MINISTER of Agriculture, Land reform and Rural Development Thoko Didiza has launched the country’s long awaited Farmer Register.

She said the department had done this to better understand its “client base” both in terms of size and scale of operation.

In 2019/20, Statistics South Africa released the Agricultural Census which covered mainly the commercial sector. “While this was encouraging, we were still short of data about smallholder producers in our country. The aim of the survey was to get data that will tell us where the smallholders are in the outreach, their demographics, production as well as their contribution to employment,” Didiza said.

To ensure that this work meets the statistical requirement, the department worked with Statistic South Africa on the development of the model. The department also worked with the Provincial Departments of Agriculture.

“In 2020, we had 95,501 registered farmers in our register. This number is further delineated in terms of provinces. One interesting feature is that in some provinces there are more female producers,” the minister said.

In terms of age category, the department found that during the year 2020, KwaZulu-Natal had more young farmers, followed by Eastern Cape. As regards operation or farmers’ production, the register has confirmed that more smallholder and subsistence farmers are involved in livestock production, followed by crops and mixed farming.

“This tool it’s important because it will enable us as government in terms of support as well as monitoring the performance by government and farmers themselves,” Didiza said.

The farmer register covers attainable smallholder farmers across provinces and it is important to note that not all farmers were reached in this phase of the register, due to COVID-19 lockdown restrictions. Farmers registration is ongoing.