The Department of Agriculture is offering nothing but lip service and is not serious enough about ensuring South Africa's current and future food security.
The Department is failing to ensure that commercial farmers are offered drought relief. On the 4th of March 2020, South Africa was officially classified as a drought disaster area, but none of the promises made to farmers with regard to a plan for financial injections and aid have since realised.
The effect that the drought has on South Africa did not dissipate with the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. The same problems that were present before the outbreak of the virus should still enjoy priority during the lockdown period.
Even though certain agricultural activities are classified as essential goods and services, Covid-19 is having a detrimental effect on the economy as well as the food value chain. It is having an enormous negative impact on commercial farmers in particular. The Department's attempts to only offer support to subsistence and small-scale farmers during this time do not contribute to food security in any way.
The government should also support farmers who were affected by the government's own exclusion during the lockdown. Numerous farmers could not continue with production because they were not classified as essential goods and services by the government. Divisions within in the agricultural sector that were economically excluded during the period of lockdown, like wool, wine and bee farmers, also deserve government aid.
Furthermore, the government is overemphasising winter crop production, while it is not making any provision for the summer month's crop production. The government must be careful not to merely look for short-term solutions to the problems in the agricultural sector that were caused by the outbreak of the virus. The government must start pro-actively preparing for future seasons now already.
The government is not honest when it says that it is concerned about food security if it is treating commercial farmers like the stepchildren of the agricultural industry.
The Department of Agriculture must quickly change its policy direction to not only focus on subsistence farmers, but also on commercial farmers who are the drive of the economy and the food value chain in South Africa.
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