Question NW350 to the Minister of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development
01 June 2020 - NW350
Masipa, Mr NP to ask the Minister of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development
In light of the fact that her department presented stimulus package programme for the emerging farmers, wherein 262 farmers are going to be supported through this programme, and the fact that beneficiary farmers were assessed and evaluated by both the Agricultural Research Council and Entsika, what are the (a) details of the Entsika entity in terms of its ability to assess agriculture projects, (b) reasons the Land Bank is being excluded from this process, (c) details of the (i) identified 262 projects in each province and (ii) commodity and ownership structure of each project and (d) update on the beneficiary selection process or policy; (2) whether the policy was used to select the farmers; if not, why was the policy and/or the process not applied?
Reply:
1. (a) Entsika was appointed as part of the consortium which had technical agricultural experts to analyses the agricultural projects.
(b) The Land Bank did not submit a proposal from the advertised bid.
(c) (i),(ii) See Annexure A.
(d) Cabinet approved the Beneficiary Selection and Land Allocation Policy for publication in the government gazette for public comments which ended on 3 March 2020.
2 No. Commercial viability was used as one of the criteria for selection of stimulus package projects.