By Invitation

Recently there’s been a lot of buzz about the illegal practices of “off-market fresh produce agents”. But they can only function with farmers’ support, and it’s up to farmers to help the Agricultural Produce Agents Council (APAC) stamp out these activities, says the APAC’s Lizel Pretorius.

As an ally of the commercial farming sector, Prof Mohammed Karaan’s election to President Zuma’s National Planning Committee gave renewed hope to commercial agriculture in South Africa. Addressing the inaugural congress of the Young Farmer’s Forum in Rawsonville in the Western Cape, Prof Karaan outlined the global issues that will shape the future of farming.

Wonderful opportunities are often disguised as insurmountable problems. Take the low maize prices and the fact that many producers are facing bankruptcy. There's an elegant and simple way out of this seemingly dire predicament - buying maize instead of planting it will benefit all farmers, big or small, says Jozeph du Plessis, maize farmer and chairperson of the Schweizer-Reneke District Agricultural Union.

This year is the International Year of Biodiversity and it is time that we remind ourselves of the major impact that biodiversity has on our businesses says Dr Bob Scholes, ecologist at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research and chair of the Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network. There is after all a direct relationship between the economy and biodiversity.

Threats of nationalisation and expropriation will eventually stop the farming clock, writes Roelof Bezuidenhout.

Though Government has assured farmers and other stakeholders that it doesn’t plan to nationalise farmland, its written policy implies otherwise. The consequences would be disastrous, writes Frans Cronje, deputy CEO at the South African Institute of Race Relations. This independent think-tank that has produced cutting-edge research and policy critiques on South Africa since 1929.

Harald Pakendorf, seasoned political analyst and journalist, predicts that the ANC will lose its two-thirds majority in the coming election. Addressing some 500 delegates at the annual VinPro information day, Pakendorf said the solid supporter base of the ANC has been eroded significantly since 1994.

SA's vultures are facing extinction due to a roaring, yet unsustainable, vulture trade, with the birds being harvested quicker than they can breed. At this rate, species such as the white-backed, white-headed and lappet-faced vultures will no longer exist in 10 to 30 years. The Endangered Wildlife Trust gives its view.

Director Leslie Liddel of Biowatch SA, a non-profit civil organisation, presents its case for the stricter regulation of GM crops and the labelling and separation of these from other products.

The Agricultural Marketing Ministerial Review Committee's review of regulation in the sugar industry is in the final stages of completion. Rodger Stewart, chairperson of the SA Sugar Association, gives his views on what a transformed industry can expect.

Dr Jan du Plessis of the strategic management research organisation, Intersearch, contends that free and fair elections won't solve Zimbabwe's problems, and that Robert Mugabe has paved the way for dangerous, large-scale foreign intervention in the region. He thinks the survival of land reform could be much briefer than politicians thought.

Gesie van Deventer - Female Farmer of the Year in 2002, also named top female exporter and overall Farmer of the Year in 2003 - called on farmers to make a mindshift concerning land reform at the Canning Fruit Producers Association's annual meeting that was recently held in Worcester.