Mr. Speaker, as regards the business of the House, we shall proceed next week with the Committee Stage of the Appropriation Bill, except on Monday when, after the discussion of the Agriculture and Fisheries Vote has been disposed of, we shall spend the remainder of the day dealing with legislation which appears on the Order Paper.

Mr. Chairman, I request the privilege of the half-hour. To put this debate on agriculture in South Africa in perspective, it will be necessary first to consider the economic and financial situation in the agricultural industry as it stands today. The gross revenue from the industry has risen over the past year by 13,6% to R4 344 million, while the net revenue has only increased by 6%, to R1 745 million. Under the circumstances this is by no means a healthy situation, and if one takes into account the fact that the real net revenue of the farmer over the past number of years has consistently dropped, indicating that the farmer’s income is insufficient to cover the increases in production costs, the situation becomes disturbing. In general the profitability of business enterprises is usually assessed in terms of the return on the capital invested in a particular enterprise, and it is accepted that a return of between 14% to 18% is more or less reasonable. In agriculture, however, the return over the past four to five years has remained between 6% and 7% and usually that does not even include management remuneration. As a result, new capital is very seldom invested in the industry and where farmers do make use of outside capital it is extremely difficult for them to pay the interest on that capital, let alone repay the capital sum. Against the background of dwindling real net income, an average return of 6% and increasing input costs, it is by no means surprising that agricultural debt has increased every year since 1972 and in 1978 amounted to R2 621 million; and it is still increasing. In 1978 the net revenue of the agricultural sector amounted to a mere 62% of its burden of debt. From this the farmer had to pay income tax and repayment of capital, develop his enterprise and in addition provide enough money for him and his family to live on. According to my calculations, if one tries to work out an average income, the farmer’s net income comes to approximately R23 000 per annum. When he has to pay the amounts to which I have just referred, I am by no means surprised when I hear that farmers everywhere are intensely concerned about the future of the industry and their personal future and that of their sons and families in the industry. The question why the agricultural industry is in this position must of course be answered. To me it seems as if the answer lies largely in the fact that over the past few years, producer prices have increased by only about 9% per annum while the price for the farmer’s requisites has increased by an average of 15% per annum.

Hear, hear!

The prices of farming inputs are therefore increasing far more rapidly than the prices received by the farmer for the products he produces, with the result that his expenditure is increasing more rapidly than his income.

One cannot speak about agriculture without also referring to food prices in South Africa. I want to put it to hon. members that it would be wrong to believe that food prices are directly ascribable to what happens at the level of the primary producer. In other words, it is ridiculous to maintain that the increase in food prices is directly attributable to the farmer. [Interjections.] The fact is that today the farmer only gets between 47% and 48% of the price which the housewife pays for food. This gap is increasing every year. I realize that there are reasons for this. In a modern society like ours, the housewife is inclined to purchase foods which have been processed. More and more she wants foodstuffs to be sold in a semi-prepared state. However, we must also recognize that something must be done to prevent that gap from widening. It is vital that something be done about this gap.

While we are discussing this, I wish to refer to the reply given by the hon. the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries to the two questions on the Question Paper I asked here earlier today. The answer was that the hon. the Minister and the Government did not interfere in the determining of prices in the food and stock feed industry. It is not Government policy. The hon. the Minister went further and said that the department did from time to time ensure that the profits on food products, and he referred specifically to grain products, were not unreasonably high, and that the competition in the retail trade was sufficient to ensure that prices were not pushed up unnecessarily. I sincerely hope that the hon. the Minister is correct, because when one looks at the food industry today, one does find that a constantly dwindling number of large chain stores is controlling the industry, and I am not sure whether the department always does enough to narrow the gap sufficiently between the price the farmer gets for his product and that which the housewife has to pay for the product. I do not intend proposing that we implement price control, but…

You are implying it.

… what I do want to say is that we shall have to look at these matters very carefully. As regards the provision of fodder in agriculture, the situation is that two or three large companies which farm on both sides of the fence pushed up prices immediately after the increased maize price had been announced, within a few days after the announcement, when they undoubtedly still had supplies on hand. Because these companies farm on both sides of the fence, they can provide their own undertakings with cheap feed while the independent farmer has to pay through the nose for it. We discussed this matter earlier this year in this House but I am not convinced that the Government is giving sufficient attention to this matter.

I could continue to discuss food prices, but I now wish to speak about the sources of finance at present available to the farmer.

Up to now you have made a very good speech.

It will become even better! [Interjections.] We have the situation today that 44% of the farmer’s debt is borne by the Land Bank, the agricultural co-operatives and the Department of Agricultural Credit and Land Tenure. 23% of the debt is covered by commercial banks and 32% by private persons and other institutions. If one takes into account the fact that the loans provided by bodies other than the Land Bank or the agricultural corporations are for the most part short-term and medium-term loans, and that the interest rate on these loans is high, we realize how dangerous the farmer’s situation really is if he perhaps suffers a crop failure or if inputs continue to rise as they have done over the past few years.

This brings me to the investments made by certain agricultural control boards with the money available to them which has been entrusted to them by the producers of the products over which the agricultural control boards exercise control. We have already seen that over the past year the S.A. Wool Board has lost approximately half a million rands in interest due to an injudicious investment. I really cannot understand why it is that while we know that we are having problems obtaining money for the agricultural industry from outside, the hon. the Minister permits control boards to invest the money they receive from the producers to serve as security, outside agriculture. Surely it would be meaningful to invest that money in the Land Bank itself so that it can be ploughed back into the agricultural industry to the benefit of the farmers and the industry as a whole. To me this would be a far more meaningful means of operation. I should like to know whether the hon. the Minister intends doing something about this matter. We cannot permit money earned in agriculture being invested outside and being lost in this way.

A large percentage of the loans have also come from agricultural co-operatives. These are organizations established by the farmer for the farmer which, in my opinion, still have a very important role to play in the future. It is true that the agricultural cooperatives in South Africa and in other parts of the world as well are rapidly increasing and expanding. I could support this by means of quotations, but my time is getting short. However, what we must ensure is that conditions must not be created with regard to the role played by the agricultural cooperatives—and I agree that they have a role to play—which could have an adverse effect on the free market mechanism of which the agricultural co-operatives also form part. We must therefore see to it that as the agricultural co-operatives grow, they continue to be absolutely effective in the service they render. The service they render is pre-eminently that of keeping production costs as low as possible by making the inputs available at reasonable prices and also of affording the farmer, who stands by or, one could almost say, is linked to his fellow farmer, the best possible price for his product. They must continue to be efficient.

In view of the fact that the agricultural co-operatives are beginning to undertake agricultural extension to an increasing extent, we must also see to it that these organizations and the Department of Agricultural Technical Services itself do not begin to compete to attract the young men to work for them so that eventually we have a shortage of extension officers. The agricultural industry will have to decide whether the co-operatives must provide the technical extension or whether the department must do it itself. I do not believe it is right that everyone should try to do the same work and that overlapping should take place in this way.

You are talking a lot of sense.

There is one final matter I want to raise, concerning the announcement of the new maize price and the ensuing debate. I realize that it is necessary, as I indicated in the course of the debate, that prices be adjusted. However I want to maintain that the price, as adjusted this year and last year, has been higher than the increase in production costs. [Interjections.] Let me just finish. If that is not so, the hon. the Minister owes it to South Africa to make available the calculations involved so that we can all look at them, because the new maize price affects not only the consumer, but also other farmers. Therefore it affects the agricultural industry itself. If the hon. the Minister takes it upon himself to single out one segment of the agricultural industry and determine prices for it, he must accept the responsibility for the consequent increases in price which have to take place. The day on which the feed price was increased, the production costs involved in milk production increased immediately as well; not over a month, but immediately. The cost of egg production also increased immediately, as did the cost of producing pork. Who is going to accept the responsibility for these cost increases?

We must be consistent and decide: Either we are going to control or we are not going to control. One cannot merely take action which affects one sector and does not affect the next.

Mr. Chairman, in the very short time at my disposal I hope I shall be permitted, in the first place, to convey my sincere congratulations and those of the members of the agricultural group of the NP caucus to the hon. the Deputy Minister of Development on his well-deserved promotion. [Interjections.] For many years he served with distinction in the agricultural group of our caucus and our loss is another department’s gain.

Permit me, too, to convey our sincere congratulations to Dr. Immelman on his important promotion and to wish him every success.

If I may react briefly to the argument by the hon. member for Wynberg, I might mention that in general he made a good speech with which not much fault could be found. There was not much wrong with his statement of the problems of agriculture, but he did not, of course, suggest any solutions whatsoever. As a child it was my favourite game, when I received the present of a toy motor-car, to take it apart. Unfortunately I could never put it together again.

Now we know where the 12-point plan comes from. [Interjections.]

It is the easiest thing in the world to spell out all the problems in agriculture, and we all know it. The answers to those problems, of course, are not so simple.

I want to reply briefly to the hon. member’s statement that the hon. the Minister should not permit agricultural control boards to invest funds outside the Land Bank. I think that the hon. member is speaking out of ignorance to some extent, because he is apparently not in touch with organized agriculture in South Africa. Surely it is a simple fact that the request put to the hon. the Minister to permit agricultural control boards to invest funds outside the Land Bank at higher rates of interest than those offered by the Land Bank, comes expressly from the farmers concerned themselves.

Does that mean that it was the right decision?

Give me a chance to reply.

It was put forcefully to the hon. the Minister that the control boards should be permitted to invest outside the Land Bank at the maximum interest rate so as to obtain the maximum return for the farmers.

That is extremely shortsighted.

The hon. member does not know what he is talking about. I want to refer specifically to the Wool Board. In spite of that theoretic loss …

It is a real loss.

… which the Wool Board suffered on one investment, the average earnings on interest which the Wool Board has obtained for the farmers of South Africa as a result of outside investment, is substantially more than what the Wool Board could have obtained for the farmers by way of investment in the Land Bank. That is a simple fact. They were short-term investments.

If anyone tries to make political capital out of this, he is making a mistake because the fact is that the Wool Board and the former chairman of the Wool Board, the late Senator Gideon Joubert, fully informed the wool farmers themselves at their congresses concerning the circumstances of those investments. The wool farmers were furnished with detailed explanations of the investment policy of the Wool Board. The wool farmers of South Africa accepted that.

Mr. Chairman, may I ask the hon. member a question?

I have only ten minutes, please.

What is absolutely ridiculous is that in yesterday’s Eastern Province Herald it is reported that the House of Assembly’s Select Committee on Public Accounts now has a new chairman. I read here that a certain Mr. John Malcomess, the hon. member for East London North, said to this newspaper in a statement—

[Interjections.] In any event it is news to us on this side of the House that the hon. member for East London North received that promotion.

I think that this whole matter of the investments made by the Wool Board has already been explained in detail to the real interest group in this regard, viz. the wool farmers of South Africa, and they have accepted the explanations. The investment policy of the Wool Board is in the interests of the wool farmers of South Africa, because the Wool Board acts as a financial institution and not merely as a control board. However, I do not wish to spend too much of my time on that. When the hon. member makes his attack, one can perhaps reply to him in detail in this regard.

The statement of the problems relating to farming by the hon. member for Wynberg was, in general, correct. We are now encountering occasional complaints in the public media that as far as prices for the agricultural industry are concerned, such price determinations should be left to the so-called law of supply and demand. We find that theoretical statement being made repeatedly. Attacks are being made on the South African marketing policy, the policy of price determination and the functions of the control boards in this regard. Surely it is a fact that all industries can estimate in advance with a reasonable degree of certainty the demand for their product which will arise in the short and medium term. Agriculture can also do so to a large extent, but it cannot do so with precision. However, not all industries can make an advance estimate of what the supply will be. Industry can do it, the manufacturing industry can do it with a reasonable degree of certainty, but in agriculture it is virtually impossible to make an advance estimate of the expected supply, and anyone who knows anything about agriculture will agree with that. In other countries such as the USA, an effort has been made to regulate the supply in agriculture, but it has been a failure. I do not believe we can ever do any such thing in South Africa. Because in agriculture it is perhaps possible to calculate the demand for the product but one can never calculate the expected supply precisely, it is impracticable, although we have a free economy, to leave price determinations in agriculture purely to the market mechanism of supply and demand. That would result in absolute chaos in the agricultural industry. The farmer must take the risk not only of increasing production costs, but also of not knowing whether he is going to have a product to provide. This is a tremendous risk not only in South Africa, but indeed in all countries of the world. If we add to that the risk that the farmer would run if he did not know whether he was going to receive a price for his eventual product, the risk factor for the farmer, particularly in a country like South Africa, would become totally excessive and he would certainly not be able to make ends meet.

