Agri minister John Steenhuisen wants small farmers to be viable, sustainable and profitable

AGRICULTURE Minister John Steenhuisen says the government’s approach to supporting small farmers will be predicated on three key words – viability, sustainability and profitability.

Speaking at a South African Breweries (SAB) event in Caledon, Steenhuisen said the government wanted to scale up small farmers in a way that enabled them to be commercially viable.

He said in the past too many assistance programmes were “simply tick box exercises” where those getting help got some land and seeds, but little else.

“There’s no use dumping someone in a field with seeds and a few implements and saying, there we go, you’re now a farmer. A farmer is not a farmer unless they have a value chain to feed their products into. You can’t have a field of the most beautiful cabbages sitting somewhere, but there’s no market.”

This kind of support was ineffective as it did not ensure that these farms were viable, sustainable and profitable. Under his watch this would change as farmers would get the type of support that would enable them to become viable commercial entities.

“We wonder why 90% of the projects do not succeed. And so what we have to do is to look at how we choose viable land, how we provide sustainable support and how we transition those farmers from subsistence small scale to large scale farmers.”

The type of assistance Steenhuisen wants to see is a deeper cooperation between role players in the agricultural sector that will facilitate getting the produce of smaller farmers into the supply chain of large companies.

He points to how SAB’s sourced limes to be drunk with its Corona beers from a smaller scale farming operation as an example of how this can be done. This programme saw over a million limes being harvested in 2023, and even having some exported.

Steenhuisen says that this type of success only works because the industry and the government are working together.

“The Agriculture Department on its own, [parlement’s] portfolio committee on its own, cannot achieve transformation goals, it cannot achieve the empowerment goals, it cannot achieve the food security goals, it cannot ensure that we reach export goals, unless there is a strong element of partnership.”

This, he says, is why the Agriculture and Agro-Processing Master Plan is such an integral part of creating those partnerships.

The Agriculture and Agro-Processing Master Plan (AAMP) is a social compact co-created by the government, business, labour and civil organisations to drive the development of the agricultural sector.

Steenhuisen says he wants to “expand and intensify the work being done on the Agriculture and Agri-Processing Master Plan” and has spoken to SAB CEO Richard “Boris” Rivett-Carnac about the brewer becoming part of the AAMP.

“I said to him, we’re going to make it happen as quickly as possible, to have a beer value chain included in the Agriculture and Agro-Processing Master Plan, because there is great alignment with agriculture, with the agri-processing that’s been done of the natural products, the value add that’s been done, not just exporting tons of barley anywhere, but actually turning that barley into a commodity which has a continental and international demand.”

Steenhuisen says the goal is not only to have a successful agricultural sector that provides for the country’s food security, but also allows it to be able to export South African products around the world.

It’s these partnerships that the department is going to be seeking across all the commodities, to be able to work with them, he says.

If these partnerships work, Steenhuisen says everyone will benefit.

“The Agriculture Department’s job, the first primary job I do, is to create an enabling legislative and regulatory environment that makes it as easy as possible for our agricultural commodities and sectors to flourish. When they flourish, jobs are created. When they flourish, food security is assured.

“When they flourish, foreign direct revenues are improved because we’re able to export more products. And of course there are challenges. And it always amazes me, and I’ve said it right from the first briefing I got in the department, how amazing our South African farmers and farm workers are in our country.”