ETHEKWINI Municipality will venture into the chicken farming industry with the purchase of two farms for the indigenous free-range chicken value chain project.
Council this week authorised the city’s head of Real Estate to purchase the farms Uitkomst and Doornrug from RCL Foods Consumer (Pty) Ltd, the parent company of Rainbow Chicken, which has been forced to sell a number of its operation due to severe sales and economic pressure brought on by cheap chicken imports.
It is estimated that about 2000 workers have been retrenched in Hammarsdale alone.
The local communities and retrenched workers from Rainbow Chicken will be encouraged to form co-operatives and participate in the project with the land belonging to eThekwini Municipality.
The city hopes to own and run the farms by June this year and sees the initiative as assisting in developing emerging farmers. Council agreed to purchase the two farms for not more than R15-million.
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Acting deputy city manager for Economic Development, Philip Sithole said the farms would also serve to introduce the youth to farming and would promote agriculture in the area. He said if the sale was successful, the city would continue with chicken farming and would also plant other crops.
He said retrenched Rainbow Chicken farm workers would be encouraged to join the co-operatives and impart their skills.
While the council majority welcomed the proposal and supported the purchase of the two farms, opposition parties were more cautious. The DA’s Zwakele Mncwango said it was not the city’s job to rescue businesses and it should rather create an investor-friendly environment for investors.
It was felt the city was straying into dangerous territory which could create unreasonable expectations that the city would intervene in other troubled companies.
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Councillor Heinz de Boer, also of the DA, pointed out that the troubles experienced by Rainbow Chicken in Hammarsdale was the result of failed national government policies that allowed for cheap chicken imports to be dumped in the country.
De Boer said countries like Brazil were dumping their chicken in South Africa and thriving while South Africans were suffering. “That is the problem,” he said.
