South Africa Says Monsant's 'Drought Tolerant' GM Maize Seed No Better Than Conventional Seed

South Africa's Agriculture Minister, Thoko Didiza, has upheld a decision to reject agriculture chemical company Monsanto's application for the commercial cultivation of its triple stacked ‘drought-tolerant’ maize seed.

The maize is genetically modified (GM) to be tolerant to drought as well as resistant to certain insects.

Didiza made a final decision on an appeal lodged by Monsanto SA against the decision taken by the executive council regarding the general release application of a GM maize event, MON87460 x MON89034 x NK603.

Its refusal was based on the fact "that kernel count per row and kernel count per ear showed that there were no statistically significant differences between the MON87460 x MON89034 x NK603 maize event and conventional maize in water limited conditions.

"The yield benefits associated with the MON87460 x MON89034 x NK603 maize event were inconsistent and in some trials the MON87460 x MON89034 x NK603 maize event had lower yields than the conventional maize.

"The insect resistance data presented was insufficient since it was only collected from one trial site for two planting seasons," her department said in a statement issued October 04 m2019 .

Monsanto lodged an appeal in November against the refusal of its general release application by the executive council.

The appeal board upheld the decision to refuse the application and recommended more sites and seasons were needed to demonstrate efficacy of the drought tolerance gene.

On August 28, Didiza made the final decision, upholding the appeal board's decision "and as such the refusal of a general release application for the MON87460 x MON89034 x NK603 maize event is sustained".

The African Centre for Biodiversity (ACB) welcomed the "landmark decision", after more than a decade of "battling Monsanto’s bogus drought tolerant maize project".

The decision, it said, was a "triumphant win" for the ACB and other civil society organisations on the continent that had "tirelessly resisted the introduction of these GM varieties in SA, Mozambique, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.

"The Minister's decision was made following the abject failure of the GM varieties to increase yield under drought conditions during repeated field trials in SA.

Full article...

Southern African Countries Record Reduced Cereal Production in 2019

Namibia, Malawi and South Africa saw a decline in cereal production of about 65,000 metric tonnes compared to 2018, a report has shown.

These are preliminary findings under the crop production and vulnerability assessment report for Southern Africa, which was presented at the joint meeting of Southern African Development Community (SADC) ministers responsible for agriculture, food security and fisheries and aquaculture taking place in Windhoek, Namibia, on June 3rd 2019.

According to the report, the three countries recorded a total of 153,000 metric tonnes of cereal for the 2018 season and only 88,000 metric tonnes for 2019 crop season.

Xinhua

South African Sugarcane Industry Hit By Competition, World Glut and New Soft Drinks Sugar Tax

In the wake of the appointment of a new South African cabinet, newly elected SA Canegrowers Chairman, Rex Talmage... saids the change in leadership offered the hope of a rescue plan for an "industry on its knees".

In the year under review, demand for refined sugar in the Southern African Customs Union countries was at its lowest in 35 seasons due mainly to the introduction of the Health Promotion levy (HPL) or sugar tax on soft drinks by the South African government in 2018.

Industry experts estimate that over 400 000 tons were displaced as a direct result of the levy over the 2018/19 season resulting in at least 600 000 tons being exported at record low prices on an over-supplied world market.

The quality of the South African crop during the 2018/19 season was the third highest in 19 seasons while the area harvested decreased from 252 049ha to 247 385ha.

Despite intense lobbying with the Department of Trade and Industry and the International Trade Administration Commission in 2018 for an increase in the Dollar-Based Reference Price (DBRP) import tariff from $566 to $856 per ton of sugar, the industry was granted a tariff of just $680 per ton. The new tariff has proven ineffective in stemming the tide of cheap imported sugar into the country.

The year under review also saw a deluge of sugar dumped on the South African market from neighbouring Eswatini. Eswatini is expected to produce about 743 000 tons of sugar in the 2019/20 season of which most will make its way onto the South African market free of any import tariff in line with the free trade agreements in the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) region.

While commercial growers have been hard hit, the worst affected are the over 20 000 small-scale growers who rely solely on the crop for their livelihoods.

Full article...

South Africa's First Licensed Crop-Spraying Drone Takes Flight

After a lengthy process, a crop-spraying drone took its first legal flight in South Africa in May 2019.

The South African Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) granted a licence to Durban-based ROC holder DC Geomatics, who operates the drone. The company proved drones equipped with crop spraying operation specifications are safe to use, passing CAA regulations.

Drones can get much closer to crops than planes - to approximately 1.5 to 3 metres above the plants. This allows for more precise application, and is close enough to spray almost 100% of field areas of this challenging terrain.

The drones can be automated to fly a fixed route, at a fixed height above the crop. This is thanks to sensors and GPS mapping on the drones that are smart enough to adjust their height according to the terrain. This allows for farmers to remove human error and maximize the surface area of fields.

...drones also more fuel efficient, using up to 60% less fuel (used in generators to charge the batteries), than in manned aircraft.

Full article...

South Africa: Difficulties Of Financing Farmers During Drought

Commercial banks in South Africa face enormous credit risks due to agricultural producers defaulting on loans and being increasingly unable to provide security for loans.

... 61% of the approximately R160 billion (1US$=14.8ZAR; June 2019) in farming debt in South Africa was owed to commercial banks...many farmers were unable to repay their loans due to failed harvests, ever-increasing input costs, and low livestock prices.
“Agricultural land is typically offered as security by a farmer when applying for credit and a mortgage bond is [then] registered on the property. Decreasing value of agricultural land and the uncertainty about loss of ownership [due to land expropriation without compensation], negatively impacts the value of the collateral held by banks.”


Besides having outstanding debt, defaulting farmers would no longer have access to loan facilities for planting or rebuilding livestock herds.

Many emerging farmers did not own land to use as security for funding, and the limited capital they have would, in all probability, be “swallowed up” during a drought.

Many farmers had left and would continue to leave the sector in search of more lucrative and less risky business opportunities.

Full article

A book about a South African sugar sector built on colonialism, indentured labour and massive profit

Sugar and Settlers: The colonisation of the Natal South Coast 1850-1910 is a doctoral dissertation by  Duncan du Bois.

du Bois, a retired teacher, says, "My research involved delving through 1,500 boxes of unpublished material in the Archives and perusing 58 years of editions of the Natal Mercury at the Killie Campbell library, aside from numerous other sources."

"People ask why I embarked on such an undertaking. The answer is simple: I am passionate about History and enjoy research and writing."

 Grethe Koen, a journalist on the City Press newspaper, has written a light review of the book.

African Agriculture

South African president's land reform proposal widely criticized

South African president Jacob Zuma has recently proposed new ideas to transfer more land from the country's white minority to its black majority.

He proposes localizing land reform to district level, and suggests giving white commercial farmers "the option of assisting (land) transfer to black farmers."

The president's proposal has been met with widespread derision, with one critic dubbing it 'ill disciplined.'.

African Agriculture

South African sugar producers expand into Mozambique

Tariff rebates by the European Union on Mozambican products are one reason South African companies producers are finding it attractive to grow and process sugar cane in that country. Lower labor costs and a growing local sugar demand are other reasons.

THe South African CEO of major sugar producer Tongaat Hulett says, "Sugar production in Mozambique is expected to grow by 30% over the next three years to above 310000 tonnes/year (from 233000 tonnes/year) together with a reduction in unit costs."

article...Financial Mail

South Africa's Land Bank to reduce lending rates

South Africa's agriculture minister announced in mid October that the country's Land Bank would extend a special loan interest rate of the prime lending rate minus 5% to both small scale and large scale farmers. 


more...Business Day

South Africa to require labeling of GM foods

In the African countries where GM foods are a discussion topic at all, it is usually whether it is 'good' or 'bad' to allow their importation/use/cultivation. In South Africa, GM crops have been a fact of life for years.

South African anti-GM activists accept that the toothpaste cannot be put back in its tube. The African Centre for Biosafety has therefore been fighting a long battle for at least consumers to be informed which products have gene-modified ingredients, so that those who are so inclined can make an informed choice to avoid them.

The South African government has now published suggested changes to make it a requirement for any processed foods with more than 5% GM ingredients to state on the label, 'contains genetically modified ingredients or components.'

To require labeling or not to has been as globally controversial as almost everything else about GM foods. Proponents advocate labeling on the basis of consumers' right to know, while some warn that the enforcement of regulations is an issue because of the cost and complexity involved.  

In a country where GM-containing foods are already widely consumed, knowingly or unknowingly, it remains to be seen if labeling will have any effect on buyer behaviour.

African Agriculture

South African land reform: more attention paid to supporting new farmers

Land reform in South Africa is far deeper than just an agricultural issue, but making viable commercial farmers out of land recipients is vital. But it is far from easy necessarily quick.

In recent years focus has been shifting from simply evaluating the success or failure of the reform effort based on how much land has been transferred from ‘old’ white farmers to ‘new’ black farmers. The historical-political-racial aspects of current land distribution patterns and how to change them were the main focus of the early post-apartheid land reform efforts. There was relatively little attention paid to how well the new recipients of land would economically fare for themselves and for the country.

South Africa has learned expensive lessons from that early land reform experience. There is increasing awareness of the need to accompany any land transfers with appropriate agricultural support for the new farmers, as this article explains.

African Agriculture

DuPont Pioneer now closer to takeover of South Africa's Pannar Seeds, but still fighting public relations battle

U.S. seed ginat Dupont Pioneer had to fight long and hard to get regulatory approval to 'merge' with (really take over) South Africa's Pannar Seeds. Despite spirited opposition by activist groups, Dupont was given approval to go ahead with the deal earlier this year, although that is being appealed.

Among the reasons for opposition to the takeover were fears of  a further swamping of South Africa with GM seeds, fears of a further reduction of 'seed sovereignty' and the general implications of the country's seed supply being significantly under the 'control' of a giant U.S. corporation.

Even though the merger deal is done, the merged entities are still fighting speculation that the price of maize, the country's staple crop and an important export commodity, would dramatically shoot up as a result of the Dupont Pioneer takeover of Pannar. 

Economist Mike Schussler got a lot of attention when he speculated in August that as a result of the merger, South African seed maize prices could rise as much as 15%. He also painted an alarming picture of the potential for collusion between Dupont Pioneer and the other seed giant, Monsanto, to push up seed maize prices. 

This caused much alarm as there is already a feeling that consumers are  squeezed by current maize flour prices. Schussler painted Dupont Pioneer as the big bad wolf. The company is clearly sensitive to this charge after the bruising battle to acquire Pannar.

Dupont Pioneer put out an outraged statement refuting Schussler's contention, with a spokesperson saying immediate post-merger prices were expected to increase by less than 2%.

It was carefully pointed out that out Schussler made his comments at a 'Syngenta-sponsored media event.' Sygenta and Monsanto are Dupont's competitors in the South African market, although the former is a relatively small  player.

Dupont Pioneer's statement also claimed that Schussler's research was sponsored by Syngenta, thereby cleverly planting a seed in the reader's mind about the objectivity and motivation for the research!

African Agriculture      

Why radical, Zimbabwe-style land reform is appealing to some in South Africa

Chido Makunike

The on-going discussion about land reform in South Africa is fascinating to watch. South Africans generally hate to have any parallels drawn between their process and that in their smaller northern neighbor Zimbabwe. But because the historical events and the pressing current imperatives for land reform in the two countries are so similar, the ghost of Zimbabwe inevitably, unavoidably looms large in the shrill, emotional debate.

The prevailing South African orthodoxy about the Zimbabwean government's 'grab' of land from white farmers, as part of correcting the earlier grabs of land from Africans by colonial governments, is that it is a lesson on what South Africa should not do. Not only is this the strongly expressed view by the anxious commercial farmers who are resigned to some kind of change coming, the government has also been at pains to insist that no Zimbabwe-style 'grabs' without compensation are being contemplated.

However, there are some sections of South African society who look at the same picture of the Zimbabwe 'grabs,' along with their agricultural and economic consequences, but come to a different conclusion from the prevailing orthodoxy.

Roughly, that conclusion is that the white farmers in Zimbabwe/South Africa were/are such an economically entrenched and strong group, and that they are also so utterly racist and against change that only radical measures can begin the process of transformation towards a less obviously racialized distribution of land, which everybody says they recognize is a trigger for trouble in the future. According to this view, land reform in South Africa/Zimbabwe has/had to be revolutionary, rather than gentle and evolutionary. And, the argument goes, a revolution is by necessity painful, with the work of getting back to a new, post-revolution
'normal' being long and difficult.

The youth league of the ruling African National Congress (ANCYL) are young hotheads dissatisfied with the
pace and nature of post apartheid/post-1994 change in South Africa. They are also not shy to express their impatience, and their contempt for the senior leadership of their party, who they believe to have 'sold out' and abandoned spearheading the aspirations of the black majority. The ANC Youth League are considered an influential force amongst young South Africans voters, so while the party leadership may be discomforted by its criticisms, it is not an easy matter to shut them up.

For many, the main proof of how ill-advised the recent Zimbabwean land grabs were as a way of correcting
the colonial land grabs of the last century, is 'land reform may have been necessary, but look at how that
country has now gone from regional breadbasket to basket case.' Therefore, 'Mugabe's land grabs' were a disaster and cannot possibly serve as a model for South Africa's even more messy and complicated
historical land issues, the argument goes.

The counterpoint to this, shared by some of the ANCYL's leading hotheads, is that expecting painless land reform is a pipe dream given the entrenched economic interests and holdover apartheid racial attitudes. When they look at Zimbabwe, they acknowledge the wrenching pain of that country's radical mode of land reform, but see that as simply another necessary phase of the long 'struggle' for post-colonial, post-apartheid self assertion.

It is not much use to argue against this view with agricultural and economic data. It is deeply and primarily a political argument, with land reform simply the most attention-grabbing conduit of an issue used by the ANCYL to make the argument. In some ways, the voices for radical land reform and those cautioning for a more 'responsible' land reform might as well be talking in two completely different languages.

'Okay then, if we suppose your crazy analysis of the situation is correct, how do the pro-radical land reform advocates, like those in the ANCYL, excuse the agricultural and economic decline that ensued in
Zimbabwe as a result of its chosen method of land reform? Explain that if you think you're so clever, you bloody, obviously Mugabe apologist.'

They don't excuse it. They simply regard it as having been unavoidable because of the perceived resistance
to any genuine reform, particularly any that caused even the slightest discomfort for the direct or
indirect beneficiaries of the colonial-era land grabs from Africans. The explanation is that the (black) Zimbabweans may undergo a period of hardship as they build a new system of land tenure and agriculture,
but at least they are the drivers of their own reform process now, in a way black South Africans are not yet seen to be by some in the ANCYL. The charge of the hotheads against their leaders is that they have got so comfortable with power and its perks that they have lost the steam to spearhead real change.

When an ANCYL leader said a few weeks ago that Zimbabwe-style 'land grabs' may be necessary and even desirable in South Africa, it was almost certainly not with any expectation that this was a suggestion
that would be widely warmly received. He was probably trying to use this extremely sensitive, emotive issue to provoke and shake people up, which he predictably succeeded in doing. Just as predictably, there was a torrent of condemnation from white farmers' representatives, most of the dominant media and other sectors.

Also predictably, a senior ruling party official had to come out and issue a statement calming frayed nerves by assuring all and sundry that the ANC government had no plans to grab land from anybody. ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe dutifully said, “It is not the ANC policy to expropriate land without compensation and personally I don’t think it will work.”

That's fairly clear cut, but it was also striking how he acknowledged the appeal for some of the stance of the young hotheads of his party by saying, “It will not be helpful to engage in violent polemics with the ANC Youth League in the run-up to the ANC policy conference (December 2012). The conference will address land reform in detail.”

Mantashe was careful to dissociate party and government policy from 'land grabs,' but interestingly, he was just as careful to step very gingerly in how he repudiated the explosive youth league leader's statement.

Clearly, this is partly in recognition of the general build up of the perception by some (many?) black South Africans of (1) how little things have changed for them since the end of apartheid and (2) how little group power relations have changed, except for the new black elite having joined 'the good life.'

South Africa and Zimbabwe may both have similarly racialized land issues, but they are very different countries in many ways. It is important to avoid reading too much into the two countries' similarities. However, it is fascinating to see how so far, the progression of the land reform debate in South Africa is very similar to that in Zimbabwe in the 1990s, before 'Mugabe's land grabs' started in earnest in 2000.

Up until then, the same 'international media' that today portrays Mugabe as a supernaturally evil ogre lauded his government for its perceived don't-rock-the-boat moderation and adherence to economic orthodoxy. It was a 'responsible government' then, very much like today's ANC government in South Africa is considered to be and praised/flattered for. But at home, there grew an increasing estrangement over post-independence (1980) 'transformation' between the rulers and many of the ruled, as is happening in South Africa today.

As late as 1995, or perhaps even later, Mugabe's government probably intended to continue with its 'no land grabs' policy. The white farmers who had feared Mugabe's accession to power in 1980 were obviously pleasantly surprised and very relieved that contrary to their fears, there seemed no plans for significant changes in the colonial-era land holding pattern. If anything, they continued to thrive as the 'responsible' new government carried on with various strong support schemes to the farmers, entrenching the country's 'breadbasket' status. All was right with the world.

The white farmers carried on pretty much as before and Mugabe was feted around the world for being the conciliatory Nelson Mandela of his time, when the real Nelson Mandela was then still holed up in an apartheid jail.

But things were not necessarily 'right' for everybody. Beneath the surface gloss of the 'breadbasket' under the then 'responsible' Mugabe government were many old historical, racial, political and economic sores that continued to fester, as well as new complaints added to the mix. Like the South Africa of today.

In the end, the infamous 'Mugabe land grab' did not so much begin because of a deliberate, thought-out policy to reverse the 'responsible' economic, land and agricultural policies of the previous two decades and before. It was arguably more a panicked, opportunistic, populist reaction to long-bubbling social, economic and therefore also political pressures that suddenly burst to the surface, forcing the government's hand towards something radical to appease the volcano.

South African society faces very much similar pressures, with decades and centuries-long feelings about previous land grabs providing a powerful conduit for articulating deep old and new grievances.

How is it all going to work out in South Africa?

It would be foolish to pretend to have a crystal ball into the issue, but in countries with particularly explosive land issues like South Africa and Zimbabwe, what governing politicians wish for, say or don't say may not be the most reliable indicator of what the future holds. If and when the volcano erupts, it is anybody's guess how the politicians will try to prevent the lava from burning them. Being flattered as 'moderate and responsible' by distant media and interest groups may mean nothing when local pressures threaten your very hold on power.

Let's watch and see how things develop in South Africa.

African Agriculture

South Africa's ruling party's youth league threatens Zimbabwe-style 'land re-grabs'

If you want to cause shock, anger, loathing and trepidation to South Africa's commercial farmers, just say the words 'Zimbabwe land reform.' You will get an emotional earful about it.

South Africa is eager to reassure its farmers and everybody else that it will not go the way of  'brutal-dictator-Mugabe's-land-grab-from-white-farmers-to-his-cronies-which-turned-Zimbabwe-from-regional-breadbasket-to-basket case.'

But the young hotheads in the Youth League of South Africa's ruling Africa National Congress have nevertheless caused a lot of consternation by sometimes expressing admiration for Zimbabwe's controversial land reform, in which land was 'grabbed' without compensation from white farmers. One of several big elephants in the room about land in southern Africa is that it most often ended up in the white farmers hands by virtue of convoluted colonial land grabs from Africans, setting up in motion the present desirability for re-grabs amongst people like the ANCYL, for whom change in favor of the black majority since the end of apartheid in 1994 has been too slow.

ANCYL deputy president Ronald Lamola said, "It was only after a forceful mass action by the people of Zimbabwe that Zanu PF (Robert Mugabe's party) ended up owning up to that role.... It looks like we are going to have that here.”

Lamola said it was expected that white South Africans and investors would flee the country when "militant and aggressive" legislation was implemented. "When the land grab process was starting in Zimbabwe, people ran away," he said. "They are going to leave."

Lamola said that when economic transformation took place in South Africa, some people would experience pain.

National Union of Metalworkers of SA general secretary Irvin Jim said the biggest mistake ever made after the 1994 elections was section 25 of the Constitution (property rights). He said it had served only to protect the wealth of the whites. "Those who control the economy are seriously protected by that section," he said.

He said white capitalists were now relaxed and happy after the expulsion from the ANC of former ANCYL president Julius Malema. "Who is celebrating [Malema's expulsion]? The white people who own this
country," he said.

The immediate controversy around the land reform/land grab (take your pick according to your bias) in Zimbabwe has died down, though still leaving the hard question of how to build a new system of commercial agriculture. Because the apartheid-era repression in South Africa was longer and far more vicious than that experienced in colonial Rhodesia, South Africa currently sits on a much bigger potential powder keg of unresolved land issues than Zimbabwe did/does.

Hopefully South Africa can somehow resolve them without an explosion.

African Agriculture

Is South Africa on the brink of a 15 year cyclical drought period?

The vice president of South Africa's most prominent farmers' union says the country has traditionally had a  cycle of alternating 15 year periods of drought and abundant rain. He cautions that a dry period is about to begin, and worries that a government grappling with many other pressures is unprepared for this possibility and its consequences.

Theo de Jager is vice president of AgriSA, representing the country's dominant white farmers, who parts of the majority rule black government consider as privileged relics from the apartheid era who are always moaning and groaning about one thing or another because of the trauma of losing political control. Tensions between the black government and the white farmers rise and fall but are pretty much ever-present, particularly over the hanging sword of the inevitability of land reform to try to 'de-racialize' land holding and farming.

However, de Jager has earned himself a reputation of being of the more modern, reformist wing of what is politely called 'conservative' commercial farmers whose attitudes their critics argue are out of step with the political and demographic realities of the new, post-1994/post-apartheid South Africa.

What does bit of political history have to do with preparing for a possible long drought? Plenty, because the ruling ANC's strong, historical suspicion of/antipathy to groups like AgriSA, many of whose members were a prominent, important part of the still painfully-remembered, despised old racial order, means the warnings by de Jager even about a 'neutral' subject like preparing for drought may be ignored by those who need to make policy decisions to counter such a possibility.

de Jager says the last two decades of relative rain abundance for South Africa have also coincided with majority rule. This means a severe, prolonged dry spell would be a far-reaching crisis for which the majority rule ANC government has had no experience in handling since coming to power in 1994.

“The current government has never had to manage a drought … You think people are angry about e-Tolls, imagine how angry they will be when the costs of their food shoot up as harvests drop,” de Jager warned.

Among the coping strategies the Mail and Guardian article mentions as being required are to look at water in a regional rather than just national context. A water expert quoted says ''the value of water has to be seen
differently. Any future plans therefore have to involve a lowering of water intensity and trade-offs between the different sectors of the economy.''

Water scarcity and the need for improved management are pressing issues allover Africa and beyond, but in most places, policy makers are many steps behind farmers and others who will be most affected by the water crises that there are already many signs off allover the globe.

The Mail and Guardian article is headed 'Farming out South Africa's water worries.'

African Agriculture

South Africans to invest in Mozambique's sugar sector

A group of South Africans is expected to invest in sugar growing on a 10,000 hectare area in Mozambique's Zambézia province.

A district official is reported to have told news agencies that work on the sugar plant was expected to begin in the second half of 2012. 400 direct jobs and up to 3000 more downstream are hoped for from the investment.

The sugar plant would be Mozambique's fifth.

African Agriculture

Activist group disputes claimed GM crop benefits for South Africa

South Africa is the continent's leading cultivator of gene-modified crops, but not everyone thinks that is a good thing.


In a statement, the African Centre for Biosafety (ACB) said it, "vehemently disputes that GM crops have benefited farmers and consumers in South Africa."

The ACB cites figures showing that the price of maize meal, South Africa's staple food and made from the country's main GM crop, have gone up by 83% between 2008 and 2012, belying the claim that GM crops will make food more affordable to consumers.

The ACB also says farmers have not benefited from the adoption of GM maize in the way the technology's promoters would have the public believe.

"The prices they receive for maize are seriously eroded by what they pay for expensive GM seeds and other
inputs. The cost of seed currently eats up 13% of a farmer's production costs - yet in 2005 this figure was only at 5%," according to the ACB.  

"It is no coincidence that over this period, the GM seed’s market share increased from 20% to a whopping 77%. Since 2008, the average price for GM maize seed increased by 30%, and further increases are likely, as expensive new 'stacked' GM crops make their way to the market" said Mariam Mayet, the ACB's director.

Mayet concludes that the main beneficiaries of South Africa's adoption and growing use of GM technology in its farming "remain the multinational biotechnology companies themselves."

She goes on to claim, "Monsanto controls around 50% of the maize seed market in South Africa,
and its maize seed revenues from last season easily topped R1 billion. Furthermore, nearly every GM seed sold in SA contains Monsanto’s patent protected traits, meaning it collects a license fee from virtually every
GM maize seed transaction in the country.”

These license fees are one of the factors of GM seed adoption that opponents most often cite as being potentially disastrous for poor farmers in Africa if they lose their 'seed sovereignty' to companies like Monsanto. As a result GM proponents are now careful to assure that various GM seeds under development for use in Africa will be provided to farmers at no fee beyond the cost of the seed. But there are obviously many ways the industry could recover these costs from farmers, as it seems extremely unlikely that their fees philanthropy could be long term.

The ACB makes a point of hammering on the food insecurity of a significant portion of South Africa's population due to the escalating cost of food, but it is not clear what the exact linkage of those price rises to GM seeds is. In the bitter propaganda battle that characterizes the pro and anti-GM debate, it would not be surprising if proponents were to claim that GM crops have prevented even higher food price rises than South Africans have recently experienced.

Nevertheless, this serves as a useful reminder that the uptake of biotechnology that is considered as progress by some , is in other ways considered regression by others.   

African Agriculture

South Africa to support struggling land reform farms

South Africa’s land reform effort has been criticized for its heavy focus on simple ‘restitution’ of land expropriated from its black citizens during apartheid. There has been much less attention paid to ensuring that the beneficiaries are then assisted to be viable commercial farmers, as previous governments did for white farmers.

There are targets for how much land should be ‘restituted’ to black South African by a certain period, but no targets for what the new farmers should be able to achieve in a given number of years. Historical, racial, cultural and other aspects of the country’s currently lopsided land distribution patterns are partly addressed, but without also taking into account the commercial viability of ‘new’ farmers or the agricultural productivity of the economy.

Without technical and financial support, many land reform farms have gone broke. In 2011 a parliamentary committee revealed that black farmers had resold almost two million of the six million hectares of farm land bought for them by the government; often back to the previous owners.

There are now modest efforts to go beyond simply re-distributing land, to also giving some of the new landholders to be viable farmers. As part of this, the government has announced a R28 million facility “to restructure and fund 13 unproductive land reform farms in the North West province.”

It is the first disbursement by the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform under a new strategy called Recapitalization and Development Programme.

A spokesman said, "The department has committed itself to recapitalize more than 1,000 deserted and unproductive farms nationally. A farm will be funded under close supervision of the department in order to ensure sustainability.”

‘Strategic partners’ had been selected within the commercial farming community to ensure the success of the programme.

