MINISTER LULU XINGWANA IS TO REINFORCE SUPPORT TO EMERGING LIVESTOCK FARMERS
03 Aug 2007
House of the National Executive Council (NEC) of the National Emergent Red Meat Producers Organisation (NERPO) held a closed-door meeting with the Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs, Ms Lulu Xingwana at the First Guest House in Lynnwood, on the evening of 31 July 2007. The intention of the meeting was to robustly but constructively discuss key impediments confronting emerging livestock farmers, while strengthening a national partnership between the Ministry and NERPO. The Minister and the NERPO Executive Council jointly agreed on the following, amongst other matters:
• That the Minister should legislate or use existing legislation to collect accurate information on livestock numbers, ownership and production. Such information would assist the industry and government to make informed decisions and plans around the livestock industry, especially the emerging sector whose contribution to the industry is always underrated.
• That challenges that stifle the expediting of land redistribution for agriculture must be dealt with decisively. The challenges include the fact that in some provinces as much as 90% of agricultural land is still under unresolved cases of restitution, delays in the processing of title deeds for farmers who leased land before 1994, as well as alleged syndicate operation of corruption in fabricated cases of restitution.
• Reviewing of the disbursement criteria for government farmer support schemes such as MAFISA and CASP, to design sub-sector aligned criteria where organisations like NERPO can be appointed as primary distributing agents of the funds to livestock related requirements in order to ensure targeted, effective allocation of services to the intended beneficiaries.
• Central control of essential Veterinary Services in order to improve standardization and service delivery, especially in dealing with controlled diseases and coordination of safety of meat and other products. The Minister pointed out that plans are underway to set up a body at national level to regulate and coordinate national standards and norms.
• Minister to give more robust attention to Land Bank, that on top of the R700 million financial injection approved for recapitalization of the Bank, focus should be much on transforming systems, so as to well position the bank in its primary mandate to support emerging livestock farmers. To speedily appoint a new CEO for the bank to oversee such a process.
• Government in partnership with NERPO should find ways of cracking the current monopoly in the dairy industry and develop strategies to enhance the participation of black emerging farmers in the industry in order to deal with milk shortages.
As a follow up to the discussions, a meeting between Land Bank and NERPO has already been scheduled to take place in a week's time to deal with some of these issues. The meeting also took a unanimous decision to have bi-annual Ministerial Consultative Sessions as a way of keeping track on the undertakings, identify new challenges while strengthening relations between NERPO and the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Affairs. Overall, farmers have welcomed and congratulated the Minister on key policy and strategic interventions she has made thus far. NERPO is a mouthpiece of South Africa's emerging livestock farmers and seeks to create successful commercial farmers out of its members who are predominantly from historically disadvantaged groups. The organisation is celebrating its 10th Anniversary this year.
Further Enquiries: Aggrey Mahanjana, Group Managing Director, Tel: +27 (0) 12 361 9127, Cell: +27 (0) 82 556 7297, E-mail: aggreym@nerpo.org.za, Website: www.nerpo.org.za OR Godfrey Mdhluli, Ministerial Spokesperson, National Department of Agriculture, Cell: +27 (0) 79 871 5437 or 082 418 1823, Tel: +27 (0) 12 3196843.
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