On food security

‘Interested Party’ writes:-

I WAS pleased to read the front page of the Herald last week, and note that there had been a relatively speedy resolution to the murder of Willem Weites, who was murdered on his farm in September last year.

I don’t think the politicians truly understand the strategic importance of our farmers, and hence agriculture, and hence our ability to feed ourselves as a country. A country’s ability to feed itself from its own agricultural production is as important, perhaps more important than any other economic consideration.

This is even more vital if you have a population explosion, as we have, with more and more people every year as consumers of food. The best example, and the example closest to home, is the way Robert Mugabe almost overnight destroyed the ability of Zimbabwe to feed itself. It was like ripping out one of the pillars that supported financial stability in that country, and the result was the economic meltdown.

Sure, he blamed everybody except himself and his policies, but the fact remains that since then Zimbabwe has been a net importer of food, and in some years has had to beg for aid for its starving people. And not just a few hundred starving people, but millions of starving Zimbabweans.

We don’t want the same thing to happen here. We cannot afford the same thing to happen here. The redistribution of land may be politically expedient, but that expediency has to take second place to the strategic ability of food supply to the people.

There is an illustration of the foolhardiness of this policy very close to Vryheid. No figures are available that I have heard of, but the fact remains that vast tracts of once-productive agricultural land around Vryheid, particularly to the south, south-east and east, have been returned to the people via land claims.

It is undeniable that this land, that once produced food or cash crops, that once employed hundreds of people, is now in many cases producing nothing. Nothing. We do not know how many people lost their jobs, we do not know how much money Vryheid businesses lost as a result of the handovers, but we do know that, for example, once, nearly every banana sold in town came from this district, was grown commercially in this district, and now, I’ve heard, that is not the case.

Similarly, how much beef production has been lost, mealie tonnage, cash-earning timber as once productive farms are occupied by subsistence-farming small-time land owners. We cannot afford to continue on this path. We do so at our peril, and will one day rue the fact that commercial farmers have surrendered to the pressure of farm attacks and left the land.

If we continue on this path, I can hereby guarantee you that within 10 years we will be importing food every year and not just in the years that drought cuts production. I guarantee it. And can we afford to import food, more and more food what with a growing population and decreasing local food production?

With the Rand so weak, and trending weaker, no we cannot. Foreign exchange should not be dedicated to food purchases. What will THAT do to our balance of payments?

So, protect our commercial farmers. It really is in our country’s interest to do so.