Agriculture Research Council: briefing

Meeting report

LAND AND ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS SELECT COMMITTEE
11 September 2005
AGRICULTURE RESEARCH COUNCIL: BRIEFING

Chairperson: Rev P Moatshe (ANC, North West)

Documents handed out:
Presentation: South African Agricultural Research Council in the New Millenium
ARC Research Initiatives
Agriculture in South Africa: Current Status


Agricultural Research Council website

SUMMARY
Delegates from the Agricultural Research Council (ARC), Dr Nthoana Tau-Mzamane (CEO) and Ms K Masibi (Group Head: Corporate Business Liaison) briefed the Committee on the mandate of the ARC and the projects which they were involved in. The ARC had facilities all over South Africa. It was mandated to research and develop technology that would help farmers become more efficient and produce better quality produce and to educate farmers on how they could farm better.

The Committee decided that a delegation from the ARC would need to brief the Committee on their annual report at a later stage.

MINUTES

ARC Presentation
Dr NT Mzamane, CEO, said the Agricultural Research Council (ARC) was a statutory body created in 1990 through the Agricultural Research Council Act. It was publicly owned and funded through a Core Strategic Fund allocated annually in a Parliamentary Grant. It also had external funds generated through business efforts. In 1992, the ARC was formally separated from the Department of Agriculture to perform "basic research, technology development and technology transfer."

The government had expressed the need for agriculture in South Africa to attain and sustain household food security, reduce and eradicate poverty and malnutrition, increase the health of the nation and produce safe food for South Africans. South Africa should be free of diseases, pests and weeds that could undermine and even prevent delivery of food and other crop and livestock products, be vigilant about new weeds, pests and diseases crossing the borders and grow and maintain the markets for its agricultural products in Africa and other continents.

South Africa should add value to its primary agriculture products before exporting them, create more agriculture related jobs and increase produce while still maintaining land, plant cover, water resources and the environment so that the future of agriculture was not threatened.

South Africa should develop strategies to minimise the causes of climate change and damage to the environment. South Africa had committed to working with the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) countries to make agriculture more sustainable for Africa.

The ARC’s role was to develop and disseminate the scientific knowledge needed to provide support for household food production gardens and farms, agricultural business for both emerging and commercial farmers and small and large processing businesses.

The ARC would import information for testing suitability in South Africa and as a basis for developing additional knowledge relevant to the South African farming sector.

The ARC was mandated to conduct research and develop technology that promoted agriculture and industry in South Africa, maintain national assets, provide scientific support for national quarantine services, provide diagnostic services for various animal diseases and host world class reference laboratories for plant and animal diseases. It provided agricultural engineering services, national testing of irrigation and other agricultural machinery to determine suitability for South Africa and accumulated scientific information for the Agriculture Geo-referenced Information Systems.

The ARC’s priorities for 2005 and 2006 were to improve the agricultural knowledge of South Africans, manage its finances responsibly, encourage transformation for a diverse workforce, serve customers and to develop the organisation.

The five core divisions of the ARC were grains and industrial crops, horticulture, livestock, public support services and sustainable rural livelihoods. The ARC had facilities across South Africa where they were close to the relevant agricultural area. Scientists would be trained to assist resource poor farmers.

The employees of the ARC who had PhDs would all retire in the next 10 to 15 years and it would be important for the ARC to encourage its younger employees to study further. The ARC would fund programmes focused on young black students.

Inflation had reduced the financial capacity of the ARC. It was funded 59% by the Parliamentary Grant and 41% privately.

The ARC was working on more than 280 projects across its core divisions. The projects aimed to uplift and create sustainability for farmers, transfer skills, increase production, alleviate poverty and improve quality of life.

Among the projects was adding nutritional value to food, monitoring soil fertility and irrigation and creating a reference collection of plant, fungi, insects, spiders, and mites etc. for national and international use, biological control of weeds, storage technologies and pest management. The ARC aimed to develop indigenous knowledge and technologies for resource poor farmers.

The challenges and risks that the ARC faced included the ability to pay for products or services, the ageing of scientific human capital, potential inability to react to all research facilities to enable testing of new biological materials, a significantly broader customer base since 1994 and the unlocking of indigenous knowledge systems and intellectual property.

Discussion
The Chairperson was concerned about the ARC’s lack of reference to aquaculture. The ARC responded that it was working on projects that explored the different ways to raise fish and what water quality would be required. It also researched disease management and the outbreak of diseases connected with fish. In Mpumalanga and Kwazulu-Natal, the ARC was running a pilot programme in small-scale aquaculture. The ARC would prepare a document for the Committee on the programmes it was involved in.

Mr L Van Rooyen (ANC, Free State) said the ARC was a world-class institution. He was concerned with the ARC’s annual report and that the ARC was not implementing a BEE program. He expressed the position that the salaries of executives were "astronomical" and questioned whether their bonuses of over R100 000 were justified. He said there was a big gap between salary and operational costs. The Auditor-General had raised concerns and he asked what would be done. External revenue had decreased but debtors had increased and that needed to be dealt with. He commented that there was a surplus last year of R6 million, although the ARC had explained what would be done with the money. He was concerned about comments by an ARC representative at the Free State Agricultural Union last week criticising both the national and provincial government.

The Chairperson said the briefing was on research, not the Annual Report and invited the ARC to present on the Annual Report another time.

Dr Mzamane said she welcomed the opportunity to present to the Committee on the Annual Report. The comment by the ARC representative in the Free State would be followed up.

Ms B Dlulane (ANC, Eastern Cape) asked how the Parliamentary Grant was accounted for. Dr Mzamane said funds from government went through the Department of Agriculture, which meant that the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Affairs was the ARC’s executive authority. The ARC was required by law to submit a budget requirement annually. In December, the government would indicate what funding it would provide and in February the ARC would present its final budget. If the Minister of Agriculture was satisfied, she and the Department of Science and Technology would allow the money to be provided. During the year, the ARC was required to regularly report to the Ministry.

The Chairperson asked the Members to invite the ARC when they had meetings with farmers. He asked if the next briefing by the ARC could include how it assisted and sustained the programmes in the provinces.

Ms Dlulane asked if the Committee could be informed about the ARC’s work in each province so they could follow up.

The Meeting was adjourned.