Minister
Distinguished guests
Members of the media
Ladies and gentlemen
Program director
Good morning. I would like to welcome you in our lovely province, I hope that in the time you have that you have been able to experience the beauty and splendour of our province. Particularly since you visited us on the weekend when we celebrate 20 years of our democracy.
Gauteng falls mainly within the highly intensive, diversified commercial and subsistence agricultural zones of South Africa and is known for grain cropping, ranching and dairy, poultry and piggery farms.
Gauteng Province commands the greatest share of South Africa’s maize exports, followed by the Kwazulu-Natal and Western Cape Provinces. This is despite the North-West, Free State and Mpumalanga Provinces being the major maize producing provinces in the republic. This is mainly because most exporters of maize are situated in Gauteng Province and the greatest proportion of maize trading occurs through the Randfontein grain market. Maize is also exported through two major harbours in Durban and Cape Town. Maize is the most important grain crop in South Africa, and is both the major feed grain and the staple food for the majority of South Africa’s population.
The Maize Triangle is a mitigation strategy to curb the impact of high food prices on poor households of Gauteng. The Maize Triangle Programme is aimed at supporting the maize producers of Gauteng Province in order to:
§ Unleash their potential to create and develop income-generating activities and sustainable decent employment;
§ Reduce poverty, develop human resource capacities and knowledge;
§ Strengthen competitiveness and sustainability and improve social and economic well-being; and,
§ Contribute to sustainable human development.
The Maize Triangle Programme has been running in Gauteng Province from 2009. One of the pillars of the programme is to establish domestic and international markets for maize farmers.
We have also developed the Gauteng Biotechnology Strategy which conceptualised and identified the need for a Bio park back in 2007/08 financial year. The strategy had 6 pillars and Development of the Bio Park was the main deliverable of the “Commercialisation of Biotechnology Pillar”. The strategy has been well implemented across all pillars and highlights of its achievements since 2009 to 2014 include the highly successful Biotechnology bursary and Internship program which has up to now supported almost 320 students Biotechnologist who are expected to become future Bio-entrepreneurs that will be utilising the Bio Park. Of the 320 bursaries and internships, 45 of these students were at post graduate Masters Level.
We have funded more than 20 Biotechnology R & D Projects in ARC, CSIR and Universities and in collaboration with NGOs such as AfricaBio. We have undertaken Public Understanding of Biotechnology through demonstration and Trial Units (DTUs) in 28 farms and staging of Biotechnology exhibitions at the Tshwane Spring Show from 2009 as well as the former Bio2Biz conference.
Some of our bursary recipients were first exposed to biotechnology at this show. We have hosted 3 successful Gauteng Biotechnology Fundi Awards. We have hosted an international workshop on financing biotechnology start-ups at The Innovation Hub in 2009 called the Biotechnology Business Angels Network. We have partnered with the “Ile de France Region” of Paris in France to undertake a project called the Technical Pre-Advise (TPA) of research projects which is an assessment of commercialisation readiness stage from 2009 -2011. Out of this relationship, the inaugural Bio-Fundi Awards winners of the Bio-Researcher Category and Bio-Entrepreneur Category were fully funded to visit Genopole Bio Park in France and other sites of interest. We have hosted the Agricultural Biotechnology International Conference (ABIC) in South Africa in 2011. I am pleased to announce that that Phase 1 of the BioPark will focus on stimulating entrepreneurship and value creation in the agro-processing sector, as it offers great prospects for job creation and food security is in final stages and early this month we did an inspection of the facility and it really looks great.
To date, through partnership with the Rand Water Foundation, 276 farmers within the Maize Triangle (Tshwane, Ekurhuleni, Sedibeng, and West Rand) have been supplied with production inputs (maize seeds, fertilizers, herbicides and fuel), training and capacity building. In addition, 31 maize-producing farms have been settled within the Maize Triangle through the Land Reform Farm Programme (DRDLR) and supported with infrastructure such as boreholes, storage facilities, fencing, irrigation systems, farm implements and production stock.
We also have the agro-processing programme that has assisted farmers within the Maize Triangle with packaging facilities, grain silos and abattoirs. Twenty eight Agro-processing projects were supported with infrastructure such as citrus/vegetable pack houses, egg grading machines; vegetable packaging machines linked to Gauteng Economic growth and development Strategy GEGDS. This is aligned to the Maize Triangle Strategy to intervene along the value chain and in related industries like animal production.
The Maize Triangle Revitalization project has so far created 765 jobs during the planting and harvest seasons and the farmers are assisted with various interventions such as on- and-off-farm infrastructure, mechanization and production inputs.
The Maize Triangle Revitalization project is aligned to the approved Agricultural Co-operative Plan, The plan has supported 135 co-operatives from Tshwane, Sedibeng, West Rand, Ekurhuleni and City of Johannesburg in the form of on- and off-farm infrastructure, production inputs such as chickens, feed, maize, seedlings, herbicides, etc., and training and capacity building; 23 co-operatives received contracts from government and successfully supply produce to hospitals and orphanages. However, it is acknowledged that more support to co-operatives is needed to promote sustainability. GDARD is particularly proud of the most successful agricultural cooperatives in Gauteng, i.e. the Winterveldt Citrus Cooperative, Ikhwezi Cooperative (overall winner of the Agribusiness woman of the Year 2013 - Tshwane), Maponya Farming Project (Tshwane), Bantu Bonke Agricultural Co-operative (Midvaal), Konke Sinako Co-operative (Emfuleni) and Yase Chaba Co-operative (West Rand).
GDARD has committed R10 million to establish four milling plants in Gauteng in conjunction with FABCOS and the Department of Trade and Industry (the DTI) The total cost of establishing the milling plants is projected to be R56 million. The remainder of the cost of establishing the milling plants will be borne by FABCOS and the DTI. The milling plants have already been procured from Buhler and will be established in Ivory Park, Randfontein, Rietfontein and Holfontein. It is expected that GDARD, before exiting the project, will contribute to the running costs of the milling plants for the first three years in order to assist to create sustainability. The estimated financial implication per annum is R3 million per milling plant. More than 50 permanent jobs will be created through this intervention. It is expected that these mills will be launched in 2014. Two weeks ago we delivered one of these milling machines to Holfontein cooperative.
A related project is the Super Grand Milling plant which was the first milling project which GDARD assisted to establish. The relocation of the mill to the new Super Grand farm (Onverwacht) and the expansion thereof was estimated at R20 million. The Department of Rural Development and Land Reform has already contributed its share of R17 million. GDARD’s contribution to the project is R1 million.
The last major GDARD commitment with relation to the Maize Triangle, an agro-processing project, is the establishment of a poultry abattoir in Tshwane North. The Memorandum of Understanding is for a period of three years at R3, 5 million per annum.
The Revitalising of the Maize Triangle has so far created 765 jobs these opportunities created by the different cooperatives operating within the maize triangle. Looking at these it indeed shows the real contribution of the agriculture sector, is however , underestimated and obscured when directly measured and the low contribution of agriculture to GDP of only 04%, but the true value lies in its backward and forward linkages. When you take into consideration the gross operating surplus of sector including food, beverages etc. the contribution in Gauteng .s 36.5 %.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I wish to remark as I conclude that the government of Gauteng is intended to continue harnessing the biotechnology sector to reach its full potential and benefit our province. I am very pleased of the progress done so far.
I thank you.
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