The success of the land reform effort is constrained by, among others, poor agricultural support systems, bureaucracy, and a lack of smart incentives, said Prof Johann Kirsten, Director of the Bureau for Economic Research at Stellenbosch University, on Tuesday (21 November 2017). He delivered his inaugural lecture in the Van der Sterr Building on the Stellenbosch campus.

Kirsten said considerable time and effort were (and still are today) wasted on design and redesign of land reform programmes without any appreciation of the productive value of farmland and the realities of farming in South Africa.

“There were five programmes in total between 1996 and 2016 that tried to deliver on the land redistribution imperative (in addition to the other two main programmes of restitution and tenure reform)."

​“Most of these programmes were considered by some to have focused only on the creation of viable commercial farms and large-scale operations which were often preferred by technicians who rarely are familiar with small scale farming."

Kirsten said market-assisted programme has delivered much quicker than generally believed and should therefore be supported and streamlined.

He argued that most of the official statistics on the progress towards the redistribution targets reported by government (and politicians) have ignored all private transactions where black individuals have bought farmland from white farmers without assistance from the state.

“The claims that land reform is disappointingly slow and that farmers are not willing to sell their land are therefore not surprising."

“Unfortunately, we know that land already in the hands of the state is not used productively – evident in the 5 000-odd farms that have been acquired but not allocated, and the hundreds of thousands of hectares of land that have already been redistributed but that now lie fallow because of weak state support and management."

“There is, therefore, little practical evidence that land expropriation without compensation will combat poverty and create jobs."

Kirsten said many of the recent policy proposals for land redistribution seems to have their origin in the continued obsession with the establishment of small-scale farms.

“It has also not been understood that the dominant form of South African commercial farming is family farms – single-owner operations with family and hired labour. The large corporate-style farms make up only a small component of agriculture in South Africa – only approximately 700 farm businesses."

According to Kirsten, most farming units with a turnover in excess of R3 million could make a reasonable contribution to land reform.

“We are only talking of around 5 000 farms. These farms should be reasonably well-represented in each district and can assist in reaching any redistribution target in each district."

Kirsten said if farmers in a district work together and land reform is implemented through a flexible and well-planned financial mechanism, then land ceilings and other punitive measures will not have to be implemented.

​“The majority of commercial farmers have now accepted the important imperative of a more equal distribution of commercial farmland in South Africa and have already offered useful ideas on how to implement successful and workable land reform."

There is much goodwill and considerable expertise that the state could leverage from the commercial farming sector to deliver land to the majority, Kirsten added.

• Main photo: Credit: Pixabay
  
• Photo 1: Proff Johan Malan, Acting Dean of the Faculty of Management and Economic Sciences, Eugene Cloete, Vice-Rector: Research, Innovation and Postgraduate Studies, Johann Kirsten, Wim de Villiers, Rector and Vice-Chancellor, and Danie Brink, Dean of the Faculty of AgriSciences. Photographer: Justin Alberts.