PCB Blog - Agriculture
Agriculture |
| 2011/06/08 |
|
Melanie Veness: PCB CEO It has been an interesting week in the Capital City, with the lively election of the new city leadership and with the Royal Show and Nashua-sponsored Art in the Park taking place at the same time. Because of the Royal Show, much of the focus has been on our agricultural sector, and I spent some time chatting to farmers and stakeholders about the various challenges that they are facing. As expected, the two issues that are often highlighted in the media, were discussed – land reform and security. Author, Chantel Illbury, gave a fascinating talk at a breakfast that I attended, in which she made the point that the world will look to Africa to supply its food needs in the future. Our agricultural sector is a critical sector from a food security point of view for South Africa and for the world. This brought to mind the fact that we are custodians of these precious resources and that we are obligated to be responsible with them. Now I know that, unforgivably, a number of human rights abuses took place on farms, and that, understandably, there is a great deal of sensitivity around land ownership in our country. However, we need to be cautious about generalizations and we also need to look carefully at this sector in order to see the real picture and what it means for us now and into the future – there are plenty of good famers out there, whose skills we cannot afford to lose. A key concern is that we are importing produce; with our resource base this should not be happening. But spare a moment to consider what it means to be a farmer in South Africa today. Consider the number of farm murders and the viciousness of many of the attacks? Imagine the frustration of having your livestock stolen time and again? Consider working a farm that has unresolved land claims on it? How much of your energy and money would you invest? The long and short of this scenario is that it isn’t an attractive option to be a farmer in South Africa today, and consequently, our agricultural resources are not being effectively employed, which is affecting our economy and compromising our future. This underemployed land is also vulnerable to other uses – If the present constraints are not challenging enough, the farming community is waking up to an altogether different threat, that of our precious land resources being targeted by petroleum giants keen to extract natural gas by means of hydraulic fracturing or “fracking”. While the battleground hitherto has been the Karoo, word on the ground is that KwaZulu-Natal too, is in their sights. As a colleague pointed out “the implications are poorly understood and potentially catastrophic”. In countries where “fracking” has taken place, various complaints are surfacing, amongst which are polluted water sources, spontaneous gas explosions and dirty air Clearly, we can’t afford to let this happen, as much as we cannot afford not to work our land productively. |
| Tags: Royal Show(1) Art in the Park(2) Land(1) Security(1) Farming(2) Fracking(2) agriculture(1) |
| Comments |
| No comments have been posted yet, be the first to post a comment on this blog |
