Estimated reading time:11 minutes
An investment in knowledge pays the best interest. That, in a nutshell, is the driving force behind the annual SernickFarmers’ Day, according to Tebogo Molele, programme director of the recent Sernick Emerging Farmers Day.
This was the 10th Emerging Farmers Day at their headquarters on the farm Liebenbergstroom in the Edenville district of the Free State. More than 200 people attended the day.
“One of the biggest challenges that emerging farmers face, is a lack of knowledge and information that will take them to the next level,” Tebogo explains. “For this reason, we try to create a programme with a mix of theory and practice. This year, we had speakers from Agbiz, the Free State Department of Agricultural, Rural Development and Environmental Affairs, Bonsmara SA, Standard Bank, as well as MSD Animal Health to touch on technical topics such as agricultural policy directions for 2025, enhancing profitability, performance testing, the importance of drawing up a will, and controlling brucellosis and foot-and-mouth disease. But we were also very privileged to have both the minister of agriculture and the Free State MEC of agriculture here.”
Title deeds for successful farmers
In his welcoming address, Sernick Group chairperson, Nick Serfontein, pointed out that there are 110 conflicts in the world at the moment, of which 35 are happening in Africa. In South Africa, he stressed, we are fighting our own wars. “We are fighting a war against corruption, crime, unemployment, and poverty. So, let us admit today that South Africa is not in a good place. Agriculture in South Africa is also not in a good place. The one concern I want to put on the table today, is land reform. Land reform is a mess.”
The government, he said, are sitting on 2,5 million hectares of land. Some of it is leased to farmers, while some is sitting unproductive. There are many successful black farmers who are leasing land from the government. They have proven themselves as successful farmers and they have been promised title deeds to their farms for years. Yet, it is not happening. “I urge the relevant officials to stop talking about what they are going to do and start talking about what they have done.” To loud applause he asked how difficult can it be to identify successful farmers and let them have the title deeds to the land they are farming? “Imagine how much wealth we can unlock immediately if these farmers have title deeds. But all we do is talk.”
Four years ago, Serfontein pointed out, the president announced the formation of a Land Reform Agency. Yet, to this day, there is no evidence that it has been doing anything. He begged the government to put action to the words and start with a constructive process of transferring title dees to deserving farmers.
Read more here about previous farmers’ days.
Growing the agricultural sector
It was unfortunate that John Steenhuisen, the minister of agriculture, did not hear Serfontein’s plea, for it was established beforehand that the minister, who had to attend the president’s State of the Nation Address address the previous evening, would arrive only late-morning at the farmers’ day. He was, however, warmly welcomed upon his arrival.
When asked why he chose the agriculture portfolio in the Government of National Unity, Steenhuisen said the answer is very simple, “I see agriculture as a massive growth sector in South Africa and a major engine room for job creation. Our country is suffering under a huge unemployment crisis and an economic growth problem.” Looking at what the sector is already doing under very difficult circumstances, he said, it becomes clear what is possible if the constraints could be removed to make it easier for farmers to do what they had to get done. This included reducing the cost of doing business and encouraging technology and investment.
“Agriculture had been a huge mainstay for the GDP over the past decade,” he said, “and if it wasn’t for the sector, I don’t think that we would have been able to cope with Covid-19 as well as we did, from a food security perspective, but also from an economic perspective.” Farmers, he pointed out, are the most important people that you need in your life. Lawyers and doctors and plumbers and the like, you may need a few times per year, but you need farmers three times per day for your food. “Growing the agricultural sector is vital, particularly for employment in rural communities. If we are going to revive rural economies, it will have to be done on the back of agriculture and agro-processing.”
Smallholder farmers, who are predominantly black, contribute only 5 to 10% of the national agricultural output, he said, but we know that they face constraints that large commercial farmers do not necessarily face, such as access to land, financing, input cost, poor infrastructure and ownership challenges. Many operate under very difficult circumstances.
Dealing with the ownership issue is of critical importance, Steenhuisen said. “We have to start giving farmers title deeds to the farms. When farmers prove themselves that they can farm effectively, we should immediately release the title deeds to them. Then they will have an asset that they can leverage financing with and understand that the effort they put in every day, will be able to be passed down to their children.”
Stock theft
Moving to some of the challenges faced by farmers, Steenhuisen said that it is unfortunate that many of the challenges farmers face, sit in the realm of other government departments. Chief amongst these, he said, is stock theft. “The sheer scale of stock theft is completely underestimated. The industry lost R1,38 billion in the last year alone to stock theft. We lack a coordinated response to stock theft across the country. We now have syndicates that are operating, and it worries me that there is evidence pointing to collusion between some members of the SAPS and these syndicates. We need an intelligence driven response to this scourge, so that we can break the back of these syndicates.
