WATCH: 'At least 60% of all farmland will have to be redistributed' - UWC Professor скачать в хорошем качестве

WATCH: 'At least 60% of all farmland will have to be redistributed' - UWC Professor

‘’I think that the agricultural industry does not fully appreciate the significance of the scale issue.’’ These are the sobering words of Professor Ben Cousins, University of the Western Cape’s Poverty, land and agrarian studies chair. Speaking to News24 on the side-lines of the Landbou/AgriSA land summit in Bela-Bela, Limpopo on Thursday, Professor Cousins outlined the risks of paying lip-service to agrarian reform in South Africa. ‘’At least 60% of commercial farm land will have to be distributed, otherwise the destructive forms of populism, as embodied in the EFF, will take hold among the unemployed youth of the country.’’ According to Professor Cousins, land redistribution has to involve a large number of beneficiaries on very large amounts of productive land. Market-orientated black small-holder farmers will have to get the largest allocation of redistributed land over their large-scale black commercial farmers. This model would not only create over one million jobs, it would necessitate a change in how South Africans consume agricultural produce. ‘’We need to transform what happens in the markets, the problem is the domination of big retailers and their power over farmers.’’ Added Mazibuko Jara from Ntinga Ntaka KaNdoda, a rural development organisation in the Eastern Cape. ‘’There is a need to secure diversified markets, particularly for small farmers.’’ Jara feels that even public institutions like hospitals, prisons and schools can become valuable markets for produce from small-scale farmers. Small-holders on redistributed land will need informal markets. Farmers markets outside of supermarkets and bakkie traders who supply street hawkers. Ultimately, this goes beyond only transforming the agricultural sector in South Africa. The country will have to adjust to a new economic structure of how we will consume agricultural produce as well. Parliament has recently embarked on a series of public hearings to hear the views of South Africans in making changes to the constitution, allowing for the expropriation of land without compensation. This follows a ANC resolution taken at the 2017 National Policy Conference that land should be expropriated without compensation. Subscribe to News24:    / news24video