AGRIBUSINESS NEXT BIG THING

Sir,

Looking at subsistence farming in some of the major economies of the world; it appears what holds the promise for this nation is transforming our subsistence farming into commercial farming.

China, one of the biggest producers of maize, having scaled down on soya beans, went down this path, following a 20-year government-sponsored programme aimed at achieving food security. And recently I heard that China increased the import of grain to feed its staggering 1.3bn people; something that I believe presents opportunities to countries in Africa to grow maize/grain on a commercial scale to feed these markets.

 The world has pumped in billions of Dollars into Africa with nothing to show in enhanced grain production. This prompted me to turn my attention to our situation at home. The State, we understand, has farms around the country that are lying fallow, waiting to be leased and we applaud that decision as this is the only way the land would ever be used. States do not have a good history of doing too well in these endeavours as seen in Zimbabwe where white owned farms were grabbed sending the farmers helter-skelter; and the end result was that the Zimbabwe that was regarded as the food basket of Africa went hungry; and is still hungry today.

When it comes to job creation, nothing creates jobs like agriculture has done on a commercial scale. South Africa next door thrives on agri-business with most of the rural populations absorbed there. And there is something our South African counterparts know that I think we don’t.

I mean the guys practice more dry land farming than we do, relying on rainwater for their maize crops but are able to grow thousands of hectares every year; despite devastating droughts in some years, they never seem to give up. Obviously they take out crop insurance to hedge against crop failure; something that I believe should be encouraged. The comfort of insurance to cover crop failure has to be preached to all farmers including subsistence farmers. That way people would plunge head-long  into farming worrying very little about the possibility of loss resulting from drought.

As a nation; apart from the commendable work that the Ministry of Agriculture is doing in terms of training, we must consider creating an agriculture-specific guarantee fund that farmers who want to go the enterprise farming route can tap into. Again the ministry must get its act together in as far as availing farm inputs is concerned.

There needs to be a revolution here, a change of mindsets from subsistence to a commercial farming mode. We need to be ruthless and make people understand that those who have vast tracts of arable land lying fallow must accept that government can give that land to those (including investors) who have capacity to use it, albeit; even if only on a lease basis.    

B Dlamini

Post your comment

Your name:

Your e-mail address:

Add your comments:

Please enter the code you see in the image:

Image:

Code: