8 minute read
AGRICULTURE
NCORA: AN EXAMPLE OF WHAT FARMING CAN LOOK LIKE IN SA
ANDILE NTINGI spells out that to develop thriving black farmers, they not only need access to additional land, but also investment into infrastructure, skills and market development
Deep in the rural Eastern Cape on the banks of Tsomo River lies the village of Ncora, home to one of many irrigation schemes in the province that has suffered from years of underinvestment after the fall of apartheid in 1994.
Ncora’s land is so fertile and blessed with vast water resources that it could easily be South Africa’s breadbasket. However, the area is unlikely to become one of our country’s main sources of food unless a serious effort is made to attract private investors to steer it towards its full potential.
In the ongoing debate about land reform, places like Ncora rarely feature in the discussion despite possessing the ability to bring poor rural communities into the mainstream of agricultural production. These places represent a wasted opportunity akin to the commercial farms that are bought by government from white farmers and transferred to black farmers only for the farms to end up being unproductive under the new owners.
NCORA’S DEMISE
During its heyday in the 1970s and 1980s, when Ncora was part of the Transkei homeland, it was a strong contributor to food production in our country. The Ncora Irrigation Scheme boasted a dairy farm, which occupied 3 500ha of irrigated land. In the 1980s, Ncora utilised modern agricultural methods to produce 15 000 to 20 000 litres of milk per day and 3 000 pockets of cabbages.
But after 1994, the scheme like many in the Eastern Cape, fell apart because of neglect and under-investment. The reason the scheme worked before is that then Transkei ruler Kaiser Daliwonga Matanzima, with the backing of the National Party government, invested money and skills into ensuring that Ncora produced food. Matanzima brought in a firm of Johannesburg-based consultants, known as Loxton Venn and Associates, to run the project. Among its ranks, the firm had former Zimbabwean professionals, who had farming and agricultural extension background, who lived on site in Ncora to run the project.
According to the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Ncora is part of 50 000 hectares of land that is under irrigation in the former homelands. In the rest of the country, there are about 1.6 million hectares of land under irrigation, mainly benefitting white farmers.
I was in Ncora recently and I felt nostalgic seeing abandoned houses and buildings that were once occupied by the Loxton Venn and Associates staff. These buildings gave me a window into the past of a farming community town that was once thriving. There is still a big board that greets you when you enter the irrigation scheme, which reads the estate was managed by Interscience Transkei Pty Ltd on behalf of Transkei Department of Agriculture and Forestry and Loxton Venn and Associates. I was surprised to see that the board has survived all these years, possibly indicating that the leaders running our country have never set foot in the area. There was massive investment into the irrigation estate, which is supplied with water by the Ncora Dam, a very imposing structure that is under-utilised. It was disheartening to see the dam overflowing and the water running to the sea despite many nearby towns suffering from water shortages due to drought and lack of investment in storage infrastructure. The R220-million that the government invested in 2016 to supply water to 97 villages is not enough.
NCORA’S REVIVAL
The potential is so huge at Ncora that the Eastern Cape government, under the leadership of Premier Oscar Mabuyane, is beginning to show interest in it. The dairy farming has been revived and is even matching levels seen in the 1980s. A big part of this revival has been driven by a black-owned agribusiness group, Amadlelo, which is run by former Old Mutual executive Simphiwe Somdyala. The company operates two state-of-theart dairies at Ncora that produce more than 15 000 litres of milk a day. By next year, Amadlelo projects to increase production to 20 000 litres a day. There is still room in the estate to accommodate up to four more dairies. This will require additional private investors like Amadlelo to come to the party to make this a reality. There is also an additional 2 000 hectares of land that could be used for agriculture. I believe a place like Ncora deserves an investment vehicle dedicated to promoting and attracting investment to the area. This investment vehicle could be used to fully exploit Ncora’s potential. This company could also be used to revive and manage irrigation schemes that the government is unable to operate. What Amadlelo has shown is that it is possible for black people to participate in agriculture at the highest level provided investment is made into infrastructure, skills and market development.
BARRIERS TO GROWTH FOR BLACK FARMERS
The government also needs to pay close attention to farms that end up failing after they have been transferred to black farmers. Addressing this problem also deserves to be given prominence in the land reform debate as it could pose risk to South Africa’s food security if once productive farms end up being unproductive due to lack of investment capital, market access and experience. Due to lack of post-acquisition support, some black farmers feeling the pressure of being thrown in at the deep end, have since rented their once-productive farms or are considering selling them back to established commercial farmers. There is a myriad of factors that lead to black farmers throwing in the towel. The most notable factors are lack of access to start-up and investment capital; markets; skills; mentoring and training; and corruption, whereby unskilled politically-connected individuals hijack state-sponsored fi nancial assistance at the expense of emerging farmers. The combination of insuffi cient government assistance and corruption displaces emerging black farmers, defeating the objectives of the land reform policy, which economist Nick Vink estimates that it cost R69-billion to implement since 1994.
SUSTAINABLE SOLUTIONS
To ensure participation of black farmers in commercial agriculture, they must be assisted to address their shortcomings. The make-up of this assistance should involve roping in the private sector to contribute to the sustainability of black farmers. Without the buy-in or involvement of the private sector, there is little hope of developing emerging black farmers into successful commercial farmers. A concerted effort must be made to open up the entire food production value to black farmers to ensure that they generate suffi cient income to sustain their ventures. However, we won’t be able to develop thriving black farmers if they don’t get access to additional land. In traditional economics, land is more than just a piece of earth, it is a factor of production, of which in its absence no production would be possible, and therefore no serious wealth accumulation would take place. Since the ancient times, the true value of land has always stemmed mainly from its scarcity, but many land buyers purchase it to capitalise on its paucity, either to develop it for residential and commercial settlements; commercial farming; mining and minerals processing; and a whole host of other cash-generating activities. On top of its cash-generating potential, land is loved by the commercial banks because it is one of the oldest forms of collateral as it cannot be moved, stolen, wasted or destroyed. Throughout the world, land is not only scarce, its ownership is also concentrated in the hands of the few. In South Africa, land ownership is linked to the colonial and apartheid conquest and dispossession of land previously occupied by black Africans. This resulted in whites owning a lion’s share of the land and blacks owning considerably less. This must be addressed if we are to build an inclusive economy that benefi ts the majority of our people.
ANDILE NTINGI
FOUNDER OF GETBIZ
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