The strict racial regimentation of apartheid that led to laws leading to mass land expropriation from blacks to whites means that land reform is a pressing but touchy issue for South Africa. Long after the formal end of apartheid in 1994, there is still debate but relatively little action about how to addresses the injustices of the past while also ensuring that the exercise does not only address sentimental issues, but agricultural and economic ones as well.

South Africa’s ever-present land reform debate has recently become feverish after a white deputy minister said blacks had no historical claim on up to 40% of the country’s land mass, and could not allege dispossession of it by whites. On the other extreme are South African blacks who are offended by the very idea of apartheid-expropriated land needing to be ‘bought back’ by the government.

African Agriculture

Land reform clash between South African president, minister mirrors stark racial differences on the issue

South Africa’s long-festering land reform issue received a jolt when the president and one of his deputy ministers publicly expressed their very different perspectives on the origins of the land imbalance and the way to resolve it.

The commonly stated figures are that black South Africans who constitute 87% of the population hold 13% of the land, while whites who are less than 10% hold 87%. Land dispossessions from black Africans and segregationist laws during the pre-1994 period of apartheid were to be initially dealt with by a government plan for 30% of land to be ‘restituted’ to blacks by 2013. The government says only 8% has been so restituted

All the figures are hotly disputed by some, but there is widespread agreement that land reform is unavoidable. Amongst the most heated issues is how best to achieve it.

President Jacob Zuma said the "willing buyer-willing seller option has not been the best way to address the land restitution question." That greatly alarmed his deputy minister of agriculture, Pieter Mulder, who is also vice president of the Freedom Front party, whose members are predominantly ‘conservative’ Afrikaners, the group which ruled the country during apartheid.

Mulder responded to Zuma, “The problem does not lie with the willing - buyer willing - seller principle. The problem is the disastrous way in which land redistribution has been implemented in the past 18 years.”

What particularly riled Mulder and his constituency was the perception that Zuma’s statement that a voluntary, free-market process had failed to address the issue “means that the government believes in the nationalization of agricultural land.”

There was the unusual, politically titillating sight of a deputy minister engaged in high profile, public disagreement with the president who appointed him to his position. However, South Africa being an open, democratic country, that seemed to be largely taken in stride by all.

But what really caused an uproar was Mulder then going on to state that, “There is sufficient proof that there were no Bantu-speaking people in the Western Cape and North-western Cape (provinces). These parts form 40% of South Africa's land surface. Africans in particular never in the past lived in the whole of South Africa. The Bantu- speaking people moved from the equator down while the white people moved from the Cape up to meet each other at the Kei River. I seriously differ with the statement that white people had stolen their land.”

On that, all hell broke loose. The debate between the two men swiftly became a shouting match of competing historical narratives on all sorts of fora, with the principal dividing line being whether the debater was black or white.

Mulder has been called all sorts of names, with many black groups calling on the president to fire his deputy minister. In a fascinating replay of the progression of the same debate in Zimbabwe 10 to 15 years ago, some took Mulder’s stance as proof that white South Africans would never voluntarily participate in any meaningful land reform except on their own terms, and that his comments proved that what he most fears, expropriation, was the best and only course available.

The president himself was a lot more measured in his comeback to Mulder, but it was still a telling sign of the deeply emotional issue that land is that he felt moved to warn Mulder to "tread very carefully."

Said Zuma, "The land question is one of the most emotive issues in our history and present, and must be handled with utmost care, and not in the careless and callous manner that Honorable Mulder handled it. It is extremely sensitive and to the majority of people in this country, it is a matter of life and death. Honorable Mulder stunned all of us and the whole country with his bold denial of historical facts about land dispossession."


The South African government has been at pains to assure the country’s white farmers that it would not exercise ‘the Zimbabwean option,’ but the fear of this remains deep amongst white farmers. They are already feeling besieged by violence against them on their farms, resulting in many deaths. The attacks against them are thought to be of a largely criminal nature, but the farmers accuse the authorities of indifference to their plight.

Recently suspended ruling party official Julius Malema is among those who have helped to heighten those land expropriation fears by expressing admiration for Zimbabwe’s controversial land reform, and advocating a similar process in South Africa.

No doubt the heated debate will continue, with little chance that deeply entrenched, emotionally held historical narratives will be changed on either side. But in the game of numbers that democratic politics is, it seems doubtful that Mulder will win over enough (or any) black South African views to his interpretation of the country’s violent land history.

It seems safe to predict that there are hot times ahead for South Africa with regard to land.

African Agriculture

South Africa debates pros and cons of privatizing communal land

by Teigue Payne

Land reform will become an even hotter topic this year as the debate revolves around whether or not to privatise communal land and what this would mean for current social and economic systems linked to the land use.

The Democratic Alliance has a private member's motion in Parliament that proposes the privatisation of all communal land in South Africa. But a recent research report takes the opposite view and says such a move could result in an entire social and economic system falling apart.