That is why we in South Africa have the sound system that wherever possible—and it is not possible in all branches of agriculture— the farmer is assured of a price which will give him a reasonable return on his efforts. That is why the determination of prices cannot be linked to the law of supply and demand.

My time has almost expired. I just want to refer briefly to the problem of the White occupation of farms on the platteland. In a very dramatic way the military problem of South Africa … [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, I should like to associate myself with the praise conveyed by the hon. member for Barberton to his predecessor, and at the same time to Dr. Immelman who now occupies that very important post. At the same time I also wish to congratulate the hon. member for Barberton on his election as chairman of this important study group. We who have known him for more than 30 years know that he will make a great success of his task in this group. We therefore wish him all of the best in this regard.

There are two matters which I should just like to touch on very briefly. The first concerns the purchase of land for the purposes of consolidation. The other concerns border farms.

As far as the purchase of land for the purposes of consolidation is concerned, we know that this is a matter which arouses very strong emotions among our people. It is a matter of very wide importance in the country. It has caused a great deal of sadness and regret and also many frustrations. I do not want to talk about more money for more land at the moment. This is something which is appropriate to a different department. Nor do I wish to discuss the matter of which land should be purchased. There is a commission investigating that. However, I should like to discuss the valuation of the land which must be purchased. This is a matter which falls directly under the Department of Agricultural Credit and Land Tenure. In former years an average amount of R30 million per annum has been voted for these land purchases. This year R74 million has been voted for this specific purpose. Now, we know that in former years major delays have occurred in the valuations carried out by the department. The matter was later referred to the Department of Co-operation and Development, which is now making the final offers to the people in question. In the past however, long delays have occurred.

In the light of the amount voted for this year—more than double that of last year—the question now arises as to whether the delays are not perhaps going to become far worse in the future unless something drastic is done. Only yesterday I again received a telegram from a voter in which he said that the valuation of his farm had been carried out as far back as November last year and that up to the present no progress whatsoever had been made in the matter. I have received a number of complaints of this nature in the past. I have heard from other colleagues that they, too, have received the same complaints. However when we ask the Department of Co-operation and Development why they are not making the necessary offers, the reply is that they have not yet received the valuations. If one asks the Department of Agricultural Credit and Land Tenure why they have not yet continued with the valuations, the reply is that they have already done so and that they have already been sent to the Department of Co-operation and Development. In the meantime, who is the party who suffers? It is the landowners. Now, I should like to ask the hon. the Deputy Minister—I think it is he who deals specifically with this matter— whether these valuations cannot be dealt with more promptly without impairing efficiency, because there have been many requests for revaluations since the valuations have apparently not been carried out correctly. Some of the applications for revaluation succeed, with the result that the eventual valuation is higher than it was originally. I now wish to ask whether these valuations could not be disposed of a great deal more rapidly and whether more valuators could not be appointed to do this work. I ask this particularly in view of the increased amount voted for land purchases this year. There are many cases of hardship. Many farmers who are in financial difficulties are only waiting for an offer to be made to them. Hon. members cannot imagine how it eats away at one’s peace of mind to know that one has to be bought out, but nothing happens. I want to ask the hon. the Deputy Minister whether he could not give immediate attention to this extremely important matter.

I realize that there has to be a high degree of co-operation between the Department of Agricultural Credit and Land Tenure on the one hand and the Department of Co-operation and Development on the other. Thus far the co-operation between the two departments has fortunately been very good and we want it to remain so. There must be close contact between these people. However, I only ask that that procedure be shortened.

As far as the question of border farms is concerned, a very important Act was passed last year, as we all know, with a view to re-establishing our people in the area along the borders of the Republic. Unfortunately it has not been possible to implement that Act because it has been impractical to do so. We are all very disappointed about that but nevertheless there was understanding for the reasons why that Act could not be implemented. We know, too, that the hon. the Deputy Minister visited these border areas last year to explain why that Act could not be carried out. I think the hon. the Minister can be praised for the very good work he has done, because subsequently I have been in contact with several of these farmers, who now show an understanding of the matter.

I should now like to ask the hon. the Deputy Minister whether he could not explain in detail, for the sake of our people who perhaps do not read the debates or get hold of a newspaper, what this new scheme entails and how it can be implemented. We receive a number of inquiries about this and if it could just be explained in detail, it would help us a great deal. We also know that R10 million has been voted specifically for the purpose of these border farms so that people can be established on them, but in this short time, R6 million of that R10 million has already been spent. After all, this indicates to us the extreme importance of this matter. For that reason I ask the hon. the Deputy Minister whether he could not inform us about this matter in detail at a later stage.

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member who has just resumed his seat raised a very important matter here, namely the question of the border farmers. I intend dealing with this matter later on in my speech. I also brought this matter to the attention of the hon. the Deputy Minister in another debate. I should therefore welcome it if he could spell out his policy early in the debate so that we could perhaps react to it, because it is a very important matter. Since I am told that he will enter the debate at about 15h00, I should like to withhold my comment on his statement until we have heard what it is all about However, there is no doubt at all that this is a matter which affects not only agriculture, but the security of our country as a whole. I look forward to hearing what the hon. the Deputy Minister is going to say.

One of the difficulties one encounters in this debate is that one is dealing with such a wide subject with so many ramifications that one almost does not know where to take hold of it. However, I shall try to overcome that problem and make a contribution.

†The hon. member for Barberton spoke about supply and demand in the agricultural industry, and I agree with him 100%. We have seen what can happen—for example in Great Britain between the wars—to an agricultural industry if one simply leaves it to supply and demand. Great Britain at that time had, of course, the advantage of supplies from the Argentine, wheat and meat from New Zealand and that kind of thing, but I do not think this applies to our situation today. At the same time, however, the agricultural industry in Great Britain collapsed entirely. It could not have been in a more desperate situation than it was when war broke out, and it cost the British nation millions and millions of pounds to put the industry back on a viable footing, in order to carry them through at least part of the war and to supply enough food for the situation in which they found themselves. I am therefore 100% behind the concept that one has to underpin the agricultural industry. This is done in every civilized country, in Western Europe to the extent that in some cases it even becomes embarrassing. It is overdone to the point where one got the beef mountain and that type of thing. But it cannot be avoided; it has got to be done, and I do not think that there is any chance whatsoever that we in South Africa are ever going to be so foolish as to turn our backs on the structured organization of agriculture and the manner in which it is organized. There must be a State section of agriculture which must provide that underpinning for the farming community.

The hon. member for Wynberg referred to the question of investments by the control boards. My own feeling is that the hon. the Minister should not limit the initiative of the boards by requiring them to invest all their money with the Land Bank. The Land Bank is an independent organization and recently acquired powers to go into the market, to issue debentures to finance itself. The money that comes in from investments in agriculture does help it along, but it is not a primary source and it should not in my opinion be a primary source of the financing of the Land Bank. I think the Land Bank is quite capable of standing in the market and attracting the funds that it needs. Whether we shall ever have enough funds in South Africa for the Land Bank for the purpose of financing the farming community is something I do not know. That is something which we can discuss on another occasion.

I now wish to again raise a matter with the hon. the Minister although he must by now be getting a bit tired of me raising it with him. During the budget debate the hon. the Minister referred to some proposal I had made in relation to the bringing down of the costs of food. I want to put it very clearly today for the last time, because I am really not going to do it again. [Interjections.] I suggest that there is an alternative to subsidies, another way to bring down the cost of food. When one considers the position in which agriculture finds itself today, I wonder whether during the past 30 years there has ever been a time when the agricultural industry was in the dire straits in which it is today, because the rise in input costs of the farming community is killing the farmers. When I raised the question of the maize price the hon. the Minister asked me what the price was going to be. My answer was R120, and it came out very, very close to that figure. This was a very major increase in the price. Yet this increase is entirely justified. There is no way that anyone can pretend that the price of maize today should not be fixed at a realistic figure so that the farmer who farms well and efficiently can make a decent living out of farming with maize. People like the hon. member for Carletonville will make a fortune, but others who are not such good farmers might make a bit less. I do not even want to mention the hon. the Minister himself. Anyway, the problem is that we want to get away from subsidies, and I make this point to the hon. the Minister because he said during the budget debate that I was asking for subsidization of input costs. Therefore I now state my opinion about subsidies. I think they are totally counterproductive. If the hon. the Minister could do away with subsidies entirely, I would welcome that day. What I asked for in the budget debate was whether it was not possible to be more generous in this bridging year with subsidies on maize and bread, because we have been in a period of recession and the Black community by and large have been going through a severe period of unemployment. While we are in a bridging year, while employment picks up and more and more people come into employment, together with the extended family situation in the Black community, more and more people are going to benefit. Therefore I should like to have seen more subsidies now during this year on bread and maize. Although I do think that we should get away from subsidies if we can.

The point I want to make to the hon. the Minister, and I made it during the budget debate, is that last year I proposed in this House that the 7,5% surcharge on tractors should be abolished. Hon. members on the other side of the House voted against me. But that is how things go in politics. Well, it was abolished in this budget, and the farming community stands to benefit on this side of their equation, input and realization, 7,5% on tractors. Suppose we abolish the entire customs duty on tractors imported into South Africa. Let us say it will amount to a sum of R30 million. I do not know what the actual sum is. The farming community will benefit to that extent on the input side with depreciation over a period of years. That is an illustration of what can be done if the Government does not collect money on that side. The hon. the Minister of Finance conceded the point to me when, on the taxation proposals, he said to the Civil Service among others: “I am not going to increase your salaries, but I am going to give you more money because I am going to reduce taxation. In other words, you are going to get more to take home because the Government is taking less.” What I have asked the hon. the Minister to do is to appoint a joint committee of his department, Consumer Affairs and Customs and Excise to look into all the things that come into the country and which go into the input costs of farmers and on which the Government…

Can the Jacobs Committee not do that?

If they could do it I would be only too pleased to have them do it. What I am asking the hon. the Minister is that somebody should do it. I would have thought the three departments I mentioned might have done it very satisfactorily, but if the hon. member thinks the Jacobs Committee can do it, I am with him all the way. What I want is the acceptance of the principle, namely if one brings down the input cost, one can bring down the cost of food. It is the only way in which one is going to bring down the cost of food. One can never expect, in the situation we are in with inflation and everything else, that the cost of food will ever come down in any other way except through the input costs being reduced. They are not going to be reduced by the ordinary flow of economic action, inflation and that sort of thing, but they can be reduced by the Government if it does not collect certain moneys which they are now collecting.

I think we are in a financial situation where the Government can do without that particular amount of money, as they have done without the 7,5% surcharge on agricultural tractors. I hope my point has been made. I hope the hon. members on the other side in the agricultural group will understand what I am getting at, namely that one has got to cut down. The Government can do it. The Government makes a considerable contribution to the input costs by the levies charged on all things coming into the country. I mentioned last year to the hon. member for Bethal the question of sulphur, for instance, which goes into sulphuric acid which goes into ammonium sulphate. I think the hon. the Minister agrees it is not a very big amount. If it is a couple of millions of rands and there are 30 or 40 items of a couple of million rand, that would be millions of rands which are not being charged to the farmer, money which the Government can do without. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, in his characteristically peaceful way the hon. member for Mooirivier made a sensible speech, one which could contribute to meaningful debate in this House. As regards the last matter he raised, viz. that of excise duty on machinery, tractors, etc., if the hon. the Minister wants to deal with that as a matter of principle it is for him to do so if he can satisfy the hon. the Minister of Finance in that regard.

This morning I should like to refer briefly to the facet of farming which predominates in my part of the world. I want to link a report which appears in Die Burger of 3 April 1980, to the maize industry. I do so because a large chemical company, Sentrachem, announced on 1 April—

The most important part is—

It is largely for three reasons that I want to link this report to the maize industry. In the first place, the maize industry is the largest single agricultural industry in South Africa, it is unequalled as a strategic industry and is totally irreplaceable as regards South Africa’s survival. Therefore the production of maize must not be hampered, and what is more important, it must not be forced out of production. The consequences of that would be so catastrophic as to be incalculable. In the second place, the maize industry is a large consumer of fuel, and the saving in the cost of fuel, if ethanol and methanol could contribute towards that, would have a widespread economic impact over a wide sphere, quite apart from the savings in foreign exchange that would result from a drop in the import of petroleum. The present estimated consumption of fuel in the maize industry amounts to approximately 400 million litres per annum, and this represents approximately one third of the total fuel consumption of the agricultural sector as a whole.

The third reason why I link this report to the maize industry is the fact that the maize industry is faced with colossal export losses annually, which it can no longer absorb alone if it is expected of the producer alone to accept responsibility for them. A contribution by the State and the consumer to the Stabilization Fund of the Maize Board with the aim of helping to compensate for export losses is done with such qualms and is so distasteful that in fact the porridge eventually tastes bitter. The estimated export losses for this year amount to between R140 million and R150 million on a possible export surplus of 3,3 million tons of maize. According to the latest estimate there is a possibility that we may have a surplus of 3,8 million tons of maize to export, and then this amount will increase still further.

What industry can afford that? Has the consumer no contribution at all to make? Does he not also have a primary interest in the continued and unhindered production of maize? This tremendous burden hangs like a sword of Damocles over the head of the maize industry, and the maize producers can no longer carry the losses alone. Eventually, due to export losses, it will no longer be possible to farm profitably with maize.

At present the risk in the maize industry is so great that it takes all the pleasure out of farming, and those who are in the maize industry themselves will know exactly what I mean. There is enormous tension and worry from the moment it rains until harvesting is over. Last year agriculture required the following inputs, among others: For fertilizer R317 million, for diesel R340 million, for machinery R320 million and for seed R90 million. I am only mentioning a few cash items to indicate the extent of the risk in agriculture at present. Only a mild drought could result in bankruptcies in the maize industry today, and apparently the consumers fail to understand this.

I want to come back to the issue of the export losses that have to be borne by the Stabilization Fund of the Mealie Board or, in other words, by the producer himself. A reduction in the dependence of the consumer and the State, to assist in carrying these losses, would temper an annual struggle, if not eliminate it completely, because it really takes a tremendous struggle every year on the part of the Mealie Board and the hon. the Minister of Agriculture to get these bodies so far as to make a contribution to the Stabilization Fund of the Maize Board with a view to helping to foot the bill for export losses, and I think that this year’s price negotiations proved this once again.

One of the methods of preventing this annual struggle would be to export as little maize as possible, or none at all, because then there would be no export loss and these bodies need not make a contribution.

In order to achieve such a situation we need to be granted permission to process surplus maize into ethanol. I therefore want to make an appeal to the hon. the Minister today to give permission for surplus maize to be used to manufacture ethanol. This would save the consumer, the producer and the State between R140 million and R150 million in hard cash this year. I need not stress the benefits of that. This, together with a saving in foreign exchange in the oil account of the State which would result from the manufacture of ethanol, would compensate more than adequately for the loss in foreign exchange that is usually earned by the export of maize. Our surplus maize production, which is a burden for the industry—we cannot get away from that—but an asset for the State because it is an earner of foreign exchange, could, if export was ceased and the surplus maize processed into ethanol, become a fine asset for all the interested parties, namely the consumer, the producer, the State, the manufacturers of ethanol and also the motorist.

I therefore want to call on the hon. the Minister of Agriculture not only to give permission for the utilization of surplus maize for the manufacture of ethanol, but also to promote the idea actively. I am of the opinion that in this way we could serve South Africa and its people because in real terms the export of mealies means a colossal financial loss for the producer. We have seen that in practice we cannot necessarily buy the goodwill of our enemies thereby. Not even that of a hungry Africa. Why, then, should we continue to burden the producer with these colossal export losses if those who are able to benefit from it, including Lesotho, continue to show increasing hostility towards South Africa? If a balance can be found in the loss of foreign exchange earned by the export of maize and the saving of foreign exchange because we need not import oil, I see no reason why we should maintain the principle that we should not use food to manufacture fuel. Accordingly I should like to make an earnest and urgent appeal to the hon. the Minister to give permission for surplus maize to be used for the manufacture of ethanol and to promote the idea actively.

Mr. Chairman, I should like to express a few ideas about the circumstances of agriculture today, particularly in the drought-stricken areas. The agricultural industry is known to us as the most brittle industry in our country. It is brittle because circumstances are such that neither the farmer’s money nor any person is able to change it. Only the Creator can change circumstances to such an extent that the brittleness of the industry will disappear.

When I consider the conditions in our cattle farming areas, I want to say that I personally am totally unable to describe them. However, it is unnecessary for me to describe these conditions in a debate such as this because we have the privilege of having a Minister who is really abreast of what is taking place in the various regions. I am concerned about the future of our people because they are dependent on this calling of theirs. When I say this, I want to add that the farming community sincerely appreciates the aid they have received from the hon. the Minister, the hon. the Deputy Minister and the department. The aid we have had from the Minister and his department surpassed our expectations and in that way we were able to overcome a disaster which we had thought was unmanageable. All we can say is that we believe and pray that relief is near. If there is not immediate relief, we believe that we shall be helped to withstand these times so that we can carry on or, if necessary, start from scratch. Provision will also be made for that.

The farmers are living in conditions that they are concerned about. With the faith and courage we have, however, they will not break us nor deprive us of what we have in agriculture and what we live for, for the sake, too, of the future of South Africa. I believe that the farmer and producer will not lose his courage and faith as a result of the circumstances prevailing in agriculture at present. If that were to happen, it would be pointless for the consumer organization to complain about the high food prices of today. If the farmer does not fulfil his calling, then in time they will be complaining about a food shortage. I want to call upon the consumer today not to complain about the prices of products, but to pray that this country will always have food for its people in the interests of its future. If the farmer were to go under due to his economic circumstances, it would be a tragic day for South Africa. Therefore I believe that we in South Africa have farmers with a calling. However, such a calling can only be worthwhile if it also justifies his living conditions. The farmer, the producer, who provides food to the people, also has the right to a price for his products so that he too can live and realize his calling. The income from his farming is indeed the farmer’s only income. He has no other income. Irrespective of the circumstances he must get by with the income he earns from his farming.

At the same time we must not overlook the fact that the farmer is also a consumer. The farmer is a consumer like any other consumer in the country. The weal and woe which is the lot of every consumer is the lot of the farmer as well.

Now I should like to refer briefly to the meat industry. I believe that our own farmers do not have reason to complain about the prices of meat products today. We appreciate this and we are grateful for the arrangements made with regard to present marketing methods. The farmer is receiving good prices for his meat products today. This is not, therefore, the factor that still concerns us today. The increased prices of meat products are no longer a problem for the farmer. Farmers throughout the country are grateful for the prices they are receiving for their meat products, of whatever nature, today. However, what does cause concern is the lack of stability in the meat industry. In the present circumstances there is no point in the farmer relying solely on the good prices he receives for his products. If there is no stability in marketing methods, it is pointless.

In this regard we may look at the wool industry, for example. There are a number of wool farmers in my constituency. Those farmers are people who are not prepared to be bound to one specific marketing method. They exchange ideas and even quarrel sometimes, but in the long run they do find new marketing methods which are more appropriate in the light of changed circumstances. That, too, is why no other industry is as stable as the wool industry today. Even if it often happens that our farmers inveigh against the hon. the Minister of Agriculture, they do not always really mean it, of course. The hon. the Deputy Minister, of course, had a lion’s share in the establishment of ideal marketing methods in the wool industry. These are methods which have given rise to greater stability. Farmers in my constituency, even farmers who farm on a small scale, sometimes in the most difficult of circumstances, know that as long as they have wool-bearing sheep, and as long as they give their wool-bearing sheep top priority, they are assured of a sound and stable future. Of course, only those things one is certain about are of real importance. On that alone a future can be built. All other things are unimportant and uncertain. In the wool industry, of course, this approach has always applied.

In the light of what I have just said with regard to the wool industry, I believe it is also important that our stock farmers and farmers who are meat producers should also not allow themselves to become bound to one marketing method. I want to recommend that in the marketing of their products, meat producers should also adopt the pool system. In that way it will be possible to ensure greater stability in this industry as well. In this way all farmers will be able to share in one another’s prosperity and adversity, to bear one another’s burdens and bring about greater security in the farming industry.

Mr. Chairman, time really passes rapidly. I see I only have two minutes left. Accordingly, I just wish to point out that when rain falls again in our drought-stricken areas—and it will rain there again—the farmers there will meet their obligations. However, I also wish to appeal to the hon. the Minister to make provision even now for accommodating those farmers when they have to meet their obligations. The hon. the Minister will realize that the obligations resting on those farmers’ shoulders have accumulated to an enormous extent and have therefore become a heavy burden for them. When the rain comes, the debt does not wash away with the first rains. The stock industry is such that provision must be made over a period of months or even years before there can be an income. Only then will the farmers be in a position to rid themselves gradually of their debt. I want to ask that the debt incurred by farmers will not have to be repaid within one or two years. It is necessary to ascertain whether a different solution cannot be found for that. I trust that the interests of the stock farmers will be considered in the future in this regard.

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for Prieska will forgive me if I do not follow up on what he has said. I actually want to comment on something that the hon. member for Parys said previously. I intend to deal more or less with the same topic as the hon. member for Parys, but from a different angle. He pleaded for more methanol production. I want to plead with the hon. the Minister in relation to the energy costs on farms in South Africa, particularly as far as electricity is concerned, and the price the farmer has to pay in order to obtain electricity on his farm. I should like to point out to the hon. the Minister that, as far back as 1935, the American Rural Electrification Act was passed. As a direct result of that Act approximately 90% of rural Americans today have electricity. The American Government made available, and still does so today, funds at an interest rate of only 2% to enable the farmers to obtain electrification on their farms. The advantages are obvious. In the first place, it provides a cheaper production method, which bears relation to the very point the hon. member for Mooi River made. One has to reduce the input costs of the farmers, and this is a method of in fact reducing those inputs. One would get cheaper and more efficient production through the use of electricity.

More importantly, one would save the import costs of expensive fuel. One would, also assist tremendously in saving diesel, because the farmer predominantly uses diesel for generating and, for pumping purposes, and we are fully aware of the fact that one of our problems in this country related to fuel is the shortage of diesel. Diesel is in relatively short supply in comparison with petrol, and as such, anything that we can do to prevent the usage of diesel I believe should be done. I fully appreciate that electrification cannot be provided everywhere. One obviously cannot electrify all the rural areas of South Africa. Some of them are too distant and too thinly populated to make it a commercial proposition. However, there are many areas which are in close proximity to towns and are well populated where electricity can be provided cheaply to the farmer. That will save him a tremendous amount of costs in terms of diesoline. The first thing I believe the hon. the Minister should do is to speak to Escom about the various municipalities, because I understand that Escom has an arrangement whereby they supply electricity to municipalities on a fairly reasonable basis, but they then limit the area in which those municipalities can themselves supply electricity to users. I believe that those limits should be extended to at least a radius of 20 km from those towns. If this could happen, it would enable the farmers living in those vicinities to obtain far cheaper power than they can currently obtain. In fact, Escom is preventing the municipalities from providing these farmers with electricity on an economical basis simply by setting this controversial limit. I think that that is the first thing that has to be done.

