Land Reform and rural development remain slow and even limited. The fact that the Ministry of Agriculture is delinked from land reform suggests that government will continue to have pressure from commercial agriculture and there approach to small scale and subsistence agriculture will continue along the same trajectory as previously. This is already evident from recent Department of Rural Development and Land Reform (DRDLR) M& E data:
3,900 households benefitting per year in period 2001/2- 2005/6  
2,000 households benefitting per year in period 2006/7 – 2008/9 
This is despite expenditure in excess of R1 billion (PLAAS 2010). The PLAAS (University of the Western Cape) report also suggests that few black commercial farms have been established and where this has happened impact on rural poverty and livelihoods have been minimal. Modest numbers of additional livelihoods have been created, many of these compensating for the loss of farm workers jobs. 

The recent Zingisa/TCOE study in the Eastern Cape on the Massive Food Production Programme (MFPP) also indicates that despite that intention of the government to promote black commercial farmers, the opposite is happening. Farmers are more indebted, the programme is driven by Monsanto and a high mechanisation process that is creating greater problems for farmers.

We need to develop more appropriate technology and support for small farmers.

PLAAS also reports that government expenditure on agriculture has increased in recent years- between 1996-97 and 2008/9 expenditure on agriculture has trebled. According to the agriculture budget of 2009/10 over R14 billion went to black agriculture. We need to ask evidence of black agriculture and who are the beneficiaries?    

It is clear that there is much to do to build the capacity of the associations and TCOE as well as others in the sector to monitor what is happening in government and how we engage to create concrete alternatives around which we can do advocacy.  Our recent experiences have also shown that advocacy is not once off actions; rather it has to be sustained on-going interventions that are also closely linked with exposures of the issues in the media.

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