Cabinet has approved the five-year Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Strategic Framework, as well as the Agricultural Policy Action Plan (Apap). 

The strategic framework and Apap would be updated yearly, Cabinet advised in a media statement on Wednesday. 

The framework set out the key challenges faced by agriculture, forestry and fisheries, and proposed interventions in four areas – equity and transformation, equitable growth and competitiveness, environmental sustainability and governance. 

The Land Redistribution and Agricultural Development Programme, which falls under South Africa’s Land Reform Programme, was one of government’s programmes that had promoted equity but had, so far, not accomplished “a great deal by way of transformation”, Cabinet said.

Whereas the Reconstruction and Development Programme, a South African socioeconomic policy framework, declared that the main purpose of land redistribution was to alter the structure of South African agriculture, the strategic framework and Apap also sought to grow the economy and create jobs.