I fully agree with you.

Secondly …

Buy a windmill.

Obviously the hon. members of the NRP …

… are full of wind.

Are full of wind, yes, but they also have no respect for the farmer in this country. When I am attempting to be positive in my speech—and when the hon. the Minister is agreeing with me—hon. members of the NRP are doing their best to disrupt the proceedings. [Interjections.] Let me make my second suggestion to the hon. the Minister. He should allow the farmers to form electrical co-operatives. This is precisely what was done in America many, many years ago. I understand that in the vicinity of Vredefort there is a similar situation occurring, but this should not just be happening in one isolated area. It should happen throughout the country. I want to quote a few figures on this—

In building the line on their own, the farmers got a quotation of R180 000, a saving of R120 000 in this one specific instance. I quote further—

I have been quoting from an article in The Farmer of March 1980. [Interjections.] Those are very significant figures. I do not think this should be done on a purely isolated basis. This should be done throughout the country. One should also allow farmers to erect their own lines and put in transformers themselves —obviously subject to inspection by Escom —because this would stop the farmer being robbed by Escom, and I think one can use strong language in this connection. Escom is charging 18% per annum or 1½% per month for line charges, even before one has used any electricity on the farm. The line charges are calculated on an 18% basis, as the hon. the Minister well knows.

Let us assume a commercial overdraft rate of 9,5%. I understand that the Land Bank is charging something in the order of 5% at this stage. If one works on an interest rate of only 8%, it takes eight years for Escom to be fully paid back for its capital expenditure incurred in putting up the line, yet the farmer has to continue paying forever. I believe that this is usury. I think that the farmer should be allowed to obtain a Land Bank loan directly, put up his own line and only pay 5%. If he then paid 4% to Escom for maintenance and ultimate replacement costs, the line charges would be cut in half. This could be very important. As an immediate step I would recommend that the hon. the Minister call on the farmers’ unions in the various areas to recommend the areas for electricity supply. I believe that the hon. the Minister of Agriculture must provide a scheme whereby the farmers can acquire electricity. I believe that he must consult with the Minister of Industries and Escom because I think we need action now. They always say that a farmer makes a plan, but in this regard I think that the hon. the Minister of Agriculture should make some sort of plan.

In the time remaining to me I want to refer to what is a most unfortunate set of circumstances. I am referring to the Wool Board losses of R520 696 in interest and R92 100 in capital. I have had questions about this particular matter on the Order Paper for some time now. The hon. member for Barberton said the farmers were unhappy. I can assure hon. members that there are many farmers who are extremely unhappy about this situation in South Africa.

Where are they?

They are, for example, in the constituency of the hon. member for Griqualand East. I can take the hon. the Deputy Minister to several farmers in that constituency. I can also take the hon. the Deputy Minister to farmers in Beaufort West.

Tell them to belong to their organizations.

I had a question on the Order Paper earlier this session. I asked whether all interest due was paid on funds invested in the short term as of 30 June 1978. I was informed that all interest due was paid. I should therefore like an explanation from the hon. the Minister about the Auditor-General’s report which states that R½ million in interest was lost. I think that we are owed an explanation to indicate why this money has disappeared.

I further want to refer to the accounts of the Wool Board as reflected in its annual report of July 1977 to 30 June 1978. In that particular financial year, up to June 1978, these funds were lost. The actual loss of interest came in the particular period concerned …

Mr. Chairman, on a point of order: Is the hon. member entitled to discuss this matter in view of the fact that it will be considered by the Select Committee on Public Accounts before long? I am asking for your guidance. [Interjections.]

The hon. member may proceed.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to point out that in these particular accounts there is not a single mention of the fact that any money is missing and the fact that interest has not been paid, and yet the accounts of the Wool Board has to be signed by its Managing Director and also by its chartered accountants. I quote—

And yet we have now been informed by the Auditor-General that in excess of R0,5 million is missing.

Mr. Chairman, I think the hon. member for East London North can rest assured that the wool farmers do have channels through which they may act, should action be required. I want to acknowledge that the hon. member is right about the question of the low cost of energy. That is quite right. What can be done about it, must be done. Even the possibility of the private construction of power lines should be investigated and if it is practical it should be executed. I agree with him wholeheartedly.

I think, however, that the hon. member for East London North, like most of the hon. members on that side of the House, was wise to steer clear of agricultural matters. Once a stranger arrived at an aged farmer on a farm in Namaqualand. He was impressed by the pretty little garden in front of the farmer’s door. As he came nearer he saw that there were beautiful pumpkins growing in the garden. So he said to the farmer: “Well, I didn’t know you planted pumpkins here”. The farmer said to him: “No, young man, we do not plant pumpkins here, only pumpkinseeds”. [Interjections.] I am not casting any reflection, because I think the hon. member does at least know that one plants the seed and not the pumpkin.

As representative of a constituency entering the third consecutive year of a disastrous drought, I should like to avail myself of this opportunity to thank the hon. the Minister and the hon. the Deputy Minister most sincerely for the way in which they are dealing with this crisis. I should like to thank these two gentlemen on behalf of Namaqualand for their sympathy and the understanding they have showed in regard to our problems. We also express our thanks for the active assistance there has been on the part of the Government through their actions.

I should like to touch upon an aspect relating to the most important natural resources of this country, viz. soil and water. The conservation of these resources is so important that after national security it is probably priority number one, or it ought to be, because, like national security, it is directly connected with our survival and that of the generations to come. Unfortunately it is a fact that in the first instance these two irreplaceable assets are dwindling annually as a result of the land that is required for industries, the country’s infrastructure and residential areas, and as a result also of the erosion of our topsoil at a rate of 400 million tons per annum. Apart from this, millions of tons of topsoil are blown away by the wind each year. These forms of erosion can only be combated by the re-establishment of vegetation.

I also note that according to Die Burger of 25 April 1980, Prof. Hiemstra, professor of irrigation engineering at the University of Stellenbosch, maintains that the South African population will have to be limited to between 47 million and 63 million, because the available water resources of this country are limited. This was confirmed by Dr. Kriel of the Department of Water Affairs when he said that our natural water supply would only keep up with the increased demand for approximately the next 20 years.

All this i<u>nf</u>ormation emphasizes only one fact. The soil and water of South Africa should be guarded with great care and dedication. For this purpose I wish to confine myself specifically to the extensive areas of Namaqualand, the Karoo and the North West, and discuss water conservation in particular. I have in my possession an official document written in reply to an application for conservation works aimed primarily at water conservation. It appears from this document that the Department of Agricultural Technical Services regards water conservation merely as a by-product or fringe benefit where soil conservation is practiced. It reads—

In other words, if there is no active soil erosion nor any likelihood of its occurring, the Department is not interested in promoting water conservation. I cannot agree with this.

In the extensive areas to which I referred, there are literally hundreds, thousands of dry water courses where the topsoil has been washed away completely over the years until rock bottom has been reached and no further soil erosion can take place. It is in these very water courses with a fixed rock base where a cheap concrete weir could be erected with great success. I want to say in this connection that the smaller works, away from the main channel of the river, are the most important and should be tackled first. I concede that where there are steep slopes in mountainous areas it is senseless to expect spectacular soil recovery, but the immediate advantage is water conservation and the creation of a microclimate which, in the long run, would yield rich dividends in the form of dry water courses overgrown by edible shrubs which at the same time combat erosion, the supplementing of our important subterranean water and, best of all, the re-appearance of fountains. I have seen these things happening and the long-term benefits of this are incalculable and cannot be over-emphasized.

Water conservation is a long-term national effort and an obligation as well. Consequently I am asking that the same rate of subsidy, viz. 70%, as in the case of soil conservation works be paid in regard to these specific small water conservation projects. I do not for one moment doubt the wisdom of such an investment.

Mr. Chairman, last year, when I criticized the Government’s agricultural policy, I was accused of engaging in scavenger politics and of making petty political capital out of the distress of the farmer. The Herzogites and the Connie Mulders of South Africa may be following that course, but I want to give hon. members the assurance that I have never and shall never follow that course. In any event, I am an independent member and therefore no political motive can be ascribed to me. My plea to the hon. the Minister of Agriculture concerns one matter only, and that is merely to promote the interests of our farming community, nothing more and nothing less. If the hon. the Minister should want to accept or follow up a few of my ideas, then I thank him on behalf of our farmers. I should like to put 10 points to the hon. the Minister for his consideration.

Not 12?

No, not 12 points; only 10. Hon. members will notice that all the points I am going to put have one aspect in common, and that is the profitability of farming operations. I do not think that anyone in this House will argue with me about the fact that today the average farmer can no longer count on a reasonable profit on his investment. Before commencing with the 10 points, I should first like to say that I shall not be able to deal with all 10 of them in this speech and that I shall therefore deal with the rest in my next speech later this afternoon.

Table them.

Mr. Chairman, I agree with the point made by the hon. member for Mooi River on input costs. It is my first point and it will not be the last time that I shall raise it. I shall raise it again and again in the House. I am sorry the hon. member for Mooi River said that he raised it today for the last time. My first point then is that I believe the State should appoint a special committee to investigate ways and means by which all input costs of the farmer could be reduced or stabilized. All tariffs, taxes and levies imposed on any commodity required by the farmer for the production of food should be omitted. The Jacobs Committee could form a subcommittee to go into the detail of every item that could be considered a farmer’s input cost. It should investigate whether the item carries any form of tax and, if so, how it could be omitted. One item that immediately comes to mind, a major item in the farmer’s budget, is the price of diesel and its very heavy tax burden. Another example which annoys us Natal farmers, I am said to say, is the annual R20 provincial licence fee which is charged on every trailer on every farm, whether the trailer goes on a public road or not. May I respectfully suggest to the hon. member for Mooi River, who also pleaded for a reduction of input costs, that he discusses with and persuades his own provincial NRP colleagues that this wheel tax of trailers is an unwarranted and direct tax on food production.

Hear, hear!

This same committee should investigate and report on the possibility of co-operative purchasing and cooperative transporting, the possibility of reducing or eliminating middle men and any other possible means of reducing input costs.

As regards my second point I concur with the hon. member for East London North, who made an extremely good speech. [Interjections.] The hon. the Minister of Agriculture should persuade the hon. the Minister of Industries and of Commerce and Consumer Affairs to revise and amend the Electrical Supply Commission Act so that all line charges to farmers could be omitted and tariff charges could be restructed accordingly. I believe South Africa should embark on an urgent rural electrification programme— something on which the hon. member for East London North voiced his opinion earlier—so that every possible farm pumping or power plant should be powered by electricity, thus making our agricultural production less vulnerable to oil embargoes. I also believe that the entire network of electricity in South Africa should be seen as a whole and that uniform tariffs should be applied for the electricity consumed irrespective of the distance from the main line or the power-station. I can see no reason why Escom should not view and consider its electrical network and tariff and line charges in exactly the same light as the telephone department at present. The hon. the Minister of Agriculture must certainly admit that it is very difficult to find a farmer in South Africa who has a good word to say about Escom. I certainly have not come across any. I think it behoves the hon. the Minister to take this up at Cabinet level in order to promote the idea of a total strategy for rural electrification.

I come now to my third point. I call upon the hon. the Minister to appoint a special committee comprised of members drawn from the South African Railways, the Meat Board and the S.A. Agricultural Union in order to investigate ways and means of co-ordinating and streamlining the system of haulage of livestock with an accompanying reduction in tariffs. My contention is that considerable savings could be effected if properly and regularly scheduled livestock block trains could be programmed from the producer areas to the major abattoirs in South Africa. I believe this Committee should also investigate and report on the advisability of subsidizing the rail tariff structure on livestock from our vulnerable border areas, in order that they can become viable and profitable again, and thus reverse the present trend of the population of these areas. This is one of the biggest bugbears that farmers have to face, especially those who farm in the outlying district. The cost of transport is killing these areas, and I believe the hon. the Minister should give a lot of attention to this factor. I realize that it does not come under his jurisdiction, but it is certainly something that should be discussed at Cabinet level.

