The Western Cape Agriculture Department’s inaugural summit has highlighted issues around rural safety, food security and land reform. The summit was held at Rawsonville, in the Boland.
As a major economic driver, agriculture is responsible for creating over 14% of all jobs in the Western Cape.
The department’s Jerry Arries says, “Farmers must make use of this opportunity of grants in their business but unfortunately grant funding cannot sustain that person forever so they will have to find other sources of funding so that we can help new people to get into the queue for funding and so that we can also get the youth and women and people with disabilities to support them.
“I would actually ask people with disabilities and women and youth to apply for these grants and if they need support they can contact us to assist them,” adds Arries.
Meanwhile, Western Cape Minister of Agriculture Ivan Meyer says numerous projects are underway to address rural safety within the province. He says an attack on a farm is not just an attack on the individual farmer, but on the economy too.
Meyer was speaking at the Department’s inaugural Municipal Agricultural Summit, which was held at Rawsonville, in the Boland.
“We have established a rural safety desk, a rural safety digital dashboard, and we’ve done an extensive study about rural safety in the Western Cape so that we can put the right resources in the various places. I’ve also done an oversight visit to some of the police stations and I’m very happy that in some places the police are looking at certain rural areas and in some places there’s simply not enough resources.”
Western Cape holds the inaugural Municipal Agricultural Summit
