Irene !hoaës
7 November 2008
The Joint Presidency Committee of the Namibian Agricultural Union and Namibia National Farmers Union, in cooperation with the Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Forestry, Ministry of Lands and Resettlement and the Agricultural Bank of Namibia, held a one-day conference on post-settlement support for emerging farmers during the week.
The purpose of the conference was to reflect on the needs of emerging farmers and take stock of post-settlement support in the country.
The call everywhere, by many, including the resettlement beneficiaries themselves, is the need for support services for newly resettled commercial farmers.
Most newly resettled farmers do not have the financial means to carry out productive farming on their newly acquired farms and would thus need additional technical and financial support.
These needs and concerns were highlighted by Salomon Tjipura, the Chairman of the Namibia Emerging Commercial Farmers' Forum (NECFF).
Tjipura bemoans the fact that resettlement farms are in poor condition, especially the infrastructural component of it.
The factor is attributed to the fact that many resettlement farms bought by Government lie idle for a long time before people are actually resettled, thus leading to deterioration of property.
"Moving to high-tech commercial farming is difficult for communal farmers, hence there is a need for support," Tjipura said about what he termed the insufficient knowledge and competence of these "new commercial" farmers.
Other constraints that Tjipura highlighted are the high input costs versus low product prices, inadequate support from line ministries such as lands and agriculture and the agricultural bank, as well as drought, bush encroachment, veldt fires, poor organisation of farmers themselves, poor access to credit and insecure tenure on resettlement farms.
An additional cause for concern is the fact that there are no clear guidelines on how to utilise wildlife resources on resettlement farms.
Tjipura said the farmers are not allowed to harvest game on resettlement farms, while commercial farmers are allowed to utilise wildlife on their properties.
"No land tax should be paid by emerging commercial farmers for the next 35 years, while over payment of premiums should be encouraged to build up buffer for bad years," the NECFF chairman recommended.
The NECFF also called on the Agribank to increase its support by, among others, letting farmers in default stay on their land while paying back, extending repayment periods without penalties, and providing soft loans at favourable interest rates to buy productive assets.
Government intervention is further called upon to subsidise solar energy and combat bush encroachment, which is a major problem in the country.
Tjipura appealed to the lands ministry to rehabilitate and hand over water infrastructure on resettlement farms, issue 99-year lease agreements and consider settling people on bigger more economical farming units.
Tjipura recommended that the NECFF become more self-sustaining and work towards one common over-arching structure for agriculture in the country, while base support of it is broadened to include other needs.
Another call from NECFF is that Government and line ministries play a bigger role in post-settlement support, while implementation of support should be outsourced to other agencies.
"We should collectively come up with preferred solutions and hopefully agree on the way forward to address some, if not all, of these challenges and gaps identified during the course of the conference," were the introductory remarks by the Chief Executive Officer of the Agricultural bank, Leonard Iipumbu.
The Government's Land Reform Programme implementation is facilitated by the Ministry of Lands and Resettlement in case of the resettlement farmers and on the other hand Agribank in case of the Affirmative Action Loan Scheme farmers.
Agribank's mandate is to advance money to persons or the financial intermediaries for the promotion of agriculture or activities related to agriculture.
To date, a total of 526 previously disadvantaged Namibians have acquired commercial farmland, approximately three million hectares valued at N$554 million.
Through the National Resettlement Programme, a total of ±2 000 families have been resettled on ±135 000 hectares acquired by the Ministry of Lands and Resettlement.
Agribank disbursed loans to resettlement farmers - those with tangible collateral - totalling N$ 4.8 million.
Iipumbu identified the most pressing challenges and gaps facing the emerging farmers as higher farmland prices, access to production loans at affordable interest rates, training and mentorship, collateral and/or security (especially for the resettlement farmers with the 99-years lease) and rehabilitation of existing infrastructure as well as bush encroachment, etc.
"The most acute problem facing the resettlement beneficiaries to access financial credit from Agribank, is the lack of collateral. The 99-year lease has not been issued to resettled beneficiaries and most financial institutions do not accept it as collateral.
Among the resettled beneficiaries are the vulnerable pensioners who cannot afford repayment of a loan with an interest rate of up to 15% per month," Iipumbu added.
The land bank's head said Agribank is developing a post-settlement support programme to make funds available for resettled farmers to boost production per hectare.
It is proposed that the Ministry of Lands and Resettlement (MLR) invests N$50 million with Agribank on a revolving basis for on-lending to the resettled farmers at a reduced interest rate, i.e., 4% per annum.
The two institutions are in discussions on how to implement the programme.
"Through this arrangement, resettled farmers will be able to access loans for the development of their respective farms and become productive farmers contributing to increased food security and accelerate the realisation of Vision 2030," Iipumbu stated.
The AALS performance is up for review to determine its affordability, sustainability and profitability in the long run.
There are also plans for January 2009, where Agribank will launch the "Know your Clients Project".
"The objectives of the project are to carry out inspections and valuations of all the AALS farms to collect information and data to evaluate productivity and the current value of the farms," Iipumbu told the gathering.
He also told the conference that he has personally visited a number of farms as part of "Know Your Clients Project".
As part of the way forward, Agribank aims at strengthening the National Agricultural Credit Programme (NACP).
Iipumbu said that the memorandum of understanding between the lands ministry and Agribank should be concluded as matter of urgency to establish the revolving financing scheme to support resettlement farmers.
"All institutions involved should make use of their resources optimally to meet the distribution target by 2020. We must speed up the process," Iipumbu advised.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2008 New Era. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
