For a few months, attributing bold ideological measures by the Department of Agriculture and its SOEs, which are out of step with the DA\u2019s own policies and pre-election positions, to \u201cmuscle memory\u201d worked for Minister Steenhuisen. Farmers now see this as an excuse, similar to the ANC\u2019s habit of blaming apartheid for the collapse of public services and entrenched corruption.<\/p>\n
None of the stakeholders who, alongside the DA in 2022, criticised the Agricultural and Agro-processing Master Plan (AAMP) were invited to the AAMP Executive Oversight Meeting scheduled for 7 October in Stellenbosch.<\/p>\n
TLU SA was invited again after being expelled from the 2022 signing ceremony for seeking clarity on the term \u201ctransformation,\u201d which appears 92 times in the Master Plan.<\/p>\n
Six organisations that rejected the AAMP, namely SAAI, TLU SA, WRSA, the National Employers\u2019 Association of South Africa (NEASA), the LWO Employers\u2019 Organisation, and consumer organisations, met three times with the Department and SOEs, as well as with AAMP signatories. They tabled nine formal objections. None has been addressed.<\/p>\n
These organisations believe they have been deliberately excluded for criticising ANC policies rooted in socialist ideology, the false \u201cstolen land\u201d and \u201cfarm worker exploitation\u201d narratives, and unattainable social-engineering goals such as the new employment equity measures, the expropriation at nil compensation bill, and new regulations on so-called fake meat and plant- or insect-based protein alternatives.<\/p>\n
No progress has been made on earlier promises to include the wildlife ranching industry, or even to solicit its input, in the AAMP.<\/p>\n
Consistent with the ANC\u2019s ideological tradition, trade unions were closely involved in designing the AAMP and are expressly acknowledged in the text, yet none of the employers\u2019 organisations were invited.<\/p>\n
The objecting organisations maintain that positions which were fundamentally wrong under an ANC minister do not become acceptable simply because the current minister is from the DA. They also question the mandate of AAMP signatories who claim to represent farmers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is an agricultural master plan without farmers,\u201d said Dr Theo de Jager of SAAI and Bennie van Zyl of TLU SA. \u201cThere is nothing in that plan to excite primary producers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Their principal objection is that profitability, sustainability, and value-chain efficiency are not meaningfully addressed in the AAMP text.<\/p>\n
\u201cTransformation can never be more important than profitability or sustainability. When transformation is elevated above sustainability, you get Eskom\u2019s load-shedding era or the current state of public healthcare. When it trumps profitability, you end up where the SABC and Denel are today,\u201d they added.<\/p>\n
The DA supported this position in 2022 after the rushed and premature signing of the AAMP in Parliament. The undersigned expect Minister Steenhuisen to adhere to the DA\u2019s pre-election policies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For a few months, attributing bold ideological measures by the Department of Agriculture and its SOEs, which are out of step with the DA\u2019s own policies and pre-election positions, to \u201cmuscle memory\u201d worked for Minister Steenhuisen. Farmers now see this as an excuse, similar to the ANC\u2019s habit of blaming apartheid for the collapse of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":3512777,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_cloudinary_featured_overwrite":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3517163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news-english"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n