Economic Opportunities
Whether his Departments spent any amount on private security firms during the past three financial years; if so, for each (a) what is the name of the firm, (b) where, (c) for what purpose and (d) at what price were the services of the firm utilised?
The Western Cape Department of Agriculture provides an extensive suite of services to SMMEs operating in the sector. These services are specifically targeted at assisting land reform beneficiaries so as to ensure the highest possible success rate of projects.
These interventions, as listed below, have helped the Western Cape to achieve a land reform success rate well above 60%. We believe this figure is still too low, and in September this year, we held a land reform summit which brought the private and public sector, as well as unions and civic organisations together, to work on a strategy to boost this success rate, and encourage even greater transformation in the sector.
In South Africa as a whole, around nine out of ten land reform projects have failed.
Below are some of the initiatives through which we assist SMME farmers:
The Department provides extension and advisory support services to the land reform beneficiaries within the Province. These services include site visits and follow up assistance based on identified needs. Furthermore, the Department provides funding support for farm infrastructure and production inputs through conditional grant funding, namely; the Comprehensive Agricultural Support Programme and Ilima Letsema grant.
The Department has partnered with key commodity groups in the Province with a view to facilitating access to mentorship support and markets for smallholder farmers. Through this process, mentors are assigned to smallholder farmers at the project approval stage.
Our land reform study, completed earlier this year, focused on a sample from a total of 246 agricultural land reform projects supported since 2009, based of 5 critical success factors; i.e. secured linkages to markets, financial management, record keeping and reinvestment into the business, development and implementation of a long term business plan and compliance with labour and tax laws. Based on the results of each section of the study, the Department will be devising a response plan.
Please find attached a list of the 246 land reform projects we have supported in the province. The number of projects we have supported is the most of any province in South Africa.
