When land reform goes wrong

It is a sad picture.

Hungry cows with their ribs showing, abandoned tractors and milking equipment standing unused. The electricity to Mantusini dairy farm near Port St Johns has been cut and the community is sad because they have not seen the benefits of receiving the farm and the cows for the dairy.

Like many black communities, the people who were supposed to benefit from the dairy project are sitting with empty wallets and stomachs. They were told if they used their land for the dairy, they would make lots of money.

But there was nobody to show them the ropes and that is why the farm, which was initially successful, has now become a place of hungry cows and people. The land where they would have planted crops to keep hunger at bay cannot be used for that purpose and nobody taught them how to grow and bale feed for the cattle during the terrible drought that has plagued the area for years.

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Local member of the provincial legislature Retief Odendaal visited the farm recently. Only about 148 cows of the initial stock of 350 are left. They mostly died of hunger because the farmers did not know how to use the machinery and pivots to water the fields.

“The community used the communal trust land to grow crops, but were talked into giving it to the dairy farm that initially had a turnover of R13 million. However, from there it went downhill when they could not prepare for winter to feed the cows. They also had no money for dip and no balers or mowers to cut feed,” Odendaal says.

During his visit a local farmer came to help with dip he bought from his own pocket to help. Odendaal says the Department of Agriculture, Rural Development and Land Reform was supposed to visit the farm regularly, but nobody ever came.

“If someone came to visit, they would have seen that farmers needed help.”

Odendaal alerted the new MEC for agriculture in the Eastern Cape, Nonkqubela Pieters, who also visited and said she would ensure there was feed for the cows. She also promised to find out what happened to the support for the farm.

“A total of R43 million is now lost in the poorest province in the country,” he said.

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Jeff Every, former executive director of Amadlelo Agri, that builds prosperous agribusinesses by offering exceptional operational capacity, extensive project management, proven skills development and significant resources as investors, says dairy farming is a challenge for new farmers because it is so complex.

“You need 600 to 800 cows to set up a sustainable dairy in a commercial sense and setting it up with water and land will cost about R100,000 per cow. The problem with Mantusini is that, although it has the potential for 800 cows, it was never developed properly and did not have proper infrastructure,” he says.

Between R58 million and R80 million should have been spent on the farm, but the full budget was never used and a lot of the R43 million allocated went into keeping the farm going instead of spending it on infrastructure.

Every says the community of farmers also did not receive any commercial support such as access to accountants who could help them budget and spend the money in the right way.

“You need enough capital, a farm that is big enough and experienced help. It takes about 10 years to train a farmer for this,” Every explains.

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Brent McNamara, senior operations manager at Agri Eastern Cape, says those responsible need to answer for what happened at Mantusini.

“Agri Eastern Cape, as well as Agri SA, has repeatedly told the government at the national and provincial level that the only way meaningful land reform projects of this magnitude will be successful is if the government involves commercial partners who have the necessary expertise and a track record of success.”

McNamara says the transfer of skills from established commercial farmers to developing farmers is critically important, as the government has an extremely poor track record when it comes to understanding the complexities of commercial agriculture.

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