Agriculture
With regard to the R50 million drought relief fund:
- Whether all the affected farmers in the identified areas received the assistance; if not, why not; if so, what are the relevant details;
- what is the detailed breakdown of all the assisted farmers, including (a) their names, (b) the assistance that they received and (c) where the farmers are located;
- (a) what was the impact of the relief and (b) what is the current situation in the affected areas;
whether there are plans for any further assistance for these drought-stricken areas since the drought relief was only provided for two months; if not, why not; if so, what are the relevant details?
All farmers located in critical and extremely critical drought stricken areas, that have submitted all the relevant documentation to be eligible for drought relief, have received support from our Department. Farm areas are identified as critical or extremely critical based on the latest bi-annual veld assessment, which was performed in September and October 2019 by a range of Specialists.
Farmers that did not qualify for drought support were those that did not conform to the National Disaster Relief Framework. Reasons include where farmers have been fraudulent in benefitting from the Scheme; such cases have been reported, investigated and farmers removed from drought relief support.
- Kindly refer to Annexure A: “Drought Relief Beneficiary List” for a detailed list of all drought relief beneficiaries.
- (a) More than 1730 Farmers were supported with drought relief in the form of fodder vouchers, which includes extremely critical conditions (monthly support) and critical conditions (bi-monthly support).
(b) The northern part of the West Coast and Witzenberg regions, the whole of the Central Karoo and Little Karoo (Eden and Overberg district), and Mossel Bay region, are still extremely critically dry to very dry and the veld has very little fodder available for the livestock. These areas still need drought-relief support. Most of the Hessequa region of the Eden District and the Overberg district is in a dry condition, with smaller parts that are critically dry. The area still needs some form of drought-relief support, because there is not much food available yet and if it does not receive follow-up rains, it will become critically dry again. Farmers should not increase the animal numbers on their farms immediately once it rains, to give the veld a better chance of recovery. Most of the Swartland and Sandveld regions of the West Coast district and parts of the Overberg district did receive welcome rains and are in a fair condition.
- The Department has requested additional funds from National Government as we recognise the difficult conditions our farmers continue to operate under.
