Programme Director; Premier of the Eastern Cape, Mr Oscar Mabuyane; Our host, Mr Tshilidzi Matshidzula, and the Redlands Farm team; Minister of Land Reform and Rural Development, Mr Mzwanele Nyhontso; Executive Mayor of the Amathole District Municipality, Cllr Anele Ntsangani; Mayor of the Amahlathi Local Municipality, Cllr Nomakhosazana Nongqayi; Chairperson of the Land Bank, Mr Mcebisi Skwatsha; Members of the Boar...
Programme Director; Premier of the Eastern Cape, Mr Oscar Mabuyane; Our host, Mr Tshilidzi Matshidzula, and the Redlands Farm team; Minister of Land Reform and Rural Development, Mr Mzwanele Nyhontso; Executive Mayor of the Amathole District Municipality, Cllr Anele Ntsangani; Mayor of the Amahlathi Local Municipality, Cllr Nomakhosazana Nongqayi; Chairperson of the Land Bank, Mr Mcebisi Skwatsha; Members of the Board of the Land Bank; Representatives of organised agriculture and development partners; Members of the Stutterheim community; Ladies and gentlemen. Molweni. Goeie môre. Good morning. It is a pleasure to be here at the Redlands Dairy Farm. Having heard so much about Redlands, and about Mr Tshilidzi Matshidzula and his team, I wanted to see their achievements first-hand. Redlands is a success story forged in an extremely demanding industry. Where progress requires grit, stamina and patience. Where hard work and careful planning can take years to bear fruit. Redlands holds important lessons, not only for South Africans who aspire to a future in farming, but for the country’s broader land reform and agrarian agenda. The first lesson is that supporting an aspiring farmer with a dream requires more than simply providing access to land. Too many projects under Government’s land reform and redistribution programme have been beset by challenges. The second lesson is the importance of established commercial farmers mentoring emerging farmers. In many professions, you can enter the workplace with a degree or diploma and little practical experience. In such professions, you hone your craft as you go along. Farming, however, is different. It is more of a calling than a profession. In farming, the land is the classroom. Much of what a farmer knows is gained through practical experience: of crop yields and failures, of weather and climate change, of animal disease, and of farming technology advancements and adaptability. No-one would expect a newly qualified doctor who has never set foot in an operating theatre to perform complex surgery. In the same way, commercial farming is best learned first-hand from those who have farmed before. That is why mentorship and the transfer of practical knowledge are so important. It is encouraging that there are formal mentorship initiatives such as Farmers for Africa, Grain SA’s Phahama Grain Phakama, the Citrus Growers Association Vision 260, where black farmers aim to capture a notable share of exports by 2032, as well as schemes run by leading banks, agribusinesses and Government. But we need more of them. The third lesson from the Redlands experience is that access to finance is the crucial bridge between subsistence and commercial farming. Yet many emerging farmers struggle to secure loans. Without assets, collateral or an established track record in farming, they are regarded by major banks as too risky to lend to. This keeps them trapped at subsistence level, unable to finance the inputs, infrastructure and additional land they need to expand their operations. As Government, we recognise this challenge and the need for better ways of financing the crucial step that moves a farming operation from potential to scale. This is where blended finance plays a catalytic and indeed transformative role. The Land Bank’s Blended Finance Scheme, in partnership with the Department of Agriculture, combines government grant funding with loan finance. Through it, we are working to make viable agricultural investments more affordable while ensuring that farmers build commercially sustainable businesses. Here at Redlands, we are seeing first-hand what agricultural transformation can look like when we bring together land, finance, entrepreneurship, skills and effective partnerships. Redlands is a black- and youth-owned commercial farming enterprise that has benefited from the Blended Finance Scheme. The support provided has extended from farm acquisition and infrastructure to livestock, dairy equipment, mechanisation and working capital. This is the kind of comprehensive support that is required if we are to enable developing farmers to become successful commercial farmers. The Blended Finance Scheme was launched in 2022 as a catalytic ten-year intervention to support black producers and advance agricultural transformation. The demand it has since attracted confirms both the need and the opportunity. The impressive take-up of this scheme means that the relevant departments, together with National Treasury and the Land Bank, need to work on a sustainable funding solution that enables more and more black producers to access this opportunity. The Land Bank occupies a unique position as South Africa’s specialist agricultural development finance institution. It must therefore be both developmentally effective and financially sustainable. We will continue to support the rebuilding of the Bank so that it has the financial strength and funding capacity to mobilise capital for agriculture. We understand that the Land Bank borrowing from the market at normal rates limits its ability to provide the much-needed affordable finance to farmers. The National Treasury, building on the success of the Blended Finance Scheme, will work to find better and sustainable financing solutions for the Bank. We have identified agriculture as a sector that can create jobs and boost growth. The growth we want is inclusive. This requires affordable finance, partnerships with organised agriculture and access to land. When I delivered The Presidency’s