SA’s struggling subsistence farmers are set to receive a cash boost with government announcing on Monday that it has set aside R1bn to assist small-scale farmers.
Millions of rural households rely on subsistence farming for their food and to supplement their incomes. Conservative estimates suggest that there about three-million subsistence farmers in SA playing a key role in improving household food security. However, they hardly receive any formal support from government.
The UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation previously highlighted that transport restrictions and quarantine measures introduced to curb the spread of Covid-19 across many countries impeded small and large scale farmers’ access to input and output markets, curbing productive capacities. Shortages of labour caused by the virus also disrupted production and processing of food.
Agriculture, land reform and rural development minister Thoko Didiza told a news conference on Monday that as part of the economic recovery plan tabled by President Cyril Ramaphosa in October, R1bn would be allocated to support small-scale farmers whose production was disrupted by the pandemic. The amount of support will range between R1,000 and R9,000 per household, and includes farming input vouchers.
Applicants should be 18 years old or older, have an SA ID, not be employed by government, currently actively involved in agricultural production and must not have received department support in the current financial year, Didiza said.
The support will mostly target women, youth, people with disabilities and unemployed military veterans. Applications, which can be completed on a cellphone by dialing *134*4536#, will open on December 10 until December 22. Applicants will receive notices in January 2021.
“It is appreciated that while the agricultural sector was negatively impacted upon, the subsistence producers and household producers remain the most affected. These are producers who utilise land in the back yards of their homes, gardens in communal areas all of which are more or less the size of a soccer field,” Didiza said.
“It is these producers who create a bulwark against the fight of food insecurity at household level. These are producers who do not earn any other income, but these small patches of land remain their source of employment and livelihoods,” the minister said.
She conceded that current agricultural policies do not address the needs of subsistence farmers adequately.
“It is these producers who may be defined as unbankable by our financial sector, and yet their role is important in providing food security for many families in our country.”
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