Johannesburg - Agriculture South Africa (AgriSA) says at least R20 billion will be needed to alleviate the drought impact among the country’s farmers and is hoping the government will allocate at least R5bn of that at the next Budget and the rest be sourced from commercial interests.
AgriSA president Johannes Moller said yesterday, in reaction to a proffered R236 million by Agriculture Minister Senzeni Zokwana, that every little bit helped, but that the extent of the impact required a hefty capital contribution.
Moller said that the priorities for alleviating the drought impact included humanitarian aid, which involved digging boreholes in water-scarce areas, setting up a fund to help farmers buy livestock fodder and funds to be set aside to help farmers, particularly grain producers, with input costs in the coming season.
“We are thankful for anything that farmers can get. We will probably give a more accurate figure by the middle of January, this is just my thumbsuck, but we need more than R20bn,” he said.
Speaking on Monday at the briefing on Africa Growth and Opportunity Act negotiations, Zokwana said that the government had set aside R236m as an emergency fund to alleviate the impact of drought and that the Treasury would be making its own research to establish how much more could be directed towards the effort.
“The R236 million is… for quick intervention.” He said it was not the whole capital contribution by the government “because at least five provinces have been declared disaster areas”.
“The process must run through National Treasury, which will do its analysis so that people can be assisted for future farming,” Zokwana said.
Initially, the government pumped in R352m to deal with the drought crisis. In November, the cabinet injected a further R100m in drought-relief measures.
He said the government had also mandated the National Agricultural Marketing Council (Namac) to monitor the price of food products to check that shops did not overinflate the cost of basic food items, using the drought as an excuse.
“We have set up a team that must monitor the changing of food prices, so that we are able to warn if people are getting exploited.”
He also said with the main grain-producing provinces of Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga and North West recording far smaller harvests than anticipated, the country’s grain supplies were likely to last until the end of April.
Thereafter, the country would be compelled to import maize in May or June.
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