Agriculture
- (a) What is his response to the announcement of an Agro Energy Fund, as launched by the national Minister at the end of August 2023, and (b) what are the aims of this fund;
- whether he and his Department are confident that this fund will achieve its intended purpose; if not, why not; if so, what are the relevant details;
- (a) to what extent will his Department be supporting farmers to apply for funding from this fund, (b) to what extent will small-scale farmers also have access to this fund and (c) what categories of farmers are to benefit most from this initiative?
- (a) Yes, I am very excited about the long-awaited energy fund as it will support a lot of our farmers to reduce their risk during the current load-shedding challenges in the province and country. This fund will also reduce their overhead costs as the increase in electricity tariffs is above the inflation rate at this stage.
(b) To provide funding support for the acquisition of alternative energy assets to alleviate the impact of load shedding on farming operations and the agricultural sector. The fund will focus on financing energy-intensive agricultural activities which include irrigation, intensive agricultural production systems, and on-farm cold chain-related activities.
- At this stage we are very confident and there is no reason to believe that the fund will not achieve its intended purpose, but the test will be in the implementation of the fund across the provinces.
(a) My officials in partnership with Land Bank will assist farmers as far as possible with the completion and to see that applications comply with fund requirements.
(b) Smallholder producers have been allocated a 70% grant allocation capped at R500 000 per applicant which will be matched with a 30% loan portion from Land Bank. The total loan and grant to smallholder producers will be circa R714 286.
(c) All producers are targeted (Smallholder, medium, large, and mega commercial producers).
