Thank you very much. I think you are, in the main, partly correct. There have been weaknesses in the manner we support small farmers. In certain instances our support was not consistent and that resulted in a number of small farmers failing. Whatever they had started, they lost faith and they failed. That, we
have identified as a challenge. That is why we want to strengthen these support centres.
The weakness in the past was that every sphere of government would come and do whatever they do. A municipality would work farmers, and they would fail on their own. A province would work the farmers, and they would fail. National government would come and work with farmers, and they would fail. What we are advocating for now and which we are going to do, is to all come together in this support centre in a district, in a particular province so that we pull together all our support assistance that we want to give to farmers, and these are supported until they graduate. Whatever mechanisation inputs; whatever fertilisers; and whatever financial support, we are looking at blended finance. Blended finance means that we are going to work with the Land Bank. Land Bank will give them a loan and government will give them a grant to start. So, the finance is blended, but we are going to be with the farmer until that farmer shows some signs of success. That centre is going to be in a province and a district, and is meant purely to support small holder farms.
According to the new model that government is designing, this service and support centre must be at a district level. That means,
if in a province we have six districts, in each an every district we must have a support centre. A district is formed by one or two, three or four municipalities. That means the service support centre will support farmers in and around the district so that our span of support is not too large, causing farmers to travel long distances to get support. Their support must be district based and co- ordinated between the three spheres of government to avoid failure rate. Thank you very much. [Applause.]