29/10/2019
On the occasion of delivering my first member statement in legislature today, I decided to focus it on the partnership between Gauteng department of agriculture and rural development and Johannesburg Chamber of Commerce and Industry (JCCI)\
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Madam Speaker
South Africa is ranked as one of the most food secure countries in Africa and 45th out of 113 countries in the world, in the Global Food Security Index (October 2018). However, whilst the country is food secure at the national level, the picture is different at household level as 6,8 million South Africans experienced hunger in 2017.
This is an indictment on all of us and finding ourselves in this quagmire, we should as a nation, remain resolute on ensuring that we are a food secure nation where no one should go to bed hungry.
The untenable situation of poverty and hunger demands from us, as government, private sector and civil society, a unified commitment towards promoting and enhancing the capacity of sectors like agriculture which is at the core of food security and employment creation in our country.
In Gauteng, the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (GDARD) carries the mandate of ‘economically transforming agri-food value chains and ensuring sustainable development for healthy, food secure, integrated, smart and developed urban and rural communities in Gauteng’.
Informed by this mandate and taking a cue from the SONA and Premier Makhura’s pronouncements on agriculture in his SOPA, the Department has prioritised and intensified interventions in both primary agriculture and agro-processing.
As we address the House this morning the Department is addressing the Johannesburg Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s annual Conference, under the theme Growing Business Opportunities for Smallholder Farmers through Agro-Processing.
This is an important step in ensuring we work with industry role-players to to broaden the scope of what smallholder farmers can do with their produce through agro-processing.
This partnership will form part of the social compacting we will forge over time to ensure broad ownership of, and participation in our programmes in the Agricultural sector that seeks to transform the ownership patterns, expand access to markets particularly to Black small holder and commercial farmers and simultaneously address our objectives of food security.
I thank you.
Ms Winifred Morakane Mosupyoe (MPL)
MEMBER OF THE EXECUTIVE COUNCIL (MEC)
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, AGRICULTURE, ENVIRONMENT AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT
