The agricultural industry, which plays a significant role in the private business sector and the economy, cannot continue to talk to the government about the threats that its destructive political and economic ideology for agricultural producers is because it serves no purpose.
So said Mr. Fanie Brink, an independent agricultural economist.
Mr. Brink specifically referred to the absence of the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Mr. Senzeni Zokwana, because of his withdrawal as the main speaker at Agri SA’s annual congress last week outside Pretoria.
He said the time to talk to this government is over. However, the leaders of Agri SA seem to be very adamant and apparently naive enough to speak with this political and economic corrupt government as if they were to achieve some results. After 13 years, the government still has no long-term plans for the future of commercial agriculture. The Department of Agriculture’s department is also bankrupt because of ongoing corruption and can no longer deliver services.
“If the ANC government continues to establish with its purely political objective and total unsuccessful attempt to try to establish small black and subsistence farmers, as proposed by its National Development Plan, to divide productive land into small portions and to immerse these farmers into poverty, it will seriously harm the food security of the country. ”
The provision of food to poor people, the sustainability of food security and the development of black farmers, is the primary responsibility of government and not of agriculture. The responsibility of commercial agriculture is to use the country’s resources as efficiently and profitably as possible in the interests of sustainable production and the financial survival of producers, as well as agriculture’s contribution to food security and economic growth. If food supply is not profitable, food security will not be sustainable.
Brink said to talk to the government about these primary agricultural goals, which the ANC government lacks expertise, interest, and less understanding, will not yield anything, as evidenced by the absence of the Minister of Agriculture at Agri SA Congress has confirmed. Many more useful and urgent steps will have to be taken into consideration, including the manufacturers and distributors of agricultural inputs, agricultural product processors, service providers and consumers, as well as the country’s foreign trade partners and financiers.
The conversations by the private sector with government and the labor sector, which, with their socialist and communist ideology, have no idea how food security and economic growth can be created are no longer significant.
“The business sector must now intervene, straighten its back and take control of all economic activities, support and cooperation with the government over which it is in control and stop trying to uphold the government. How long do the different industries in the economic sectors of the country want to watch how everything is wasted and destroyed around them? ”
Brink said the private sector would have to pay real close attention to practical measures and actions to stop government’s uncontrolled waste of taxpayers’ money.
“All the conversations do not impress government. If, after 2019, this or a new government does not reveal better insights, then the script will be on the wall and will only fall further in an underdeveloped country like in the rest of Africa with a destroyed economy, unprecedented famine, and much greater poverty,” said Mr. Brink.
Read the original article in Afrikaans on Die Vryburger
South Africa Today – South Africa News
