MINISTER for Rural Development and Land Reform, Gugile Nkwinti said that he is impressed with the progress made by rural, environment and agricultural development department (READ) in the province.

Nkwinti said this when he witnessed the first grain value chain agri-park harvest day in Springbokpan on Wednesday.

“Agri-parks are set to boost economic growth. We want to increase our own contribution to growth development plan. Our national development plan is talking about economic growth of 6% by 2030. In order for that to happen, it means sectors of agriculture and manufacturing should bring in more effort noting the challenges we face in other sectors like mining.

“We want to increase GDP through agriculture. Right now this sector is at 3% and this is still less. Establishment and functioning of the agri-parks will take us a long way,” Nkwinti said.

North West premier Supra Mahumapelo said they have put agriculture at the apex of their economy drive. He said they aiming at fighting unemployment, poverty and inequality.

“We have chosen to deal with agriculture, culture and tourism. The harvest attests to the correctness of our decision. We also encourage young and old people to embark on farming. We are reaping the fruit after we conceptualised, planned and executed.

“We also want to bring our people together. They must benefit from the entire value chain of agricultural sector. This will create jobs, deal with inequality and unemployment,” Mahumapelo said.

He said they will also bring in technology to farming, commending READ and RDLR departments for supporting his vision of Village, Township and Small Dorpies development.

“All this big cities like Johannesburg and Pretoria will not succeed if they were not getting their feed from rural provinces. So in terms of economy strategic plan, we are better located than them.

“The major challenge we are facing as the province is youth unemployment. It has reached staggering 37%. However we formed Youth Entrepreneurship Services (YES) and Youth in Agriculture and Rural Development programmes. We must just make sure that we maximise and push much harder to empower young people in agricultural sector. If we reduce youth unemployment, we would defeat hunger,” he said.

READ MEC, Manketse Tlhape said: “We have witnessed the first harvest for the storage. We are building a processing plant next to silos where we will produce maize and other commodities. We are also building a warehouse where we will have our mechanisation.”

She added that they spent R50m on rehabilitation of the silos last year.

“We have injected also injected R4m to do the costing and spent R8m for the mill. We want our people to beneficiate from the whole value chain. We are also having another agri-park in Makapanstad.

“We also did sod-turning for satellite agricultural farmer produce campus. Our department has a farm training centre called Kgora at Ramatlabama in Mahikeng. This will assist emerging farmers,” she said.

-TDN

Follow us on Twitter@Taung_DailyNews or @IceT_

taungdailynews@gmail.com