R6m for Sekhukhune farmers
Bobo Lukhele
4 March 2004
Subsistence farmers in Limpopo's impoverished Sekhukhune district have received a R6-million boost as part of an innovative rural food security programme.
The 137 Tswelopele farmers, 37 of whom are women, have been given access to 685 hectares of fertile land for small-scale commercial vegetable production.
The agriculture department hopes the vegetables will help improve food availability and nutrition levels in southern Limpopo and northern Mpumalanga.
Recipients have also been encouraged to use some of their individual allotments of five hectares of land to produce cotton as a cash crop to generate new wealth and additional jobs in the area.
The hand-picked cotton is guaranteed a market by local processing company NSK, which also provides financial and technical support.
The first 70 hectares of sprinkler-irrigated land was handed to farmers this week, with the remaining 584 hectares scheduled to be handed over in the next six
months.
The programme, which receives technical support from the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation, is an improvement of a failed 1977 scheme that was rejected by local communities.
"The earlier scheme was a failure because local communities were not fully involved in decisions on how the land should be utilised," said Limpopo agriculture department spokesman Ndo Mangala.
"The programme has been revitalised with the full co-operation of local farmers - through their representative structures - who are already taking responsibility for overall management of the scheme", Mangala said.
This includes the management of a new local water user association, which pumps water from the Steelpoort River to a series of new storage dams, from where it is redistributed into a portable sprinkler irrigation system.
Source: BuaNews
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