Ramaphosa wants 'many more Redlands' as 2.5 million hectares head to black farmers

President Cyril Ramaphosa wants the Redlands model copied across South Africa. Speaking at a black and youth-owned commercial dairy farm in Stutterheim in the Eastern Cape on Thursday, he said the farm shows what happens when access to land is combined with finance, skills, mentorship and strong partnerships.

“We need many more Redlands across South Africa. We must take what works and scale it up,” he said.

Redlands Dairy Farm has drawn on the Land Bank’s Blended Finance Scheme, run with the Department of Agriculture. The scheme mixes government grant funding with loan finance so that viable agricultural investments can be made and farmers can build commercially sustainable businesses. It was launched in 2022 as a 10-year intervention aimed at black producers and agricultural transformation.

Ramaphosa drew three lessons from the farm. The first is that access to land on its own is not enough. “Too many projects under government’s land reform and redistribution programme have been beset by challenges,” he said.

The second is mentorship. Established commercial farmers, he said, have a role in guiding emerging farmers and passing on practical knowledge. “Farming, however, is different. It is more of a calling than a profession. In farming, the land is the classroom,” he said. He listed what farmers learn by doing: crop yields and failures, weather and climate change, animal disease and advances in farming technology. “That is why mentorship and the transfer of practical knowledge are so important,” he said.

The third is money. Ramaphosa described finance as the bridge between subsistence and commercial farming, and said emerging farmers struggle to get loans because banks see them as too risky without assets, collateral or a track record. “This keeps them trapped at subsistence level, unable to finance the inputs, infrastructure and additional land they need to expand their operations,” he said.

That is where blended finance comes in. “The real power of blended finance is not simply the amount of grant funding government provides. It is the amount of productive investment that every rand of public funding can ultimately unlock,” he said.

Demand for the scheme is strong. Ramaphosa said government, National Treasury and the Land Bank need to work out sustainable funding solutions so that more black producers can reach affordable finance. The Land Bank, he said, must be both financially sustainable and developmentally effective. “We will continue to support the rebuilding of the Bank so that it has the financial strength and funding capacity to mobilise capital for agriculture.”

He tied the farm visit to the wider land release programme, saying government is handing land acquired through land reform to black farmers, with about 2.5 million hectares to be released across the country. “As the land release process continues, the demand for affordable and patient capital by new era commercial farmers will be even greater in the coming months and years,” he said.

Public money alone will not cover it. Ramaphosa called on development finance institutions to use government support to pull in more capital from financial markets, commercial banks, development partners and the private sector. He also pressed the case for market access, noting that about half of what South Africa produces goes to export markets and that the value of those exports was around R266 billion in 2025. He said the country is exploring additional markets in BRICS countries, the Middle East and Asia after progress in accessing the Chinese market.

Agriculture and its value chain currently employ around 1.3 million people, a number he said must grow. Transformation, in his telling, should not stop at primary production. “We need developing farmers to progress from primary production into processing, distribution and markets,” he said.

The Eastern Cape is where he put much of the emphasis, saying agriculture there can help address poverty and unemployment. “This is an opportunity to overcome the challenge of a country and a province with ‘two agricultures’, where we see progress in one part of the farming sector, while the other remains on the periphery of development.”

He also flagged plant and animal health, pointing to the recent outbreak of Foot and Mouth Disease, and the need to invest in seed breeding.

Ramaphosa congratulated Redlands owner Tshilidzi Matshidzula, his family and the farm team, and thanked the Land Bank, government departments, National Treasury, the Eastern Cape government and other partners. “We want a transformed agricultural sector that is productive, competitive, inclusive and increasingly able to contribute to South Africa’s food security and economic prosperity,” he said.

Source: SAnews (South African Government News Agency), President Ramaphosa calls for more Redlands-style agricultural enterprises: https://www.sanews.gov.za/south-africa/president-ramaphosa-calls-more-redlands-style-agricultural-enterprises