Cyril Ramaphosa has his strategic objectives and biblical parables back to front. His announcement that he plans to investigate why so many land-reform farms are derelict, following his earlier announcement that the Constitution is to be changed to allow land expropriation without compensation, puts the cart before the horse. We can predict what an unbiased investigation will uncover: that emerging farmers have insufficient access to capital, particularly where their tenure status is uncertain. Expropriating commercial farms without compensation will condemn the agriculture sector to a similar fate. Without the more than R150bn that farmers have secured in loans, production will slump, innovation will cease and food prices will rise. Will the state step in to fill the funding gap? That is impossible, as credit extension to farmers dwarfs the land-reform budget and the Land Bank’s capacity for credit extension by several times. AgriSA CEO Omri van Zyl has noted that "a third of the m...
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