The fourth point I want to make is to request the hon. the Minister to hold, together with the S.A. Defence Force, urgent talks with the agricultural unions in order to investigate and to improve the position of the young farmer, who finds it so difficult to leave his farm and young family to comply with additional call-ups after he has completed his two-year period of service in the Defence Force. None of our farmer boys wish to shirk their duty, but I believe some way must be found through which they can be accommodated. I personally believe that the answer could be found in the S.A. Defence Force would allow aspirant and bona fide young farmers who want to become more deeply involved in farming, the right to complete their military service obligation in one continuous period directly after they have completed their two-year period of service. This is something that obviously needs to be discussed at a very high level, and I appeal to the hon. the Minister to take a very good look at this issue because it certainly is affecting a large number of young dairy farmers in my area who find that they just cannot get away from their farms. They are usually granted one exemption, but when the next call-up comes they have to go. Hon. members will realize that a dairy farm cannot function without the farmer being present. This is a dilemma which faces the whole of our farming community at present.

My fifth and last point that I want to raise this morning is that I believe the agricultural control boards could be rationalized and reduced to possibly 12 or 15 boards. Each of these new boards should then appoint highly trained and motivated marketing experts. Great stress should be laid on the fact that these newly reconstructed boards should be geared far more towards aggressive and innovative marketing and that the stimulation of the demand for their product, rather than the control of its supply, should be their motivating force.

I get the feeling that the hon. the Minister has in the past believed that, because I am normally so highly critical of the control boards, I wish to destroy the entire control board system. This is just not so. I believe that he, as well as the boards, are possibly unduly sensitive to criticism of this particular control system. I actually criticized the boards because most of them have not been effective enough in their prime function of marketing their product sufficiently and of obtaining a fair and reasonable price for their own producers. I believe the root cause lies in the fact that too many boards are controlled by very prominent and very well-meaning farmers, while most of these fine men do not have the vaguest idea of the principles of marketing and do not really understand the law of supply and demand. It is for this reason that I believe it would be beneficial if the boards could be rationalized and reduced in number and that highly trained and competent marketing men should be employed by these boards.

Mr. Chairman, the first major problem which the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg South has, is that the hon. members for Mooi River and East London North have already stolen two of his 10 points and that consequently only eight remain for him.

Order! Is the hon. member suggesting that an hon. member will steal another hon. member’s point? [Interjections.]

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member also said he was speaking on behalf of the farmers of South Africa. Unfortunately he can now only go back to the farmers with eight points—depending on what the remaining five are—and say: “That is what I have asked for on your behalf.”

The hon. member also has yet another problem. It seems to me he has devoted all the time allotted to him for the Committee Stage of the Budget, to this debate. Consequently he has simply discussed other matters under this vote and requested the hon. the Minister please to convey the message to his colleagues. [Interjections.] For example, he requested the hon. the Minister of Agriculture please to talk to the hon. the Minister of Transport about rail tariffs.

Do you not agree?

Surely the hon. member could have spoken directly to the Minister of Transport Affairs about that. The hon. the Minister of Agriculture has a lot of work. He cannot raise the hon. member’s points with his colleagues, on top of everything. Moreover we have just had a defence debate in which the hon. member could have raised the question of military service. That is all I have to say to the hon. member.

The hon. member for Wynberg evidently took note of my motion which we discussed earlier this year. I am grateful to him for again raising the matter of the power which departmental stores could acquire. In this regard, I fully agree with him.

The hon. member also dealt with investments with the Land Bank. Before he conducts a further debate about this matter in the House or elsewhere, I wish to ask him first to consult with his colleague, the hon. member for East London North, because I have an idea that the hon. member for East London North would not always be in favour of investments being made with the Land Bank at a lower rate of interest when higher rates of interest could be negotiated in the private sector. The hon. member for East London North need merely nod if he agrees with me.

Why did he ask for lower interest rates for electrical undertakings?

That is no argument.

The hon. member for East London North does not wish to comment now.

The hon. member for Mooi River made a very calm and sensible speech and for the most part I agree with what he had to say. One point he raised with which I am unable to agree, is that at this juncture, exceptionally high subsidies cannot be paid. I agree with the hon. member for Mooi River in the sense that I, too, am in favour of moving away from subsidies. I should like to see subsidies being phased out altogether. However, if one were to increase them now, the phasing out period would have to be so much longer and it would be so much more difficult to phase them out. I shall let that suffice.

I was expecting that we would have an outline from the side of the official Opposition today on what, in their opinion, the agricultural policy should be for this country.

They first have to have a national convention about it.

I long for the days when a former hon. member of this House, Mr. Streicher, used to stand up every year and accuse us of supposedly lacking an agricultural policy. Then he would always try to give an indication of the Opposition’s agricultural policy. The present chief spokesman on the Opposition side has simply made a lot of statements, however …

They have not had a national convention on agriculture yet.

He even made some erroneous statements.

If somebody were to ask me today what I would regard as a sound agricultural policy for the Republic of South Africa, I should probably say that the agricultural industry should be developed in such a way that it could continue providing the food requirements of the Republic of South Africa and of its neighbouring States. That one would wish to lay down as the general policy. I also believe that this is in fact the general policy of the country. As I have said, the country should not only produce sufficient food for itself, but it should also produce food for its neighbours. We as farmers know that if a camp has been denuded by excessive grazing and the adjoining camp is green, one’s fences cannot hold back the stock. They push through to the green pastures. That is why I say that in looking after ourselves, in ensuring that we have sufficient food for ourselves, we should also produce a sufficient quantity so that we can supply food to our neighbouring countries at the normal price when they no longer have food. In order to carry out such a policy, it is necessary that the agricultural industry should always remain in the hands of an optimum number of independent farmers. This is a point I raised in a debate on a private motion in the House earlier in the year. It is also a point which the hon. member for Wynberg referred to again this morning. It is terribly important that the industry should remain in the private possession of the greatest possible number of farmers. As far as production is concerned, it is also necessary that the industry should be kept as stable as possible. Since the Second World War, the growth in the agricultural industry has been greater than the population growth, and that in spite of all the shortcomings. We have consequently always been able to feed our population. That is an achievement of which South Africa can be proud, an achievement made possible by the agricultural policy of the Government.

However, there are danger signs that may not be ignored and which, in fact, are not being ignored. During the past two years, for example, there has been a committee to investigate the bottlenecks in agriculture. I am referring, of course, to the Jacobs Committee. I shall perhaps come back to that again in the course of my speech. What we have to strive after is an agricultural industry in the hands of the greatest possible number of independent farmers and then, in addition, stability of production. Why? We have to populate the rural areas, and we can only do that if the agricultural industry remains in the hands of private individuals. It is necessary that the rural areas should be populated. I believe the farmers have always been the backbone of the country. Healthy attitudes, a healthy outlook and a healthy philosophy of life are fostered in the rural areas. What is even more important, however, is that a large number of independent producers contribute towards stability of production. Big entrepreneurs can easily enter into the agricultural industry, and can get out again just as easily, with adverse consequences for the country. It would be a sad day if certain sectors in the agricultural industry were to be in the hands of the big monopolies—and there are indications of such a trend—because then we would no longer be assured of continued stability of production.

If one has a large number of independent units, one provides employment to more people. Unfortunately I do not have the time to enlarge on that, but hon. members may accept that as being correct. How are we going to implement my proposal? We have to guard against vertical integration in the agricultural industry and we have to guard against monopolies.

Mr. Chairman, the ancient Romans used to say that there was always something new out of Africa. The hon. member for Malmesbury has also come up with something new, because he has to share his chairmanship of the Select Committee with the hon. member for East London North. [Interjections.] I wish to address a few words to the hon. the Minister of Agriculture on the beer industry.

I have never heard a debate in this House on the various facets of the beer industry. For many years I have listened attentively to wine being discussed here in very affectionate terms, and not only by the hon. member for Paarl and the former hon. member for Worcester. I also had the privilege, with many others, of listening to former Minister Paul Sauer and Mr. Harry Lawrence talking of wine. Hon. members can go and read their speeches in Hansard, but the Hansard speeches would not be able to reflect the spirit and the atmosphere that prevailed.

The beer industry is most closely allied to the primary product, barley, which is cultivated in the wheat-growing regions of the Southern Cape. This industry, like wine, has a long history and tradition. It is, of course, not quite the same. One could read about the Scots of bygone days. Their recipes for “heather ale” were preserved from generation to generation and every child had to take a solemn oath before his father that he would never divulge the secret to anyone. We all know the old legends in that regard. I also wish to point out that Keats, in his Ode to the Nightingale, said—

So, at that time already there were crops other than the vine that yielded intoxicating liquor. He also wrote—

In my part of the world, the production of barley, from which malt is produced for the beer industry, is closely allied to the wheat industry. At this stage I wish to direct the attention of the hon. the Minister to the fact that the production of malt is the life blood of the beer industry and that there is no substitute for it. Until a few years ago, the consumption of beer was 500 million litres per annum. In recent times, this has increased to 750 million litres per annum. In 1979 alone, it rose by 28%. I have been told that if the Black people had a choice between a glass of beer and a glass of wine, they would choose the glass with a great deal of foam. They believe that the foam will make them strong, just as the hon. the Minister of Agriculture believed as a child that spinach gave one bulging muscles. It is claimed that the interest of the Black man in beer is one of the reasons why the consumption of beer is increasing so rapidly.

Both the production on the primary level, that is to say, the cultivation of barley, as well as the processing, that is to say the malting of barley, will consequently have to receive urgent preferential attention if the rate of increase in beer consumption continues as it has been doing during the past few years. If the brewing of 500 million litres of beer requires 60 000 tons of malt, the brewing of the present 750 million litres per annum will require 90 000 tons of malt. It would therefore appear that we are rapidly approaching the 100 000 ton level. In the past, the ready availability and the stable influx of imported malt was the cause of the laissez faire attitude of the beer industry to the production of barley. However, this position has changed rapidly. There was even a stage when we were led to believe that our own product was inferior. I remember how it was said when I was younger that the colour, the protein content and the germination possibilities were not in our favour. We readily believed that. Fortunately, this attitude has changed very quickly during the past few years.

Since there is no substitute for barley in the production of beer, and since the dangers threatening a steady supply have intensified, this change has redounded to our advantage in the sense that negotiations were initiated between the beer manufacturers and barley producers. A further cause was the increase in barley production, which was of such an extent that there was an increase from 20 000 tons in 1974 to 120 000 tons in 1977. Furthermore, the lack of confidence in the wheat industry in the region I am referring to, was one of the basic reasons for this development. There are many reasons, and the hon. the Minister knows what they are. There was the rising cost of the means of production, a shrinking profit margin, etc.

There was a break-through in the sense that the primary barley producers, through their co-operatives, succeeded in acquiring a share in the secondary facet of the industry. I consider that to be of very great importance in this industry, because it is quite an historical occasion that for the first time, as far as this industry is concerned, organized farmers have gained a foothold in the secondary facet. Now, apart from a production plant at Vereeniging, which produces 35 000 tons of malt, there is also one at Isando which produces 11 000 tons. A production plant with a production capacity of 34 200 tons of malt is now going to be constructed here as well, in my constituency. That means that it will be possible to produce 80 200 tons of malt in this country. The local co-operative at my town, together with Sasko, has acquired a minority share in this enterprise. Now, the big and important question we wish to put to the hon. the Minister is what the price policy should be.

One requires the same land, the same implements, the same fertilizers and the same methods of cultivation. Up to the storage stage, all the machinery that is used in the cultivation of barley is the same as that used in the cultivation of wheat. If that balance is disturbed, then there will be a repetition of what happened during the past few years. With the record crop of 127 000 tons in 1979, a surplus of 36 500 tons had to be sold at a loss of R2,9 million, something which depleted the Barley Reserve Fund within a single year.

