Date: 17/06/2009

Source: Democratic Alliance

Title: DA: Bosman: Speech by the DA shadow minister of agriculture, forestry and fisheries on the budget vote debate in Parliament

Honorable Chairman, Hon Minister and Deputy Minister, Hon Members of the House.
I would like to again congratulate Minister Joemat-Pettersson on her appointment as Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, as well as the Deputy Minister Dr. Pieter Mulder on his appointment. As you were not present in Parliament with the President's debate, let me take the opportunity to say I sincerely hope that under your leadership agriculture will get the attention it needs.

Primere boerdery is lank reeds ‘n waardetoevoeging-skakel in die voedsel produksieproses. Hierdie proses is met vryer handel en mededinging in ‘n globale markomgewing aan al-hoe-meer invloede en vereistes onderhewig wat deur boere, hulle insetverskaffers, voedsel- prosesseerders en -bemarkers in ‘n vennootskapsverhouding verstaan moet word.

Die Staat speel ook ‘n belangrike rol om suksesvolle ontwikkeling en mededingendheid te verseker. Die rol wat spelers in die waardeketting speel om pryse vir die verbruiker te verhoog moet ernstig onder toesig gehou word. Infrastruktuur en diensverskaffing moet koste-effektiwiteit verseker, navorsing- en regulatoriese ondersteuning moet volhoubaarheid, mededingendheid en voldoening aan omgewing en verbruikervereistes verseker, bowenal moet ‘n beleidsbedeling vertroue inboesem wat rolspelers sal aanmoedig om Suid-Afrika as ‘n voorkeur bestemming vir investering te beskou.

Dit was met teleurstelling, dat primere landbouproduksie nie deur u Departement as van uiterste belang vir die land se ekonomiese groei en stabiliteit uitgesonder was in u begrotingspos nie. Die belangrikheid van die landbousekter as voedsel en veselverskaffer, asook werkgewer en as verdiener van buitelandse valuta was in die verlede nooit deur die ANC as sulks erken nie. Die gesegde lui dat enige land wat sy landbou misken uiteindelik tot mislukking gedoem is, Zimbabwe is 'n sprekende oorbeeld hiervan.

Honourable Minister, the Democratic Alliance supports a united, profitable, sustainable and thriving agricultural sector in South Africa.

We believe that it is critical for our food security and that South Africa needs to be the food exporter that it once was.

Apart from ensuring South Africa's food security, the primary agricultural sector employ a workforce of 796 000, consisting of 431 664 fulltime and 365 142 part-time workers, or 8.8% of the total workforce.

It is in this context that we can support some of the goals of the Department of Agriculture's Medium Term Strategic Framework, to "promote agricultural productivity and profitability through the identification of opportunities, sustainable use and protection of land, water and genetic resources and infrastructure development, to ensure household food security".

However with the greater emphasis on transformation issues and lack of focus first and foremost on the economic viability of the sector, I am afraid to say that this will not be achieved.

As a result of government's confrontational stance to commercial agriculture, we have seen a huge disinvestment and a decline in employment, as well as an exodus of producers in this important sector. The threats from government to do away with the "willing buyer-willing seller" principle and the now shelved Expropriation Bill, certainly also contributed to the decline in investor confidence. We cannot afford to repeat these mistakes.

The challenges that we now face to restore confidence and improve production are the following:

Firstly, government must have a clear regulatory framework based on the free market system to regulate and enhance investment in the sector.

As early as 1961 Johnston and Mellor argued that agriculture could make important contributions to the structural transformation of economies. In other words, it could provide labour, capital, foreign exchange and food to the growing industrial and urban sectors as well as a market for domestically produced industrial goods. The further challenge for agricultural growth and development is not only to produce more food, but also to create employment and thus income for poor people inside and outside of the sector.

The declining contribution of agriculture to overall Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is frequently misinterpreted as a decline in its role in the country's economy. However agriculture's real value to the economy is embedded in several other not so obvious economic functions. These include agriculture's forward and backward linkages, its ability to earn foreign exchange, employment ability and its role as a provider of food for the nation.

