A huge chunk of the Western Cape Agriculture Department’s 2018 budget will go towards reducing the effects of the drought and fighting diseases in the industry.
Farmers in various areas have been hard-hit by the worst drought in over a century. Provincial Agriculture Minister, Alan Winde, delivered his R834-million budget on Tuesday.
This sector contributes R54 billion to the province’s coffers. The Western Cape Agriculture industry employs over 300 000 people, however 57 000 jobs have been shed.
The effects of the drought and diseases such as avian flu have been quite severe. “We’ve cut down about 5 hectares of table grapes out of a total of 30, we also have not planted this year, I had a 6 hectare new vineyard that I was supposed to plant but I cancelled what we call stokkies last minute, so yes it has had an impact,” says farmer Anton Bergh.
The drought is set to cost the agricultural sector close to R6 billion. “Our budget now is how do we mitigate risk, making sure we got vets in place to do the correct testing, to help with that ecosystem of agriculture, at the same time enough money going into land reform and research, or supporting climate change, supporting the industry in general in getting our product to market, and then of course there’s food security, that underlying need of any nation to make sure you’ve got food security,” says Winde.
He says the success of land reform in the province is a priority. “Our last study to determine the success of our land reform projects indicated that we are currently sitting on 62 percent. This year, the department will once again be undertaking an external land reform study to determine the performance of all our projects since 2014.”
The official opposition has criticised the budget as not placing sufficient emphasis on women empowerment in the sector.
“The radical economic changes that are taking place, we as the province are not following, but yet we say we support the NDP, so that’s the first issue we are raising in terms of this budget. In terms of the issue of women who are in the in industry, most women only own labels, but in terms of the value chain they are not there,” says African National Congress’ Siyazi Tyatya.
The department says it is investing in new technologies and farming practices to help farmers become more resilient to climate change.
Meanwhile, Agri Western Cape says although the budget allocations will help farmers, more drought relief funding is required from national treasury to assist the battered industry. Click below for more on the story:
