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Date : 01/03/2004
Source: Department of Agriculture
Title: D du Toit: 23rd FAO Africa Regional Conference


SPEECH PRESENTED AT THE OPENING 0F THE TECHNICAL SEGMENT OF THE 23RD FAO AFRICA REGIONAL CONFERENCE BY DEPUTY MINISTER OF AGRICULTURE AND LAND AFFAIRS, ADV. DIRK DU TOIT, Sandton Convention Centre, 1 March 2004

FAO Regional Representative for Africa, Mr Tchikaya
Outgoing chairman of the technical segment of the 22nd FAO Africa Regional Conference
Permanent Secretaries and senior government officials, distinguished guests
Ladies and Gentlemen.

Let me start by saying, welcome...welcome to this, our beautiful and warm land called South Africa. You come here as we prepare for our third elections in a young democracy that is now ten years old. Indeed, it is an important moment for us and I'm sure for you too as you have walked the road to democracy with us. It's important because it allows us, SA, to reflect upon what ten years of democracy means to South Africa and how that has shaped our relations with the rest of the continent.

Agricultural production operates in an ever-changing environment marked by the impact of weather conditions on seasonal outputs; such as the drought we are currently experiencing. This translates into the rise in food prices and continued decline in employment in the sector. Investments in agriculture research, trade and technology development and dissemination, including sustainable use of our biodiversity, are, therefore, central to the success of agriculture.

The tool to harness these investments has already been provided by our leaders in the African Union, who put forward the vision of NEPAD. We are all aware that Africa took a bold step towards redefining its development agenda and its relations with the rest of the world through the launch of the NEPAD Initiative. Through NEPAD, we as Africans have been able to affirm the need for collective self-reliance and to define a developmental vision that is in tandem with the political vision of our continent. This vision has been translated into an agriculture programme, the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), which you will be deliberating on.

You will recall that this 23rd FAO Africa Regional Conference takes place in the Southern African region following the Conference of Ministers of Agriculture of the African Union in Maputo in July 2003 where Ministers of Agriculture reaffirmed Africa's responsibility to reinvigorate its food and agriculture sector for the economic prosperity and welfare of its people". The ministers called for the implementation, as a matter of urgency, of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), its flagship projects and evolving Action Plans for agricultural development at the national, regional and continental levels.

The ministers agreed, amongst others, to working towards the establishment of regional food reserve systems, including holding of physical stocks that are linked to production; and to allocating at least 10% of national budgetary resources for their implementation within five years.

We also know that African Ministers of Water and Agriculture met in Tripoli, Libya (12 February, 2004) and highlighted the need for integrated water resources management (IWRM) within agriculture, a major component of the CAADP and an agenda item in this conference.

Our challenge is to ensure that decisions we have made at the various fora are implemented. Hence the importance of this conference in reviewing progress in the implementation of what we have agreed upon and working towards finding ways of assisting one another to achieve our common goals of food security and poverty alleviation.

The agriculture family has an important task to find solutions to the problem of food insecurity in our continent. To this end, it's important to note that appropriate technologies, with associated management structures, can be effectively utilised to enhance agricultural production and ensure food security. In our sub-region, SADC, we have accepted the use of biotechnology in its broad sense, and are in the process of ensuring that its utilisation does not have adverse impacts on our biodiversity and health by enacting the appropriate regulatory systems. We have therefore agreed upon a harmonised approach to regulatory matters on Biotechnology and even formed an Advisory Committee, the SADC Advisory Committee on Biotechnology and Biosafety, to provide us with the necessary advice.

The increasingly onerous and complex technical restrictions being placed on trade demands our close attention. On Saturday a workshop held here on the role of trade in Africa's development was informed about the real difficulties presented by new legislation and regulations relating to food in the European Union and Bio-terrorism in the US. The new US initiatives for port and container security mean that those that do not comply will be bypassed. The cost of compliance places a new level of demand on resources and technical capacities, of which we have a scarcity in Africa. We will need to find novel ways to influence and respond collectively to developments of this nature and to ensure that standards developed by international bodies, including the Codex Alimentarius, are taking our interests into account. The workshop underscored the value of increasing intra African trade in agricultural products and the theme throughout supported a greater level of African collaboration, in the supply of services, joint positioning, exchange of expertise the development of regional capacities and financing arrangements.

We should also look towards a greater level of collaboration and harmonisation of positions and regulations on sanitary and phyto-sanitary (SPS) matters has also been agreed to. In other words, it is important for countries to ensure that they have sustainable and effective policies and regulatory systems that enable access to and the management of technology.

To deal with food security and poverty alleviation, agriculture has been central to a number of other strategies that have been implemented in the last ten years in our country. We have begun implementing our Integrated Sustainable Rural Development Programme, which calls for, among others, focused attention on investments in agriculture development and the elimination of food insecurity. To this end, we are also implementing the Special Programme for Food security with the assistance of FAO.

We have set out systematically to create a democratic society based on the principles of equity, non-racialism and non-sexism. This created a requisite environment for the country to address poverty and inequality, and restore the dignity of citizens. From an agricultural perspective, we have internalised the implementation at commodity level of the Strategic Plan for South African Agriculture - a document very close to our hearts - and our vehicle for the implementation of CAADP. This is a partnership between government and industry to share a common perspective on the sector's strategic issues; to build a partnership from a common framework; to share the imperative of black economic empowerment and enhance profitability of agricultural industries at the same time; and from now on have common key messages to convey to the public, the sector, our country, the African continent and the world. The vision of the Sector Strategy is a united and prosperous agriculture sector.

South Africa, along with a number of SADC member states and other African member states of FAO, have participated in the long and painful negotiations that have resulted in this International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. To us, this has been an important development because of the objective of ensuring food security, not just for South Africa but also for Africa in particular, and the global community.

Our challenge as Africa and the global community is to ensure implementation of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture actually achieves its primary objective of food security, particularly for the hungry masses in the developing world, in particular in our region. South Africa will do its part to ratify and accede to this International Treaty; indeed we're in the process of doing so. I remain concerned that this International Treaty will not succeed if all parties to it, particularly developed countries, don't fulfil their commitments. I therefore, call upon all, in the interest of global food security, to do their utmost in ensuring full implementation of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.

Globally there is recognition that despite controversy surrounding the use of biotechnology in food and agriculture; it has great potential to advance food security and rural development. Technological developments in related disciplines such as, energy, information and communications also offer new opportunities that could benefit the poor, their food security, and natural resource management. However these benefits only accrue if policies, institutions and science and technology strategies are in place to guide technological developments and management towards solving poor people's problems. Inadequate inter-sectoral strategic planning and priority setting for agricultural research and development on both national and regional basis need to be addressed. It is necessary, therefore, for existing institutions such as Nepad, FARA, Sub-regional Organisations and National Agricultural Research Institutes to strengthen their roles in bringing stakeholders together to exploit synergies, analyses options and formulate and implement strategies and programmes.

The global trading environment is currently subject to the Doha Development Round of negotiations and those of you who were at Cancun will know the frustration of the slow movement of the process and the difficulty of progressing with the objectives that we as Africans have set for the negotiations. The fifth WTO ministerial meeting in Cancun was intended to take stock of progress on the current negotiations that have a focus on development outcomes. Naturally agriculture, an area in which we as Africa in many areas have a comparative advantage, is a centrepiece in the negotiating agenda.

While Cancun might be termed by some as a failure I would like to share a different perspective with you. This is that it is clear to most participants that the failure is in some way associated with the reluctance of the major economies to reduce their distorting subsides that harm developing countries. This recognition reflects what I believe is a fundamental shift in the negotiating dynamics in favour of developing countries. The role of particularly the G20 in the negotiations and the engagement by Africa has contributed towards many in the developed world realising that a development outcome to these negotiations cannot be treated lightly.

I would like to conclude by pointing out that we are still plagued by vagaries of nature, which precipitate food emergency situations in many of our countries and increase our people's vulnerabilities. We need to work together to put in place mitigation strategies, harness the potential contained in our natural environment and also address constraints to production such as infrastructure to increase agricultural outputs.

I wish you well as you engage with one another on these important matters and hope that you will find time to go out to discover South Africa.

I Thank You.

Issued by: Department of Agriculture
1 March 2004
Source: Department of Agriculture (http://www.nda.agric.sa)

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