The Land and Agricultural Development Bank of South Africa (Land Bank), together with the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC), the National Youth Development Agency (NYDA) and Buhle Farmers’ Academy (BFA), aims to graduate ‘agripreneurs’ and prepare them to enter the commercial farming sector.
The Land and Agricultural Development Bank of South Africa (Land Bank), together with the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC), the National Youth Development Agency (NYDA) and Buhle Farmers’ Academy (BFA), aims to graduate ‘agripreneurs’ and prepare them to enter the commercial farming sector.
South Africa has a well-developed agricultural sector, with approximately 32 000 commercial farmers in production. However, there is an urgent need to transform the sector and empower previously disadvantaged individuals – particularly youth and women – with the knowledge and skills required to go beyond subsistence farming and contribute to the broader economy. This is increasingly vital within the context of the current land reform debate. It is also vital as the National Development Plan envisages creating one million new jobs in agriculture by 2030.
The Land Bank’s corporate social investment (CSI) programme has a number of focal areas, including the Agri-Teen Symposium, the Communal Wool Growers’ Association Programme, employee volunteerism and BFA. Through its CSI programme, the Land Bank has helped to create a range of opportunities for youth to be absorbed into the agricultural sector. The Land Bank has a well-established relationship with BFA, a non-profit organisation dedicated to training and developing entrepreneurial skills for the sector – particularly among emerging black farmers. Some 98% of the beneficiaries of Buhle’s programmes are black and close to half are women. With a 16-year track record and Agricultural Sector Education and Training Authority accreditation, BFA is the ideal partner for the Land Bank, which spent R1.55 billion on transformational projects in 2018.
Trainees from all over the country attend BFA’s Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal campuses, with training as practical as it is theoretical. Courses cover crops, vegetables, poultry and livestock production, as well as mixed farming. The Academy has trained more than 6 000 farmers and created over 8 000 jobs in the agricultural sector to date – no mean feat (around 65% of its trained alumni are able to either establish or improve their existing farming operations). By partnering with the Academy, the IDC and the NYDA, Land Bank is looking at ways in which these emerging farmers may be able to access finance eventually – one of the bottlenecks that hampers the growth of the sector.
Introducing the smallholder farmer development project
The latest initiative that Land Bank is supporting, in conjunction with BFA, the NYDA and the IDC, is a three-year smallholder farmer development project that will enable 10 emerging farmers to become viable, sustainable commercial businesses within the agricultural sector. The programme was established in 2019 and is expected to run until 2022. The emphasis thus far has been on recruiting, selecting and contracting with the programme’s beneficiaries who were carefully selected by the project’s partners. The approximately R3 million allocated to the project has been used to cover grants to the selected farmers (R200 000 each), as well as for ongoing training (R10 000) and support or mentorship (R90 000) for each farmer. Every year, R3 million is allocated for specific focal areas.
The partnership model is one of shared responsibility and shared value creation, says Lion Phasha, Land Bank senior specialist in stakeholder relations and CSI. The Land Bank’s focus on the agricultural sector aligns with the IDC’s investment in agro- processing. The timing could not be better, as government is reprioritising agriculture, knowing that it plays a vital role in terms of driving job creation and GDP growth.
While the sector is robust, it is notoriously untransformed. However, the project will go some way towards assisting with transformation – the ten farmers selected are predominantly young black-owned farming enterprises (nine are youth-owned). The type of farming varies, from vegetable production, broiler/ poultry production, livestock (including goat, cattle, sheep and pig production) and fruit production. Five provinces are represented and six farms are rural, with three urban and one peri-urban farm.
Developing commercial farmers
Phasha believes that BFA is taking the right steps to develop farmers because it insists on practical, hands-on farm experience – the inductees must spend time with ‘master farmers’ learning how to plant, irrigate, use pesticide and much more. However, mentorship does not stop there.
“Thanks to this initiative, farmers will be able to acquire not just hands-on farming experience, but also enhanced awareness of how to run a business – they gain business management skills, their economic vulnerability is reduced, and their bankability is vastly improved. This means they will be able to access loans. At the moment, a lot of farming in South Africa is purely subsistence farming. Our aim is to follow a step-up approach – to take these small businesses to the next level in order to develop new commercial farmers. In this way we will be able to completely transform the sector,” says Phasha.
Phasha is adamant that the Land Bank is looking for people passionate about agriculture and excited at the idea of forging a multi-generational career. “We want this initiative to have a sustainable impact,” he says. “We encourage farmers from previously disadvantaged communities, women and the youth to farm – but the proviso is that they must love farming; they must want to make a career out of agriculture. Eventually, we would like to train thousands of farmers and ensure that the best-performing of those continue to produce and go on to create employment and maintain food security in the country. Primary producers are very important. We want to graduate them to be bankable – not just with the Land Bank but with any financial institution.”
This incubator for ‘agripreneurs’ will go a long way towards making the agricultural sector more vibrant and inclusive, helping to remove the legacy of racial and gender discrimination. It will also create the farmers of tomorrow, who will help to safeguard food security in the face of drought, the current climate emergency and economic uncertainty. The importance of such a project can therefore not be underestimated.
Lion Phasha, Land Bank Senior Specialist: Stakeholder Relations and CSI lphasha@landbank.co.za www.landbank.co.za
