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SA headed for permanent food
shortages due to ANC-policies"
Notes: ANC = African National Congress, the ruling party that
practised terror to gain power.
March 11 2007
- The South African Rapport newspaper today cites five top agricultural economists, all
warning that the country's agricultural sector is on the point of collapsing
due to the ANC's Marxist "black-peasant-only" land-rights policies.
The country's food-producing sector is now stagnating so seriously under
ANC-rule that hundreds of rural towns have practically depopulated, with the
rural economies on the verge of permanent collapse. South
Africa now already needs to routinely import an annual 1-million tons of
wheat or more -- just to feed its own population. Only ten years ago, the
country was one of the world's most reliable major exporters of food grains
and other important agricultural products such as meat and poultry.
Economists warn that the ANC "does not see our agricultural production as a
priority" -- pointing out that in spite of the current nationwide,
devastating drought, --the worst in a decade -- the regime still slashed its
agricultural budget to R2,28-billion and is refusing any disaster aid to the
dwindling number of commercial farmers who still manage to produce food.
In 1992, there were more than 57,000 commercial farms, now there's
far less than 40,000 remaining -- and another 20,000 "white"
commercial farmers also face forced removal by 2014 from their productive
farms under the ANC's Marxist "black-peasant-farmer-only" policies.
Commercial farmers who know they are facing forced removal from their land
to make way for black peasant farmers, are also not reinvesting any more
capital into the rural economy -- and for the first time in its recorded
350-year history, South Africa is no longer raising enough food each year to
feed its own population. Before 1994, South Africa's
commercial farm-owners were for the most part, professional, well-organised
and top-educated businessmen who poured all their earnings back into the
agricultural economy -- and who also employed and housed 1-million farm
workers -- some 200,000 more than are employed in the SA agricultural sector
today.
"Small-scale peasant farming is an economic failure...' Dr.
Mohammad Karaan, chairman of the National Agricultural Marketing Council,
also warns that the ANC-regime's Marxist-style "small-scale" farming model
is proving to be an economic disaster -- and that it must be urgently
scrapped. "Small-scale farming cannot succeed in the world economy, farmers
actually need more land to be able to compete successfully -- which is one
of the reasons why the (ANC-) land-reform policies are failing," he warned.
Yet the ANC-regime keeps plowing on with its disastrous policy -- regardless
of all these warnings from top experts. The regime just
announced that it is going to hand over yet another 30% of all of the
country's agricultural land to small-scale black farmers by 2014 .
This represents 26-million hectares of currently-productive farmland where
12,000 commercial , highly-productive "white" farmers are facing forced
removal. This important farmland will be 'transformed'
into unproductive subsistence smallholdings for
(agriculturally-inexperienced) black families, warns Dr. Chris Jordaan,
Transvaal Agricultural Union's landrights manager.
Economists warn that this
disastrous policy is already causing a massive drop in local food
production.
Prof Johan Willemse of the University of the Free State says South Africa a
decade ago was self-sufficient -- exporting massive quantities and a
large variety agricultural products and had enough affordable food for all
the 46-million population.
Now the country has to import at least one million tons of wheat annually as
a matter of routine because its less than 40,000 commercial farmers simply
can no longer produce enough. By 2015, this production will have been halved
when 20,000 more commercial farmers are forcibly removed...
"Our previous independence in local food production is now facing a serious
threat, and our agricultural economy is stagnating because the commercial
farmers have no economic incentive to reinvest as they always did
previously."
Rural ghost towns:
Agricultural economist Prof. Johann Kirsten of the University of Pretoria
warns that "if the government wants to stop agricultural villages from
turning into ghost towns, it will have to intervene."
Emotional land-rights issue
Agricultural leaders warn that the ANC-regime is using the emotional
"land-rights" issue to drive their political engine with -- instead of
accepting the advice from a Harvard-group of international experts report to
parliament last month that the country's agriculture, mining and
manufacturing industries had to be nurtured as the main engines which were
driving the SA economy.
Prof. Nick Vink, University of Stellenbosch agricultural economist warned
that agriculture won't be able to grow without new investments -- yet the
agricultural sector in South Africa was stagnating.
"Ten years ago, South Africa
exported R2,40's worth of homegrown agricultural products for every R1 of
imported goods.
We now are past the R1,40 mark -- and if this continues at the present pace,
our agricultural economy will soon reverse itself (permanently)."
Original Newspaper link to this
article: now closed.
http://www.news24.com/Rapport/Nuus/0,,752-795_2081597,00html
STOP PRESS January 2008.
Imported basic foodstuffs such as maize go up in price by 25% as the uSA
diverts such foodstuffs for bio-fuel production.
But A rescue could happen from
Zambia.
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