Young farmers from Mbizana in the Eastern Cape have called on the government and the private sector to invest in farming as a way of eradicating unemployment and poverty in the area. Unemployment is rife while Alfred Nzo district in the Eastern Cape has been identified as the poorest in the country.
The Mbizana-based organisation Youth in Agriculture and Rural Development, YARD says scores of young people have taken an interest in farming. They say they have hundreds of hectares of arable land but there’s a lack of support to utilize it and create employment.
Farming is one of the industries with the potential to end poverty and unemployment. Now scores of young people have taken interest in Agriculture vegetable farming is popular in Mbizana. More established farmers assist young farmers but they believe more could be done.
The chairperson of YARD Yonela Nzoboyi and a farmer Mthuthuzeli Dwabu say they want more assistance.
“If the government can assist us in terms of funding for us to grow the business of farming in Mbizana and have commercial farmers one day we need assistance from the government. We need subsidy, we need funding for infrastructure because we don’t take from anything we started these businesses from our own pockets,”
“We are towards the planting season but yet some of the farmers have no direction. The fertiliser prices are up mechanisation, chemicals we are struggling with. We would like the government to come in and help us with a seed, help us with a fertiliser,”
The young farmers say they struggle to keep up with the skyrocketing amount of fertilisers.
“Last year we were buying fertiliser for R450 but now we are buying it for R 1150, as I went to meetings, I saw that people did not take farming as a business so I felt that there was a need for someone to come and train them, even those that see it as a business cannot manage it so I went to the National Youth Development Agency ( NYDA) and asked them to come and us,”
Other farmers Nandipha Sodwele and Mbizana Vegetables Growers chairperson Nolitha Msuthi say water and fencing are some of the biggest challenges. While funding and farming implements are still lacking to utilise this land.
“We don’t have water, and because of that we are unable to produce the volumes required by the market so we fall short of meeting the demand even though we have joined forces as the Mbizana group we still cannot feed the supply,”
“We have land, sometimes five hectares but you’ll find that we don’t have implements to work. We can’t even get inputs, even when the ones from the government are only received by a small number of farmers. We need to get training. we used basically because we grow up farming, we can appreciate training like business management financial how to record so that we can grow,”
The Department of Agriculture’s Chief Director for farmers supports Mthuyiseli Ntsabo and is calling for the Mbizana Local Municipality and the Department of Agriculture to work with farmers.
“We have encouraged the young farmers to revive their provincial youth in agriculture so that we have a targeted approach that seeks to respond directly to the demands of the youth. We have identified a young farmer and assisted with a borehole, and fencing of 10 hectares and we brought in mentors to further assist with skills provisioning. “He said.
Many of the farmers already supply local supermarkets and sell to locals. They say with a little more help, they could be the biggest growers of vegetables.
