The unavailability of land, the drought and farmers not willing to sell productive land are some of the stumbling blocks in the way of Bhisho buying 18 farms in the metro.
The Eastern Cape department of rural development and agrarian reform is on the hunt for land in Nelson Mandela Bay for small-scale stock farmers to keep their animals.
But farmers in the city are reluctant to sell their farms due to the bureaucracy attached to selling land to the government.
Due to budget cuts in the national department, Bhisho can only buy two of the 18 available farms in the metro in the current financial year.
Two livestock farms – Stilgenoeg and Carl’s Kraal – are available for purchase at R3.1m and R6m, respectively.
The report on farms available for purchase in the metro was, however, rejected by the metro’s economic development, tourism and agriculture portfolio committee on Friday.
Mayor Athol Trollip, who chaired the meeting, asked the department to identify land where small-scale farmers could take their cattle.
The idea is to finally find land and give it to residents whose livestock normally roams the streets in search of grass to graze.
Provincial rural development and agrarian reform official Nomfundo Mbewana told the committee farmers who had the land were not willing to lease parts of their farms to the government.
Mbewana said officials hoped to buy the two farms and ultimately allocate hectares of the farms to smallscale farmers through the department’s accelerated land development and redistribution initiative.
Trollip said the asking prices of the farmers were excessive.
“It’s a concern to me that we are being given figures as if we aren’t going to interrogate them.
“We want to acquire land for people who have cattle in this city because the bylaw says that we may not run livestock but there are people who come to the city with their livestock,” Trollip said.
Listing some of the farms, Trollip said the figures were not helpful.
“What we are looking for are not smallholdings. We have done a livestock audit and there are thousands of head of cattle, sheep, goats and pigs in this city and this is not going to help us do anything.
“Can the department of land reform please assist us in identifying some commercial agricultural land that is viable for livestock so we can assist the livestock owners,” Trollip said.
He further asked that the department consider farms that are outside of the Nelson Mandela Bay metro borders.
“There isn’t enough land that is suitable for livestock within the metro and we can’t extend our borders, running after handkerchief-size land; its not sustainable.”
Trollip said the farms listed by Mbewana were not realistic and were unsuitable for livestock farming.
Mbewana said farmers who had productive land were simply not coming to the party.
“The list of farms that have been offered to us by the farmers, we are currently still buying through the willing buyer, willing seller approach; the farmers are not coming on board to sell the highly productive land.”
Mbewana said access to highly productive farms remained a challenge.
“Farmers are just not selling and unfortunately as a department we cannot force them to.”
Mbewana said the department wanted to buy and warehouse and later allocate the farms, but this was not happening.
It was unfortunately confined to the metro, Mbewana said.
“The issue of the metro is really frustrating because we are not accessing the land that we want to access.”
Trollip proposed that the department pursues deforestation of land for livestock farmers in the city.