Farmers in the Eastern Cape who started planting maize through the R79.3m investment by the department of rural development and agrarian (DRDAR) are seeing their crops germinate early, thanks to the heavy rainfall and early planting.
The department is working jointly with grain producing commercial commodity groups, including those owned by previously disadvantaged individuals, and the farmers make their own financial contribution to the cropping programme.
With the forecasted better rainfall falling, we are moving a step closer to increasing investment in growing the agriculture sector by bringing African people and their land to the mainstream of the agriculture economy.
Policy objectives of our department, which are a continuous implementation of the elections manifesto commitments made to the electorate, will see us increase production quantities and size of the land under production.
The investments made by the department in commercialising the agriculture sector, increasing participation of African individuals, capacitating them to produce using commercial methods, means the Eastern Cape is increasingly producing quality maize for global and local markets.
When launching the cropping season last month, MEC Nonkqubela Pieters emphasised the importance of ploughing every available arable land in the Eastern Cape.
She further committed the department to continue supporting communal farmers to become commercial farmers so that they can play an active role in our economy by creating job opportunities, and sell produce to the markets through off-take agreements.
Pieters said: “This year the province invested R79.3m in maize production covering 26,198 hectares of land in the OR Tambo, Alfred Nzo, Amathole, Joe Gqabi and Chris Hani districts. About R37.6m of this money is invested in partnerships with commercial grain producers such as AfroSaint Business Consultants, Dalasile AgriPark, Nodayimani Investments and Luleka Mbete Investments, SAGRA, Ukhanyo Farmer Development and Wiphold to work with farmers in producing maize to be sold to the market through off-take agreements.”
She added that about R42.3m is invested in procuring production inputs for farmers for maize production on 13,633ha and R36.8m invested in procuring mechanisation services to supply farmers with mechanisation for production on 10,021ha.
Given the need for the transformation of the agriculture sector, Pieters said she was elated that this programme brings the 1,526 adults, 51% being females, 621 youth, 13 persons living with disability benefiting from this year’s cropping programme, all previously disadvantaged groups to the mainstream of the agriculture economy as main players, not just as workers.
• Manyisana is the principal communications officer for DRDAR, while Sicwetsha is the chief director for communications and customer care in the department.
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