“Many of the farmers in the communities know who is responsible, but these people run protection rackets. So, we have to make absolutely sure that the SAPS and our courts treat stock theft as a priority crime, given its terrible effect on food security and our rural economy. So, what it would take is a beefed-up stock protection unit, consisting of a multi-disciplinary approach including the SAPS, private security companies and prosecutors who understand how to prosecute these cases. Then we need to weed out bad elements within the SAPS who are profiting from this crime.”
Blended finance
Steenhuisen said that blended finance is working as a model towards providing access to finance for people who cannot access it through traditional banking avenues. “It is still not the silver bullet,” he continued. “Interest rates are still too high and there needs to be a better understanding of how long agricultural cycles are. There has to be a period of breathing space to transform the borrowed capital into an asset and only start repaying the loan once the asset is established. Although we need to streamline the model more, I am very pleased to say that we have received a couple of hundred million rands more in our budget this year for the blended finance scheme with the Land Bank.
Concern over food insecurity
In her address, the MEC for agriculture in the Free State, Elsabé Rockman, expressed concern over the high levels of food insecurity in the Free State, despite the fact that the province is one of the most prolific producers in the country. Last year, she said, the National Food Security Survey results showed that there was a significant portion of people in the Free State that are completely food insecure. In addition, there is another group that is vulnerable to food insecurity. “This is in the midst of the Free State being one of the highest producers of crops such as sunflower, soybeans and maize, while beef production is also significant. Yet, we have too many people who do not have food on a daily basis. So, it is a priority for us to seriously address our food security initiatives.”
These initiatives, Rockman explained, cover a broad range, from back yard gardens to community gardens, to bigger farms and enterprises that produce food. “We focus on vegetable gardens. When I was here in October last year, SERDEV, Sernick’s development arm, had just started their tunnel projects, but they had also made land available for the Edenville community. Eleven co-operatives are using this land to plant vegetables. In addition, they are being taught the ins and outs of both production and marketing for them to be able to develop a value chain. We have now finalised an agreement with SERDEV to support that project.” Another project that they will support, she said, was in Qwa-Qwa. This project was run by the African Farmers’ Association of South Africa (AFASA) and has 500 beneficiaries. “We need this kind of anchor project in every district. We need to encourage communities to grow our own food, firstly for own use, but also to sell into an informal or formal market.”
The importance of private public partnerships
Sernick, she pointed out, was a very good example of how partnerships between the private and public sector can be successful. Their training and development programme is comprehensive and very tough. But it produces graduates who are very clear in their vision of the path they want to follow.
“We have also developed many other partnerships with commodity and other agricultural organisations, both in terms of training and development or focusing on specific commodities. So, our private public partnerships are not the traditional triple-P partnerships that typically involve infrastructure. It is more collaborating on finding solutions and drawing from each other’s strengths, and when there are challenges, sitting together and looking at the different options available on the way forward. Organised agriculture, such as AFASA, NAFU and Free State Agri, play very important roles. We regularly consult. They come with ideas on how we can do things better.”
There are, however, significant challenges in the agricultural sector such as access to land, access to water, access to markets, and access to finance, Rockamn said. Infrastructure is not what it should be. But there are solutions if we all work together, taking hands with local government, provincial government and national government. “So, it is a very positive collaboration that we are beginning to build, and I think we feed off the hope and inspiration that we get from each other.”
Economic review
Wandile Sihlobo, the chief economist of Agbiz, pointed out that the South African agricultural sector experienced a very difficult year in 2024. There were animal diseases that negatively affected the sector, but also a mid-summer drought that had a very negative effect on crop yields. “The core message for 2025, is that this is a year of recovery. However, although the recovery will be there in terms of output, farmers will not necessarily get richer, for input-cost pressures remain part and parcel of the cost squeeze. I do think, however that the sector’s broad performance will be better this year.”
For the medium to long term, he said, there were a lot more that the sector could do, foremost of which was the 2,5 million hectares of land in the hands of the state, that the government must transfer with title deeds to deserving individual farmers. “As this land comes into production, it will deliver growth and more employment.” There is a changing environment, he pointed out, that affected the sector.
“The big story, globally,” Sihlobo said, “is the uncertainty around trade policy. South Africa is an export-orientated sector, exporting over half of the product we produce. It is therefore very important that we pay attention to what happens in the EU, the US and elsewhere. Our ultimate goal, is to retain the markets that we already export to and also to expand our export to as many new markets as we can.”
BRICS, he said, offered such an area to which we could expand. “Within BRICS there really are attractive markets, but the core challenge now is their higher import tariffs and noon-tariff barriers. South African farmers have not benefited much from our BRICS relationship. Our exports to BRICS only account for about 8% on average of our overall exports.”
The goal for 2025, Sihlobo concluded, was pushing for expansion in export markets, ensuring that we make progress on land reform by releasing the land that is owned by the state, expand on blended finance, but doing all this in an environment that is expanding. “The municipalities are one area where renewal is urgently needed. They must do their part as they are part and parcel of the growth of this sector.” – Izak Hofmeyr, Plaas Media