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Citrus farmers in EC receive a R55 million pack-house boost

Fruit framers on production
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Citrus farmers in the Ngqushwa area in the Eastern Cape have received a major boost after the provincial agriculture department officially gave them a R55 million pack-house.

The pack-house is of international standards and will assist farmers in the area to improve their export to Asian and European countries.

Three citrus farmers producing  over 300 hectares have started using the pack-house.

Agriculture MEC Xolile Nqatha says this is evidence that the land reform project won’t fail.

Nqata says plans are in place to ensure that youth benefit from the project.

“There are young people who are working here who’ve got Grade 12. We want to take some of them so that we can make use of the available land to plant more land and use them to be farm owners in their own right. That’s the commitment I’m making that the department will do that going forward so that we grow the number of farmers here, from these three farmers and multiply them using young people as the future of agriculture in our country”.

However, one of the farmers, Zukile Mgadle, says the new pack-house is making their farming much easier.

“In the old pack-house we were compromising the quality of the fruit because it was stop and go because of the breakage of the machines that we couldn’t fix in time. So we lost the quality in orchards because it took a lot of time to pack our fruit. Now with the new pack house we will be able to take the fruit fresh and compete with other market international because our quality will be very good”.

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