I am the first to acknowledge the progress President Cyril Ramaphosa is making on different economic fronts in trying to stabilise our economy and bring about much-needed investment. However, I am worried about the pace of development in the agricultural sector, especially in rural provinces such as the Eastern Cape. The government’s efforts are still haphazard, or government departments are not even attempting to work together to bring necessary support packages to help the sector.
In the Eastern Cape we have irrigation schemes as part of business plans that have been developed by interested private-sector players, but with minimal or no government support. There is huge potential in developing black commercial farmers, some of whom have spent large sums of their own money buying farms through financial institutions such as the Land Bank. These farmers were very excited when the government introduced its blended finance programme, but since inception the programme has not a...
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