Then came the reaction. Then there was a rise in the price of wheat—I have no quarrel with that—and a purchaser’s levy of R15 per ton and a producer’s levy of R5 per ton had to be imposed on the 1980 crop, which amounted to 108 000 tons. In this way the reserve fund was restored and now we are again in the position in which we were two years ago. What we are asking now, is that the relationship between the prices of barley and wheat should continually be investigated. I could supply that ratio to the hon. the Minister off the cuff, because I grew up with those things. During the past three years the average yield of wheat in my part of the world was 1,208 tons per ha. During the same period, the yield in barley was 1,563 tons per ha. If we take into account, then, that 80% of that usually qualifies as brewers’ barley and 20% as fodder, we arrive at an average ratio of 3 to 4. That is how it has been all the years, and it has to remain that way, or else we have a stop-and-start kind of farming, a see-saw type of farming. It is an unfortunate fact that a farmer is inclined to be led astray by anything that merely looks as if there could be money in it. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, I shall not be following the same line of debate as the hon. member for Caledon. I should like, however, to raise a subject with the hon. the Minister. I do so acknowledging that I am not a farmer, although I do not believe that precludes any hon. member from raising a matter which they regard to be in the interests of farmers in general. It is a matter, which, I believe, I can ask the hon. the Minister to give his attention to. That is the whole question of the possibility of the growing of kenaf in commercial qualities in this country.

There is a lot of confusion about this matter. I know the hon. the Minister of Water Affairs has had representations in this regard, but I am raising the matter with the hon. the Minister of Agriculture today in the hope that, in the interests of the farmers of this country, he will take some action which might lead to a situation that could save South Africa a large amount of foreign exchange.

I think we must look at what we know about kenaf. I think it is accepted by experts that it can be grown here very well. I have some samples of kenaf which are now some 16 years old. These are samples of kenaf that were grown in South Africa through a chemical process. To me as a chemist they certainly appear to be of as good a quality as that of an imported sample from Siam.

You should lay them upon the Table.

I also have here a sample of phormium tenax which is produced in South Africa, but which is not nearly of as good a quality. Clearly, there seems to me to be a reasonable case for the further investigation of the commercial growing of kenaf in South Africa.

We know that a process exists by way of which this can be done. It is a process that was investigated by one of our large mining groups and found to be totally viable; economically viable as well. There seems to be every reason why the hon. the Minister should go further into this matter, because at present the problem is that nobody is quite sure what quantity of fibre, whether jute or kenaf, is used annually in the Republic. I do not believe it is in the best interests of our farmers that a situation exists where the Republic has to import from foreign countries much of the thousands of tons of fibre it uses annually and paying for it with a considerable amount of foreign exchange. It is very difficult even to make an estimate, but on the basis of information I have available, it looks as though we could be spending up to R40 million a year on the importation of fibre and jute bags. If local farmers can phase in and produce kenaf, not necessarily in that quantity, but in reasonable quantities, we could be saving the Republic a significant amount in foreign exchange. The problem is that the local farmers have been offered a price which is only approximately one-third of what we are paying overseas. According to figures the hon. the Minister kindly supplied me yesterday, figures which go back as far as 1959, the cost per ton came to roughly R180 or R190. The price the growers have been offered is approximately R130 per ton, a price which is clearly below the cost of production. However, that price is only one-third of what we are paying overseas. It seems to me that if local farmers could be offered and, if necessary, guaranteed a price that is equivalent to what we are paying overseas, there is every possibility of the Republic producing a significant quantity of the fibre which is presently being imported. I therefore ask the hon. the Minister to look into this matter. He will need to consult with the members of the Cabinet, because there seems to be a great deal of secrecy surrounding the question of how much we are paying for the fibres we import. There seems to be a monopoly in respect of the importing of these fibres through the State. It has to go through the Department of Industries, which is reluctant to issue figures. Is it still a strategic material? I think it is unnecessary, 35 years after the Second World War, that there should be so much secrecy surrounding it. One can understand that at the time of the Second World War it was necessary to have some secrecy, but today it is not necessary. I want to ask the hon. the Minister, in the interests of the farmers of South Africa, to look into this matter and to come back to this House with some explanation as to what he can do to help the farmers to produce this product.

Business suspended at 12h45 and resumed at 14h15.

Afternoon Sitting

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for Berea made an interesting speech on the production of fibre from hollyhock. I trust that the hon. the Minister will reply to him on that. It was a very well-prepared and well motivated speech.

I want to refer briefly to the criticism of the Dairy Control Board as a result of the sponsorship of the Springbok series against visiting sports teams, viz. the amount of R65 000. The criticism is that this is supposedly a waste of money because at the same time the price of milk is being increased. In my humble opinion this is a sound investment in the promotion of milk. In the first instance it is a product which is out and out a balanced natural source of nutrition for every person. It is an inexpensive promotion. To draw a comparison, I assessed a few other media. If, for example, one takes prime time on TV, it costs R6 090 for one broadcast of 30 seconds. If this is doubled to one minute, it costs R12 180. The lowest tariff for a promotion on TV is R768 for one broadcast of 30 seconds. For a full-page advertisement in black and white in our newspapers, the amount varies between R900 and R4 000 per edition; in other words, for one appearance. That is why I think that this was a fine opportunity taken by the Dairy Control Board to promote that fine product. The motto is “strength for every day”, but we can elaborate on that somewhat. Every little chap who is going to be walking around there will see that the Green and Gold—the Springboks—bear that motto. [Interjections.] I know the Natalians are feeling a little neglected because their people are not there now, but we can say “win with the boers”, “win with the steel of Transvaal in the front row”, or “win with milk”. I think this is a sound investment!

I should like to discuss one idea with the hon. the Minister on the depopulation of our White farms. Our chief spokesman on agriculture, the hon. member for Barberton, had just touched on it when his time expired. Similarly, the hon. member for Parys referred to the inputs in the maize industry. The hon. member for Prieska made a fine statement, viz. “the consumer must not complain about the price of the product; he must pray that food will be available”. The hon. member for Malmesbury referred to the preservation of the optimum independent farmers in the industry.

What is really at the root of the problem, viz. farms are being depopulated by the Whites? We must examine this problem more closely and ask what is troubling those people. They are sober, cultivated people. Their balance sheets are available at their accountants and their bank statements at their bank manager. They have a sober view of this matter. They do not mind making sacrifices. They are prepared to get up at five o’clock in the morning, but not because the rednecked Francolin woke them, but because the alarm clock woke them so that their children could be taken to a bus shelter, which may be four to five kilometres from their houses, because the school authorities do not want to arrange for the bus to come nearer. Those farmers still love their land, they are still attached and devoted to it. They know that more than just one generation is needed to develop a farm. To develop a farm into a productive unit takes generations. There sit the hon. member for Caledon and the hon. member for Paarl, the pick of our agricultural people. We listen so attentively to “oom” Japie when he speaks. These people have been on those farms, that must be preserved, for five generations now, and every day, in these times, those people have to plan carefully to maintain the value of their land and to keep those farms available for their descendants. When we come to the crux of the problem, it is the risk of existence on that farm as an economic unit. The question is asked: Does one have a chance of making a living on that heritage, on that land one loves so much? If one does not have it, but must continue for the sake of the development of one’s children, who are one’s responsibility, one must seek other solutions to be able to make a living. What affords our people a livelihood? The economy. What makes it possible for them to make a reasonable living? The prices of their products. Our newspapers refer to the increase in the maize prices announced by the hon. the Minister, and the title of the Citizen’s leading article was “Amazing”, and it read—

The newspaper says this because our farmers are being compensated. What makes me sad is that it is the farmer himself in his productivity who is blamed when he requests an increase in the price of his products. Do hon. members know that in this budget of the hon. the Minister of Finance provision has been made for a series of increases in salaries? Today I ask hon. members in all fairness: Has the effective productivity of those people really increased in proportion to the salary increases? Has it really increased, or has it only increased as a result of inflation and other causes which water down the buying power of money? But if our farmers request an increase, then everybody kicks up a fuss about it. Surely this is unfair. Surely these people have a just cause, if we express the farmer’s cost inputs percentagewise or compare them in millions of rands, as the hon. member for Parys put it so well.

Over the past five years the increase in the price of fuel has been 155%; tractors, 139%; fertilizer, plus minus 131%, and in addition to that is this year’s 23%; implements, 111%; maintenance and repairs 101%; crop spraying, 88%; fodder, 87%; packaging, 71%; insecticides and dips—this is a little expensive otherwise we should have applied it to the official Opposition—67%. This gives an average of 113%. In contrast to this, let us look at the increases in agricultural products. Bear in mind I have been quoting figures like 155%, 139%, etc. The figures in this regard, however, are as follows: field husbandry— this is the average because there is a series of sectors in field husbandry—70%; horticulture, 60%; and animal husbandry, 45%. This gives an average of 57% against the averages of the cost inputs of 113%. Surely, then, these people are justified in asking for a livelihood and also that we should fill agriculture with the entrepreneurial know-how of our White farmers, for the farmer is an entrepreneur and an employer as well. These people are entitled to a price structure so that they can make a living. Our farmers in agriculture fulfil a much wider role than that of a mere agriculturist who cultivates the soil.

As a result of developments, our agricultural land is dwindling. I have before me the report of the Department of Agricultural Economy and Marketing. Here we see what has been decided officially without our farmers having any choice in the matter. The total surface area which has been taken by the State since 1971, comprises 197 801 ha and in one specific area, the Sishen area, 40 307 ha has been taken. It is expressed as follows for us in this official document—

This is cause for concern to us. This involves the possibility of making a living. These farmers provide our rural areas with the infrastructure of a place to live in the rural areas, support other communities, afford businesses and schools the possibility of existing in towns. The farmer forms part of the infrastructure, the structure which afford life to our rural areas. If we excise more and more of our people … [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, I always enjoy the enthusiasm with which the hon. member for Standerton makes his statements. He dealt very effectively with the issue of the price increases in the means of production in agriculture, but I should very much have liked to have seen him reply to the stupid statement made by the hon. member for Wynberg, viz. that the maize price had risen more than its production costs. That was such a stupid statement that one almost does not want to reply to it, but I should like to quote to him from a magazine which most certainly supports his party and not the NP, viz. the Financial Mail. The Financial Mail spelt out very clearly that if the maize price was 100 on the basis of the 1969-’70 index, it had risen to 251 before the recent price increases, i.e. for the 1978-’79 season, and this over a period of 10 years. The price of farming requisites which the farmer needs to produce maize rose from 100 to 292 during the same period. But now the hon. member alleges that the maize price has risen more than the input price.

I was referring to the past two years.

All right then. I shall quote the figures for the past two years as well if the hon. member wants them. They were also stated in the Financial Mail. The index is also approximately 20 points higher for agricultural requisites than for the maize price. However, I do not want to speak on behalf of the maize farmers because they know a great deal more about their business than I do. I agree that the high maize price has a ripple effect which will have a detrimental effect on many other branches of farming, and in this regard I am thinking of the dairy industry, the egg industry, the pork industry, etc.

I want to confine myself to another industry this afternoon, viz. the dairy industry. There we are not only faced with an increase in the maize price; we are faced with an increase in the price of lucerne hay as well. Since the control over the price of lucerne hay was abolished, the price at one cooperative I know of has risen from R49 per ton to R84 per ton within one year. This represents a price rise of 71%. However, I do not blame the co-operative and the farmers because the price was unrealistically low and that is why the farmers ploughed up their lucerne and planted cotton, vineyards, etc. The result was that although the official price was R49 per ton, one simply could not obtain it. The control over the price of lucerne hay has now been abolished, and although the price has risen by 71% one is at least able to obtain lucerne again. The question is this: How must the dairy farmer make ends meet? But necessity is truly always the mother of invention, and our farmers will have to devise a plan in this case as well. Because our farmers do not have control over the prices they must devise a plan to continue to make ends meet and make a living in spite of the price increases in the inputs. There is only one piece of advice I should like to offer this afternoon, and that is that we should make use of artificial insemination in order to make the best stud material available to us. It is not only breeding which brings about increased production. Feeding and management play just as important a role. But breeding definitely plays a very important role. It is unfortunately the case that many of our farmers do not make use of the means they have at their disposal, with the result that the production figure in our dairy industry presents a sombre picture.

I have here the most recent statistics made available to us by the department, and according to them it appears that the average milk production of Frisian cows was 4 697 kg during the three years from 1946 to 1949. Thirty years later, during the period 1976-’79, it had only risen by 4 kg! I was shocked when I saw these figures. This is tragic, but fortunately there are a large number of farmers today that are making use of the means at their disposal, viz. the very best tested bulls, with which they have brought about a tremendous increase in production. I want to mention only one case here in the Western Cape, where a person has pushed up his production over the past three years from 5 100 kg to 6 100 kg, and it should be borne in mind that the average for the Republic is just over 4 000 kg per cow. So it can be done.

I want to give another example of a farmer in the Western Cape who uses these methods. He pushed up his production from 4 200 to 5 200 kg per cow. Another pushed his up from 4 800 to 6 000 kg per cow—an increase of 1 200 kg per cow in three years’ time. This shows one what can be done if farmers make use of the methods that are being made available to them.

I have here the figures pertaining to ten bulls that are at the disposal of the industry. I shall not mention their names, but simply refer to them by their code numbers so that they cannot be identified. The first is FPS. His relative stud value is 107 which is far above the average in the industry. The increase in milk production he brought about among his daughters, was 155 kg. In respect of a few other bulls in this category the figures are 109, 163, 208, 169, 187, 155, 122, and 154, respectively. Then there is one, the daughters of which produce 402 kg more than their contemporaries. If our farmers want to make use of these means at their disposal, I predict that we can escape from this pincer of rising inputs and static product prices.

The tragic fact is that whereas this exceptionally good stud material is available to the farmer, according to estimates only between 15% and 18% of the dairy farmers in this country make use of these means at their disposal. Then many farmers tell one: “Yes, but the prices of these bulls’ semen are too high—R4 per dose. Who can pay that?” Our farmers are unfortunately far better farmers than economists. What does it cost to rear a heifer? A very conservative figure is R250. The price of semen which the farmer pays to produce that heifer is R4—R4 as against R250! Then he prefers to buy semen at R1,50 since it is supposedly cheaper. What is the difference between R1,50 for the semen of an untried bull and R4 for the semen of a tried bull as against R250? By saving R2,20 on an amount of R250, he causes himself to get a number of poor heifers.

I should also like to convey my sincere gratitude to the hon. the Minister of Agriculture. One can only undertake this work of testing bulls if one has excellent milk recording services. A few years ago we had to wait a year longer before the milk recording results were processed and given to the farmer. Now the results are on one’s desk within two months after the cow has completed her lactation. I want to thank the hon. the Minister for that. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for Parow will pardon me if I do not react to his speech. Years ago already I supported his arguments on the dairy industry.

I should like to address myself to the hon. member for Malmesbury. [Interjections.] Sir, I am going to make a friendly speech. When it comes to agricultural debates, I am on the side of the hon. the Minister. The hon. member for Malmesbury said that an ideal agricultural policy for South Africa would be one which asks farmers to develop and stabilize their food production to such an extent that they are able to meet the needs of South Africa as well as those of its neighbouring States. I do not have the correct figure for the number of farmers in South Africa at the moment. I think it is approximately 200 000. Could the hon. the Minister tell me whether I am correct or not? [Interjections.]

80 000.

My colleagues says 80 000. Where does the NP get all its votes then? [Interjections.] I now want to raise a more serious point. Those 80 000 farmers must not only feed the 25 million people in South Africa today, but in addition approximately 15 million people beyond South Africa’s borders. The number of farmers are not exactly going to increase. Consequently those 80 000 farmers will have to feed approximately 80 million people in South Africa and beyond our borders by the year 2000, 20 years from today. This is an enormous responsibility, an enormous task.

However, there is something that must be added to what the hon. member for Malmesbury said. The farmers must do what he suggested, provided that South Africa’s soil must at all times be fully protected, because the most important aspect is that food production primarily depends on the protection of South Africa’s soil. Agriculture in South Africa should also be seen in the right perspective by the South African population. This must be added as well. The image of agriculture in South Africa must consequently be related to the whole spectrum of activities in our country. This is essential, and I shall come to the reason for that in a moment.

I should just like to mention what a certain Mr. George Harrar said about the three crises facing the world. I quote—

People in general have a deplorable misconception of agriculture and the agriculturist. The agriculturist is generally regarded as a simple person with a limited ability who operates a monopoly and becomes extremely wealthy by cheating the consumer at every turn. That is why the understanding of the agriculturist is faulty and the attitude towards him unfriendly, critical and unsympathetic. This must be rectified as soon as possible. The definition of an agriculturist signifies a producer who has to possess many talents and abilities. He must be an expert in many fields, and a scientist to boot. He must be an accountant, he must be an artisan and a skilful manager. South Africa must realize— and I am now speaking of the population as a whole—that agriculture is a vital primary industry. In the nature of things all the other industries are very important, too, because they also contribute to the material welfare of South Africa, but the agriculturist contributes to the continued existence or survival of the population of South Africa. Agriculture ensures our continued existence, or survival. That is why it is so important that the image of the agriculturist be rectified in the eyes of the people of South Africa.

How is this going to be done? All of this can be done if the public relations work on behalf of agriculture improves, in other words if there is better co-ordination between the various persons and bodies that do the work in this regard. The information service in connection with agriculture must be far better in future than it has been in the past. Newspaper articles on agriculture or the agriculturist, the South African farmer, are usually critical ones. Such articles usually follow an increase in food prices, and so often the agriculturist is represented as a rip-off artist, a person who robs the rest of the population. It is incorrect, and it is a pity, erroneous and dangerous that such a conception of the agriculturist should exist. There must be better and more effective contact between the organizations representing the agriculturist and all the organizations that represent the industrialist, the businessman and other professional people in the cities. Virtually no contact exists between these organizations. Why is there no contact between them? Plans are now being devised and steps being taken to bring these organizations together in order to bring about a better overall understanding of South Africa’s problems. However, this is not being done in respect of agriculture. One does not, for example, hear that the Chamber of Industries or the Chamber of Commerce or the mining industry is creating an opportunity to make a study of agriculture to ascertain for itself what the problems of agriculture are in order to form a better understanding of it. These steps are necessary because our continued existence depends on agriculture being kept sound, vital, prosperous and progressive. If this is not done, the population of South Africa will not be able to continue to exist in a sound, vital and progressive way.

It has now become fashionable to say “the name of the game is power”. But I say that the name of the game in South Africa, in Africa and in the world in the course of the next two decades, is going to be “food”. That is going to be the word, the concept and the industry which is going to determine everything. The ability to produce food and to supply it throughout the world is going to be the determining factor. At this stage 500 million people in the world are experiencing a food shortage. This is principally the case because the population of the world increased by 2 000 million between 1930 and 1976, i.e. a twofold increase. Over the next 20 years this figure will increase to 6 500 million, which will be an increase of approximately 5 million people in the course of 70 years.

You are making a fantastic speech.

In the same book it is stated—

Unless we stabilize the world population, extremely grave problems will be experienced, and this is going to be experienced principally in respect of children. I wish members of the NRP would listen just as carefully as the hon. the Minister. It is stated here—

The standpoint I want to state is simply that the continued existence of all the population groups in South Africa is dependent on many factors, for example, quality of life, education, housing, medical services, etc. The underlying factor is, however, the nutrition of those people. This is the most important aspect in respect of the responsibility of the Ministry of Agriculture. In Africa, including South Africa, the population growth is an average of 2% per annum. The per capita consumption of proteins is, however, decreasing by 2% per annum. [Time expired.]

I want to congratulate the hon. member for Bryanston on his speech. I have never heard him speaking so positively and productively in this House. I trust that the hon. member is feeling satisfied this afternoon. I shall even forgive him for his incorrect statistics at the beginning of his speech. I want to congratulate him most sincerely on this positive approach. With a new growth phase ahead of us and an increase in the real spendable income of the consumer, the demand for refined and packaged foodstuffs, and instant foodstuffs in particular, will increase in South Africa. This will serve as a great stimulus to business concerns that are operating in this packaging industry. With the large increase in the real income of the Black population in particular, we can expect the demand for proteins, and meat in particular, to increase, since the Black population will to an increasing extent substitute meat for the starch products in its diet.

The consumption of red meat has increased in recent years. In 1974-’75 the per capita consumption of red meat was 31,6 kg. In 1978-’79 it was 34,4 kg. It is interesting to note that been represents 70% of the per capita consumption of red meat. According to estimates the stock of cattle, sheep and pigs has diminished during the past year. Since November 1978 the number of cattle has decreased by 6,1%. There will most probably be a further decrease in the supply of beef. The part being played by the increased slaughter of heifers in the control areas, should not be underestimated. The slaughter of heifers increased from 5% in 1975 to 12% in 1979. As a result of poor rainfall conditions the average mass of cattle carcasses has also decreased during the past year.

As far as mutton is concerned, there is no prospect of production increasing. It is simply the case that the extensive sheep areas cannot carry more sheep than they do at present. In the principal mutton producing districts we are at present contending with a tremendous drought. This year the demand for mutton will probably exceed the supply.

A major increase in pork production is not expected. The recent higher price levels ought to help to prevent a drop in pork production.

Taking into account all these things, it seems that the supply of red meat will not meet the increasing demand, and consequently higher floor prices are justified, since they will serve to encourage increased production.

With all due modesty I should now like to make a few suggestions pertaining to floor prices. Unfortunately I do not have the time now to refer to all the meat grades. In the case of super grade beef I believe the floor price ought to show an average increase of 41,5%. At present it costs R1,54 to produce 1 kg of super grade beef. In the case of Prime A the average increase in the floor price ought to be 34%. In the lower grades the percentage increase ought to be even greater.

This brings me to sheep. In the case of non-fat-tailed lambs, I believe the increase should be at least 26% of the average floor price. In the case of fat-tailed lambs the increase ought to be an average of 27%. In the case of sheep of the non-fat-tailed type the increase ought to be an average of 27,5%. In the case of sheep of the fat-tailed variety, the average increase ought to be 28%. In the case of kids I believe that the average increase for all grades ought to be 28% and in the case of goats, 27,5%.

The producer’s share in the consumer price of meat has decreased over recent years from 54,5% in 1977 to 52,8%, in 1978 and 52% in 1979. As a result of the increase in marketing costs and the lowering in the price of hides and skins, the producer’s share may decrease to 47,5% this year. In comparison to the consumer price which rose by a mere 11,4% from 1975 to 1979, the producer’s price increased by an average of 9,1% per annum over the same period, whereas the cost of farming requisites rose by an average of 15,2%.

The prices farmers have received for their products over the past few years have increased far more slowly than the prices they have had to pay for their farming requisites. The farmer’s cost increase is consequently more rapid than his income. Consequently the real net income of farmers drops each year because they are, to a large extent, compelled to absorb their cost increase themselves. Furthermore this means that food prices have not risen as much as was expected. This is to the benefit of the consumer and the detriment of the farmer.

In the case of agriculture, the price of farming requisites, including capital equipment, has risen by an overall 140% during the period from 1973 to 1979. During the same period the agricultural producer’s price has risen by a mere 72%.

The misconception prevails that the higher food prices can be directly attributed to the farmer and that any increase in the producer’s price of agricultural products causes the retail price to the consumer to soar—and this is not true. One can compare the cost of a standard food basket purchased by the consumer with its farm value, i.e. that portion of the price paid by the consumer which the farmer receives. I am not going to bother about the cents. In 1974 the consumer costs of this food basket was R74, whereas its farm value was R41. In other words, the producer’s share was 55%. In 1977—I have now skipped a few years—the consumer costs of the good basket was R98, whereas its farm value was R48. In other words, a producer’s share was 49%. In 1979 the consumer costs of the same food basket was R121, whereas its farm value was R58. Thus the producer’s share was 47%.

