Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF) Minister Senzeni Zokwana together with Statistics South Africa will on Tuesday brief the media on the establishment of the Producer/Farmer Register (PFR).
The project is expected to run from 2018 to 2021.
“The project will collect statistics on commercial and non-commercial farmers. Statistics SA will collect data on commercial farmers through the Census of Commercial Agriculture (CoCA) and the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries will collect data on non-commercial farmers through the Producer/Farmer Register,” the department said.
The establishment of a Producer/Farmer Register for South Africa, the department said, is to improve the inaccurate and/or misrepresented statistics of farmers in the non-commercial sector, such as smallholder farmers.
Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) officials have since last month been visiting farms across the country gathering on the country’s state of commercial agriculture.
The exercise, which is expected to carry on into 2019, will see 600 field staff visiting various commercial farms across the country. The study, according to Stats SA, will establish the number of farms, the size of farms, crop types being farmed in different geographic areas, and agricultural inputs such as irrigation usage.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations recommends that a country conducts a census of agriculture at least every ten years. South Africa’s last CoCA was in 2007.
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