Hon Chairperson, Ministers, Deputy Ministers, Members of Parliament and guests in the gallery, the thrust of the ANC's policies is "Power to the people". It is through the Freedom Charter that we project a different vision from that of the apartheid past, a past which sought to divide our people along racial and gender lines and trap the overwhelming majority of the population in conditions of poverty and social, economic and political exclusion. Central to this task has been the fight against unemployment, poverty and inequality in our society.
In so far as subsistence farming and access to markets are concerned, the rural areas remain divided. There are well-developed, white commercial farming areas and impoverished rural communities. Land and agrarian reforms have not produced the desired results.
The ANC considers subsistence farming as a pillar of our struggle against unemployment, poverty and inequality. People living in rural areas face the harshest conditions of poverty, food insecurity and lack of access to services on an almost daily basis. Workers living in rural areas face the brunt of poverty, with many of them working long hours for poverty wages. Women in particular, who form the majority of residents in rural areas, face the burden of poverty. The ANC is committed to a comprehensive subsistence farming strategy linked to agrarian reforms, which builds the potential for rural, sustainable livelihoods, particularly for African women.
The Freedom Charter says:
Rent and prices shall be lowered, food plentiful and no one shall go hungry.
The pursuit of household and national food security is a constitutional mandate of the ANC government. We have to continue to create an environment which ensures that there is adequate food available to all, now and in the future, and that hunger is eradicated. The ANC government is already putting in place an emergency food relief programme on a mass scale in the form of food assistance to the poorest households and communities. Increased subsistence production has the potential to improve the food security of poor households in both rural and urban areas, by increasing food supply and by reducing dependence on purchasing food in a context of high food price inflation.
The Land Reform Policy is one of the initiatives of government to redress the imbalances of the past by affording the previously disadvantaged majority access to agricultural land. However, the settlement of new farmers with limited capacity to produce optimally, coupled with poor financial and market support, poses a threat to overall agricultural productivity.
Land is integral to livelihood security, and land reform is integral to poverty reduction. Land can be a catalyst in the development of rural areas through links with input supply, processing and distribution activities, and expanding employment opportunities.
Within the Southern African Development Community, SADC, region women are responsible for over 80% of food access, either through own production or purchasing. Land reform should therefore prioritise gender equity in land ownership. Women are often part of the entities that own land, but they are not the custodians of its productivity. Land reform should prioritise the ownership of land by women with targets of 10% by 2015, and 15% by 2030.
Customary laws governing land ownership rights in the communal areas also discriminate against women, and traditional leaders should prioritise the allocation of land to women for subsistence farming and agricultural production at large.
Formerly controlled markets have been radically deregulated since 1996. The enactment of the Marketing of Agricultural Products Act of 1996 provided certain limited government interventions in the market, such as registration, regulation and information collection, but by early 1998 all control boards had ceased operations, and their assets were transferred to industry trusts, which are expected to provide services such as market information, export advice and product development.
Food price controls were removed and single-channel markets disappeared with the abolition of these control boards. As a result, the small-scale sector remains characterised by low productivity, a lack of access to markets, and insufficient market information, as well as poor capacity, and a lack of production, of marketing infrastructure, and of the required protection in order to develop.
Linkages within the input markets, which involve seeds, agro-chemicals and mechanisation, and the outputs, which are trading, processing, manufacturing and retailing, create barriers to market entry, and worsen terms of trade for the emerging agricultural sector. Their access to the national commercial food value chains should be policy-driven and coupled with support to meet the required specified market standards.
The AgriBEE Transformation Charter is one of the interventions by the state to promote economic transformation by increasing the participation of black people in the agri-industry. The charter requires the industry to implement broad-based black economic empowerment principles throughout the value chain. This will be achieved through ownership and preferential procurement, in order for the emerging agriculture sector to actively participate in the agricultural economy. The charter requires the agri- industry to produce 10% of their total products from the emerging agricultural sector.
According to Statistics SA, about 3 million households experience inadequate to severely inadequate access to food, and over 72% of these are in rural areas. South Africa faces the following challenges in attaining national food security. The country is able to produce or procure sufficient food, but food access by all remains elusive. There are limited opportunities and platforms for the poor and marginalised to participate in economic activities to provide the income to purchase food. The availability of adequate, timely and relevant information for analysis, monitoring and evaluation of, and reporting on the impact of food security programmes on rural communities is a work in progress.
In conclusion, the ANC government is working tirelessly to intensify subsistence farming so as to ensure that more productive land is in the hands of the rural poor. Less than a quarter of South African households are involved in subsistence farming and the majority produce only for household consumption. The rest of the population depends on income from employment to purchase food, making employment a pivotal determinant of food security.
As we speak, the ANC government is busy providing the rural poor with technical skills and financial resources to productively use the land and create sustainable livelihoods. The ANC government is ensuring a much stronger linkage between land, the agrarian sector and water resource allocation, so as to ensure that the best quality water resources reach all people, especially the poor.
In keeping with the vision of the Freedom Charter, the ANC will continue to work towards a comprehensive food security system and enhance our delivery by promoting subsistence farming as part of our efforts to build a caring and cohesive society. I thank you.