Cape Town - The Department of Agriculture, Foresty and Fisheries hopes to create 90 000 new jobs a year through the submission by provinces of over 140 project plans for job creation projects, says the Minister of Agriculture, Foresty and Fisheries Tina Joemat-Pettersson.
In a written response to a Parliamentary question raised in the National Council of Provinces by an opposition member on whether her department would be able to create a million jobs in the agriculture sector over the next 10 years, Joemat-Pettersson said projects by the provinces could create 30 000 permanent and 60 000 temporary jobs per year.
The jobs would be created as part of the department's provincial job creation projects, which Joemat-Pettersson described as a medium-term strategy aimed at identifying the low hanging fruits for job creation.
The agricultural sector, she said, had experienced increasing job losses and employment had declined at an average of about 5% per quarter - leaving a total of 598 000 jobs in agriculture by June, according to Statistics SA.
But she believed that by improving the competitiveness of the commercial sector and supporting smallholders to become commercially viable, South Africa would be able to overcome challenges of an increasingly concentrated sector and an increasingly competitive global market.
She pointed out that her department's Smallholder Development Support Programme and the Zero Hunger Programme were longer term programmes, aimed at developing markets and comprehensive farmer support.
In those products with a negative trade balance, Joemat-Pettersson said her department was devising an import substitution strategy, with the aim of providing incentives that would encourage local processing of both agricultural and forestry products.
These products are processed agriculture (-R4 billion), forestry (-R8.3bn) and fisheries (R928.11 million).
She said in those products with a positive trade balance (such as unprocessed agricultural products which experienced a positive trade balance of R15.4bn), the strategy would be to diversify the market from South Africa's current traditional markets to new dynamic markets.
"This will be done through trade promotions and bilateral agreements. The strategy will further look at changing our export profile - changes in products lines going to traditional markets," said Joemat-Pettersson.
