Pretoria – Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development Minister Thoko Didiza has launched the “much-awaited” national Farmer Register, as her department seeks to understand its client base both in terms of size and scale of operation.
In 2019/20, Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) released the agricultural census and it covered mainly the commercial sector.
“While this was encouraging we were still short of data about smallholder producers in our country. The aim of the survey was to get data that will tell us where the smallholders are in the outreach, their demographics, production as well as their contribution to employment,” said Didiza.
In order to ensure that this work meets the statistical requirements, the department had to work with Stats SA on the development of the model.
The department also had to work with the provincial departments of agriculture “because this is where, on a daily basis, farmers receive their services”.
In 2020, the department had 95 501 registered farmers on its register. This number is further delineated in terms of provinces.
“One interesting feature is that in some provinces there are more female producers and, in terms of the age category, we have found that during the year 2020, KwaZulu-Natal had more young farmers, followed by the Eastern Cape,” she said.
The existing register has confirmed that more smallholder and subsistence farmers are involved in livestock production followed by crops and mixed farming.
“This tool is important because it will enable us as government in terms of support as well as monitoring the performance by government and farmers themselves,” said Didiza.
The farmer register covers “attainable” smallholder farmers across provinces.
The Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development highlighted that not all farmers were reached in this phase of registration due to Covid-19 lockdown restrictions.
“Farmer registration is ongoing as the department is still attracting more farmers on its data base in all the provinces. The data collected to some extent includes households, subsistence, medium-scale and commercial farmers based on the following farming activities: cultivation of crops and horticulture, livestock production and a combination of the above (mixed farming),” the department added.
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