Agriculture

1.    (a) The Extension Recovery Plan (ERP) has a specific budget for capacity building of extension officers. The bi-monthly Blocksessions for extension officers provides tailored training for continuous upskilling in order to  equip the extension officers with information and tools to address any emerging issues.  The  department is also making use of commodity experts during these Blocksessions. Furthermore, the department also exposes the extension officers to the work of professional bodies like the South African Society for Agricultural Extension (SASAE) and other local and international agricultural conferences.

b. Extension Officers are compelled to attend agricultural shows in their respective districts or those that are specific to their field of expertise. Farmer’s days is a Departmental indicator on our APP and therefore extension officers have to attend farmer’s days in their districts to, inter alia,  demonstrate the latest technologies to our smallholder producers. In order for extension officers to provide the latest marketing knowledge to farmers, liaising with marketing divisions of agricultural products is a necessity.  Furthermore, the Department is currently training extension officers in the international Smallholder Horticulture Empowerment and Promotion (SHEP) approach which in essence is a  “market orientated” approach to agricultural businesses.

 c. ERP and Departmental bursaries are available for formal training opportunities.  It must be noted that in terms of our extension norms and standards it is required that extension officers must have a 4 year degree.  It was through this fund and initiative that the department could send extension officials to various tertiary inistitutions to ensure that they met the mimimum requirements with their  qualification. 

d. Approximately one (1) percent of the department’s budget is used for formal training.