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“There are improvements in the Green Paper on Land which should be welcomed. In as far as the Green Paper still proposes a limit on the size of private land which an individual may own, it creates a recipe for food shortages in South Africa. Approximately 15% of South Africa’s commercial farmers at present produce 80% of the food which is consumed. By placing limits on how much land these big farmers are allowed to own, the whole of the agricultural economy will be warped without the land reform problems of the government being solved,” according to Dr. Pieter Mulder, deputy minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. Dr. Mulder was a speaker at the TLU’s annual conference in Pretoria.

“In South Africa the size of the land under agricultural production has declined by 30% from 1994 until 2009,” according to Dr. Mulder. “It places much more pressure on farmers to still produce enough food for South Africa’s population of 50 million on less land. Land reform, climate change and the exchange rate are some of the most important reasons which have lead to this land not being under production any longer. This, while only 13% of South Africa’s land is suitable for sustainable intensive agricultural production,” Mulder added.

“South Africa’s commercial farmers have declined from 60 000 in 1996 to less than 40 000 today. Approximately 40 million people of South Africa’s population of 50 million cannot provide in their own food needs. That implies that every commercial farmer has to produce food for nearly 1100 people. South Africa should, in the light of these figures, be doing much more to ensure that the commercial agricultural sector is not wiped out. Once a country loses its commercial agricultural sector, as was the case in Zimbabwe, it is nearly impossible to rebuild it again,” Mulder said.