The research, conducted in the Pondoland area north of Port St Johns by Valerie Payn, a commercial farmer in KwaZulu-Natal, concludes that people in the area value the communal-lands allocation system because they are so poor that they cannot gain access to land in any other way.

Payn says instead of­privatisation more effort should be made to improve the productivity of communal lands.

Annette Steyn, the DA's spokesperson for rural development and land reform, believes privatisation would generally benefit the inhabitants of communal areas, mainly because many people leave these areas to move to cities and give their land to relatives who do little with it.

Steyn says communal-area land reform received only a one-line mention in the recent green paper on land reform, even though as many as 20-million South Africans live in communal areas.

Payn and Steyn apparently agree that many people are too poor to get land, but Steyn says she has been informed of situations in which land rights were taken away when the chief was unhappy with the user. She believes the system allows for land to be manipulated as a way to control rural people.

The only way to appeal is through the tribal authority, which falls under the jurisdiction of the chief, making it fundamentally undemocratic, according to Steyn.

"Communal ownership also makes rural women vulnerable if land rights are alienated when their spouses pass away. Security of land title would not jeopardise the capacity of a chief to provide guidance or leadership on matters of culture and ritual. Little or no progress has been made to bring development to most communal areas. I believe the reason for this is that the traditional authorities and the elected councillors do not agree. We need a discussion on the rights of South Africans 'owning' land worth billions while remaining the poorest of the poor."

Payn says communal land is not just about production of agricultural goods. It also supports a wide variety of other facets of the traditional way of life. She says the land in her focus area is highly productive and heavily utilised for a wide range of purposes, including the production of food and harvesting of building and craft materials and medicinal plants.

In many instances women are the primary farmers, keeping the household alive. One woman told her: "We don't agree with the idea of selling land. If you sell land, how will people without money be able to get hold of the land they need to grow food? Our system works well. You are given the land that you need to grow the food you need, so there is always enough food. If you don't need it any more, it can be given [by the chief] to someone else who needs it."

Payn says although livestock on communal lands has contributed to considerable environmental degradation and erosion, the training of herders in modern methods of targeted "biological grazing" - increasingly being used by commercial farmers -- can achieve excellent improvements in both veld condition and stock yields without fencing or creating paddocks.

Payn says many households would starve without the food they produce, and they would not have houses if they did not have access to natural building materials. A wide range of crops is grown, including vegetables, maize and a variety of fruit trees.

Time-series mapping on the Wild Coast indicates there has been both an increase and a decrease in cultivation in the same areas. Payn says there has been a shift from large, labour-intensive communally farmed fields to smaller, less labour-intensive garden-type cultivation around individual homesteads. This may be because of the departure of men for migrant labour, the unwillingness of the younger generation to work in the fields and the end of the system of voluntary reciprocal communal work parties. She found that although fields were smaller than in the past, there were more of them.

Agriculture on the Wild Coast is still largely done for subsistence purposes and little of the crops produced is sold, mainly because of the difficulty in finding ways to market them.

One subsistence farmer told Payn: "Some of the food we grow is sold to local people, but because everyone grows their own it is difficult to sell locally. We could grow a lot more if we had somewhere to sell it."

The function of the former trading stores as middlemen has fallen away as they have been replaced by chain retailers.

"The old traders would barter five bags of maize for some of their goods, or they would buy small amounts of maize and store it in a silo until they had enough to sell to the mills. The chain stores no longer do this. They usually source their fresh produce in the Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg markets," says Payn.

Despite this, some small-scale farmers she researched did make a fair income from marketing their produce.

Payn rejects the notion that young people do not want to become farmers and the current older generation will be the last to use the land. But she admits that "the older people are happier to do farming for self-sufficiency and subsistence. The younger generation also want crops which would generate income."

A major factor in the lack of income-producing potential for communal farmers is that prices for agricultural products have declined over many years and farmers face competition from all over the world, including countries where farming is subsidised. Commercial farmers face the same pressures, which has caused a decrease in the number of commercial farmers and an increase in the size of farming units.

Instead of privatising communal land, Payn believes ways should be found to improve the productive capacity of small-scale farmers and help them find markets. She agrees, however, that they should be given more security of tenure and protection against unscrupulous and corrupt chiefs and politicians.

Subsistence farmers may need temporary subsidisation or, like all farmers, more tariff protection, Payn says. She believes there is a strong correlation between the continued use of communal land for agriculture and social and community cohesion.

In places where there has been a pronounced decline in cultural traditions, traditional systems of agriculture are often in ruins. She does not believe, however, that the breakdown of traditional communities is inevitable and where it has occurred it can be reversed.

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