Secondly, we must overhaul the failure of our land reform programs by ensuring that the new land beneficiaries have adequate post settlement financial and other support. We need to identify people with an interest in farming, we need to train them and have proper mentorship programs with former land owners, to ensure smooth skills transfer.

The Department‘s Extension Services have completely collapsed, and need to be rejuvenated as a matter of urgency.

We took note, with interest, of the Department's Extension Recovery Plan which reported to have recruited 384 extension personnel, to have trained 1,200 officers in generic, technical and computer skills, and to have provided ICT equipment to a further 1,231 personnel.

With my experience in this field, I believe that the extension services should be strengthened by commodity based mentorships through which great successes have been achieved in the past.

I am therefore pleased that agreements have been signed with eleven commodity organisations to support the development of emerging farmers.

Mr Chairman, more money will have to be put into Research and Development as well as the use of biotechnology to its fullest possible extent, to enable producers to increase production.

Thirdly, the impact of climate change and droughts on production and food security should be recognised. The availability of water of good quality is becoming more important for maintaining production. Rainfall is unevenly distributed and South Africa is periodically affected by severe droughts. We will have to focus on strategies to mitigate the adverse impact, especially on water availability and adapted plant biodiversity.

Proper management of natural disasters is critical for the long term sustainability of this sector. We need to accelerate the promulgation of a Disaster Management Act. Currently the management of disaster aid is ad hoc and take far too long to be implemented.

Fourthly, we need to revisit our trade and tariff policy in order to align it with the policy space allowed for in the DOHA round of the WTO agreements in order to make sure that our local production remains competitive and profitable. Market access is of vital importance for small-scale producers to secure adequate prices for their products.

Daar is ‘n behoefte aan ‘n landbouhandelsbeleid wat beter na Suid-Afrika se belange sal omsien: ‘n beleid wat ‘n balans moet tref tussen enersyds die voedselbekostigbaarheids vraagstuk, teenoor die meriete daarvan, om die effek van onregverdige owerheidsondersteunde invoermededinging met toepaslike invoertariewe te neutraliseer. Beleidsvoorstelle hiervoor is ‘n geruime tyd reeds gedoen, maar dit word nie prakties toegepas nie vanweë ‘n sloering op regeringsvlak. Om vir toereikende beskerming teen gesubsidieerde mededinging te vra, is verseker nie onbillik nie. Deur dit nié toe te staan nie, benadeel die regering investering in plaaslike produksie wat sou kon bydra tot verbeterde voedselsekerheid, werkskepping, landelike ontwikkeling en selfs uitvoere. Uit ervaring blyk dit in elk geval dat voedselinvoere nie laer voedselpryse tot gevolg het nie. Is die sloering met die toepassing van die aanbeveelde beleid nie ‘n voorbeeld waar sogenaamde sosiaal-maatskaplike voordele voorrang bo ekonomiese ontwikkelingsgeleenthede geniet nie?

South Africa is currently a signatory to various trade agreements other than the WTO. Most notably of these are the Southern African Customs Union (SACU), the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the EU-SA Trade, Development and Co-operation Agreement (EU-SA TDCA).

South Africa, within the ambit of SACU, is also currently in the process of negotiating various different bilateral trade agreements. This raises the question of how much trade policy space South Africa actually has for its agricultural sector.

A study by Sandrey et al. provides answers to this question. They conducted research to assess the amount of ‘policy space' that is actually available to increase tariff protection to South African agriculture, and concluded that in general space available is limited. Nineteen percent of all imports have some policy space subject to WTO tariff rate quotas. The Agricultural Trade Development Strategy addresses the four pillars of trade intervention - in other words, trade support, tariffs to be part of a development policy, regulatory support and bilateral and multilateral negotiations as instruments to improve market access. It is therefore necessary to implement a Trade and Tariff policy for South Africato give substance to the above issues.

To close, Hon. Minister, the Democratic Alliance looks forward to a more cooperative relationship with the you and your Department in order to take agriculture development, food security and our country forward.

I thank you.