Budget Vote speech in June 2026, I said the Government would begin releasing the land we have acquired over the years to black farmers. This land amounts to about 2.5 million hectares across the country. The Department of Land Reform and Rural Development has begun releasing this land with title deeds to beneficiaries. As the land release process continues, the demand for affordable and patient capital by new-era commercial farmers will be even greater in the coming months and years. But public resources alone will never be sufficient to finance the scale of agricultural development that South Africa needs. The Land Bank and other development finance institutions must leverage government support to mobilise additional capital from financial markets, commercial banks, development partners and the private sector. The real power of blended finance is not simply the amount of grant funding Government provides. It is the amount of productive investment that every rand of public funding can ultimately unlock. I therefore want to encourage the organised agriculture groups to collaborate with the Department of Land Reform and Rural Development and the Department of Agriculture in these efforts to boost inclusive growth in this important sector of the economy. We need many more Redlands across South Africa. We must take what works and scale it up. To do this, Government, development finance institutions, organised agriculture, commodity organisations, agribusinesses and the financial sector must work together. Government must create the enabling conditions. The Land Bank and other financial institutions must mobilise and deploy capital effectively. The private sector must open value chains and markets. Markets must be opened not only domestically but also abroad. About half of what South Africa produces goes to export markets. In 2025, the value of these exports was around R266 billion. This large exposure to export markets means our efforts to grow agriculture domestically must be matched with similar efforts to boost exports. We already have access to a range of markets across Africa – from which half of our farm products’ export earnings come – the EU, parts of Asia, the Middle East and the Americas. But this is not sufficient. Opening more export markets for our farming products is critical. We are having some success in China and are now exploring other markets across the BRICS countries, the Middle East and Asia. Access to these markets is vital to the success of the new-era commercial farmers. For South Africa to export to these markets, our farmers must build productive, competitive and sustainable enterprises. If we get these elements right, we can simultaneously advance agricultural transformation, food security, employment, exports and rural development. Building a competitive farming economy also means investing more in plant and animal health. The recent outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease underlines the critical importance of animal health. We have now progressed in controlling its spread. About a week ago, I received a thorough briefing from the Department of Agriculture about the procurement of vaccines and efforts to include the private sector in domestic manufacturing. We must encourage such efforts. We must also invest more in plant health and increase our focus on seed breeding. No agriculture can prosper without an efficient seed industry. South Africa’s farming economy has more than doubled in value terms since the dawn of democracy in 1994. During this time, employment has also increased. Agriculture and its value chain employ around 1.3 million people. These are the numbers we want to grow. We are here today to witness what blended finance, deep partnership across the sector and a farmer’s commitment promise for the growth of this sector. We know that a growing agricultural enterprise creates employment. It buys equipment and services. It requires transport and logistics. It creates opportunities for processing and manufacturing. It supports local businesses and communities. Agriculture can therefore become an even stronger engine of rural economic development. This is particularly important in provinces such as the Eastern Cape, with substantial agricultural potential and where expanding productive economic activity is essential to creating employment and reducing poverty. This is an opportunity to overcome the challenge of a country and a province with ‘two agricultures’, where we see progress in one part of the farming sector while the other remains on the periphery of development. Here in the Eastern Cape, we see this in the underdevelopment of the northern regions of this province. Through agriculture and agribusiness, we can bridge this gap. Our agricultural transformation programme must connect farmers not only to finance, but also to skills, technology, infrastructure, markets and agricultural value chains. We need developing farmers to progress from primary production into processing, distribution and markets. We need more agricultural enterprises employing people in rural communities. More South African agricultural enterprises must become competitive participants in regional and global markets. We want a transformed agricultural sector that is productive, competitive, inclusive and increasingly able to contribute to South Africa’s food security and economic prosperity. That is the agricultural economy we must build together. I congratulate Mr Matshidzula, his family and the entire Redlands team. I also thank the Land Bank, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Land Reform and Rural Development, National Treasury, the Eastern Cape Provincial Government and all the partners whose efforts are helping to make agricultural transformation a reality. Let us take the lessons from Redlands and turn them into opportunities for many more emerging South African farmers. I thank you.
Speech Brief