If the prices of all agricultural products rise by 10% from 1 January 1980, for example, the consumer price index of food will rise by a mere 4,7%. With an increase of 30% in the producer’s price of agricultural produce, the consumer index will rise by a mere 3,5%.

I believe that at present the consumer is in a position to absorb essential price adjustments which have to be made by agricultural producers.

Mr. Chairman, before replying to the various speeches I should first like to mention the fact that when we meet next year, some of my departmental right hands will no longer be with us. Firstly, I want to point out that Mr. Fanie van Schalkwyk is retiring as one of our top officials at the end of this year, when he will have reached retirement age. He is a man who has rendered 43 years of faithful service, not only to the State, but to his people as well. He was born in Worcester. He went to school at Villiersdorp at the present De Villiers Graaff High School. He joined the Department of the Interior in 1935 and subsequently acquired the B.A. and B.Com. degrees. In 1955, he succeeded Dr. Claude van der Merwe as Secretary for Agricultural Economics and Marketing. I have worked with him for a long time. During the past almost 13 years in the ministry I have liaised with him very closely, so I can only tell him: “Mr. Van Schalkwyk, fortunately you will still be with us for a little while, but after that we wish you a pleasant retirement. You have been a faithful and sincere person. You have given me great pleasure and I want to thank you sincerely for your service to us.”

We are also going to lose Mr. Van Blommenstein after 34 years’ service. He is going to the Department of Community Development and Government Services, which is going to take over many of the functions of the present Department of Agricultural Credit and Land Tenure. Therefore he will remain in the service of the State and he will occupy even higher positions in the future. At the moment he is still Deputy Director-General, but I foresee a great future for him.

Then I am also going to lose Mr. Paul Nel as my private secretary. I am sorry that I cannot keep Paul any longer. Where it is said that the customer is always right, I want to say to Paul: Thank you very much. One grows fond of a private secretary. He will be succeeded by Steph van Blommenstein. These are all hand-picked people.

There have been other promotions as well. The hon. member for Bethal is now the Deputy Minister. He used to be the chairman of our agricultural group. He is being succeeded by the hon. member for Barberton, Mr. Casper Uys, an able farmer, Mr. Gert Kotzé, the hon. member for Malmesbury, has been chosen as chairman of the Select Committee on Public Accounts … [Interjections.]

What about Malcomess?

The two of them are joint chairmen. The hon. member for Carletonville, Mr. Dan Wilkens, is the secretary of our agricultural group. I feel that these people are working with me, with the agricultural group of the NP.

Many of the things that have been requested here are already receiving attention. For example, a memorandum has already been drawn up about the supply of electricity to the rural areas and a submission has been made concerning the proposals for having electricity supplied by co-operatives, for example, and having some of the electricity business conducted on a different basis. The hon. the Minister of Industry is very sympathetic towards these proposals.

The hon. member for Prieska, the hon. member for Namaqualand, the hon. member for Ceres and the hon. member for Beaufort West are having a difficult time. We are constantly discussing their sober descriptions of the disastrous drought conditions in their constituencies. I convey my sincere thanks to them as well.

I have to thank the South African Agricultural Union. I could not do this work if I did not have the co-operation of the people I have mentioned, plus the South African Agricultural Union. I want to thank them, too, for their clear-headed views. The hon. the Deputy Minister of Agriculture has never complained about the fact that I have given him the less pleasant part of the department, aspects such as border farms and agricultural credit assistance, but he has the gift of listening to people sympathetically. Therefore he will reply to those aspects during the discussion of this Vote. I shall say more about this on Monday night.

There are so many people who apply to the department for assistance. I am reminded of a man who once said: “The higher a baboon climbs, the more one sees of his backside.” Therefore we must remain humble, in spite of all our promotions and good qualities. I also want to thank the hon. Opposition very sincerely today for the spirit in which this debate is taking place. Many important matters have been raised and I must say that the attitude has changed. I am grateful for that.

The hon. member for Wynberg asked a few interesting questions. I want to tell him, firstly, that when he refers to the burden of debt of the farmers—the hon. member for Bryanston also said that we should correct the immage of agriculture—we must always be realistic, also when we are talking about the economic difficulties of the farmers. We must remember that in 1967, the burden of debt of the South African farmers was R1 050 million. Today it is R2 856 million. That is the increase there has been. In 1967, the assets of the farmers were R8 167 million, and today they amount to R22 700 million. The assets have appreciated to such an extent that one should not only look at the burden of debt, but should consider the two together. Percentage-wise, the burden of debt was 12,8% in 1967, and today it is 12,6%. In reality, therefore, the financial position of the farmer has more or less stabilized as far as the ratio between assets and liabilities is concerned. I do not want the feeling to arise that we are practising an industry which is not a healthy one, although there are many things, many problems, which have to be resolved. One must realize that land values have gone up and the tractor and other implements on the farm have appreciated in value and become more expensive. Most of them have already been paid for and are therefore assets of the farmer. The value of a cow, a sheep or a farm in 1967 as against its value today should be seen in the proper perspective.

I should like the hon. member for Wynberg to appear on television—and if he agrees, I shall arrange for this—to put his standpoint to the housewives of our country, so that I shall be able to say that I am not the only one who is increasing prices. The hon. Opposition, too, is prepared to state the case of the farmer. [Interjections.]

It seems to me that you are afraid of the women.

The hon. member for Wynberg also said that the farmer was not recovering his production costs. In the case of maize, however, he has recovered his production costs. The hon. member asked whether the figures were available. They are general knowledge.

Are they really available?

Yes, they are general knowledge. They were available on Friday at Samso’s meeting and the discussions of the S.A. Agricultural Union. According to the department’s figure, the cost of producing a ton of maize is R17,35. In our materialistic times, there is enormous pressure for salary increases. Sometimes this is unjustified, sometimes it is justified, because we live in a time of inflation and salaries have to be adjusted. However, there is one part of the population which has not asked for a salary increase and which has asked only for its production costs. They say forget about the salary increase in the form of entrepreneur’s remuneration, etc. The South African farmers have received a net amount of R100 a ton for maize. Their proven cost of conduction is R17,35. They are satisfied because they realize that there is a problem with exportation. There is a 10,3 million ton maize crop, of which yellow maize receives R115 a ton and white maize R118 a ton. I want to thank the South African farmer for not having asked for his full cost increases under the specific circumstances prevailing this year. However, they are realistic and they realize that there is nothing else we can do.

The hon. member for Wynberg also referred to the extension services provided by private initiative as against those of Agricultural Technical Services. He is quite right. The ideal situation would be for Agricultural Technical Services to conduct all the extension and research. But now matters have developed differently. Seed research, for example, is in the hands of private initiative. Our policy is that we want to make South Africa a free enterprise country. In the process, some of these things have passed from the hands of Agricultural Technical Services to the private sector and cooperatives, and they have appointed extension officers and research workers in their turn. We have come to a stage where I have even told the department, back in the days of Dr. Verbeek: “If you cannot fight them, join them.”

Now we have a system of co-operation, for there is only a small group of Whites for us to choose from, people who have expert knowledge. There is only a limited number of them available. We have been outbid in that they have been offered larger salaries. We have the co-operation of these people. We cannot keep it as a closed circle in the Department of Agricultural Technical Services only.

The hon. member spoke about the egg problem. People often say the hon. member for Wynberg is not a farmer, but he takes a great interest in egg and poultry production. That is why he is concerned about the fact that large companies are entering the egg industry. This is one of my dilemmas, too, and I am glad the hon. member realizes that I have a problem. We cannot allow big companies that make a profit from the sale of concentrated feed—4% profit on a dozen eggs—to market a dozen eggs at 4 cents less than the producer who does not have an affiliation with such a company. These are matters we must look into, and I am glad that the hon. member approached them realistically. The hon. member also said that the increase in the price of maize would have an effect on milk, eggs, and meat and other products. It is true. We cannot adjust all the prices at the same time. When we introduce a price increase, the Marketing Board, as well as the control board concerned, has to submit proof of expenditure. This first has to go through all the channels before we can make a price announcement. I shall refer to the hon. member for Wynberg again because he raised quite a number of other interesting matters as well.

I think the hon. member for Barberton replied effectively as far as the investment by the Wool Board is concerned. I want to reassure hon. members by saying that it is our standpoint that the control boards should invest their funds in the Land Bank. However, the Wool Board felt that they wanted to invest certain funds they had obtained from a direct levy at the highest interest rate, so they invested it in a bank which subsequently got into trouble. I warned them, because the funds would have been absolutely safe in the Land Bank, but they wanted a higher interest rate. In calculating the loss, however, we have to weigh it against what they would have earned if they had invested the funds in the Land Bank at a lower interest rate. When we do that, there is not really any question of a loss. The total investment of the Wool Board approaches R80 million at the moment. This is because of the commendable attitude of the wool farmers, who say that they can introduce a levy to build up the Stabilization Fund to such a level that if there were to be a slump in the wool price, they would be able to finance themselves and would not have to apply to the State for assistance.

Mr. Chairman, may I ask the hon. the Minister whether the approximately R80 million to which he referred is all invested in the Land Bank?

I think between R60 million and R70 million is invested in the Land Bank, but money is also invested in some other institutions that are also very safe. They committed an error by investing in an enterprise which offered a higher interest rate, but which was risky. Of course, they did not know that. They invested money from deferred payments there. However, the hon. member may rest assured that we are going into the matter carefully. It is being investigated by the Select Committee on Public Accounts, and all the statements of the control boards are being checked by the staff of the Auditor-General. He has pointed out to us that if we give permission for something of this nature in the future, we have to be very careful. However, my standpoint is that the control boards must take cognizance of the fact that they must invest their money in the Land Bank, for as hon. members have rightly remarked, those funds are used for agriculture again.

But if that is so, why did hon. members on the other side shout at me like that?

Yes, but sometimes that is very enjoyable. The hon. members did not mean to give offence.

They should try to use their heads.

The hon. members could not have known that the hon. member was going to adopt such a positive attitude today. [Interjections.] The hon. member for Potgietersrus raised an important point when he spoke about people’s land that we were going to acquire for the consolidation of the homelands. I have repeatedly told farmers that all negotiations with regard to consolidation will be above-board. The farmer of South Africa will just have to take cognizance of the fact that we do not have the money to effect consolidation over a short period. It may take years. There are farmers who have known for four to five years that their land is involved in consolidation, but they are continuing their farming operations as if nothing were going to happen. I cannot believe that a farmer would buy another piece of land at this stage, just because his land is required for consolidation purposes. He compromises himself by buying a piece of land and then asking the State to buy him out. Then I have to tell him: “It may take six years before you are bought out.” So he just has to go on as if nothing were going to happen. He can only talk about buying when he has pocketed the cash. In the valuation of the land we allow for improvements which are essential to allow the farming activities to continue. If a farmer puts up a bam a year before the farm is bought out and that bam is justified, we pay him what it is worth. Our policy is to pay the price of a voluntary buyer and a voluntary seller, according to market value, not agricultural value. In addition, we pay a solatium of 10% which is added to the price by the Department of Co-operation and Development.

†The hon. member for Mooi River spoke of the need for a realistic view in respect of supply and demand. It is true that we must be realistic. I fully agree with him. He said that in a previous debate I referred to his proposal that the farmer should be assisted by not levying import duty on any agricultural commodity. Well, Sir, last year he asked that the surcharge of 7,5% be abolished. Now it has been abolished. One must take into consideration that while last year, for instance, the value of all the tractors, combines, harvesting machines, planters, ploughs and agricultural implements that were imported was R114 million, import duties on that amounted to R2,6 million. Compared with the total cost of production in South Africa, that is a negligible amount. The surcharge on agricultural implements was 7,5%. That is why I ask whether it really helps us to get the R2,6 million when one considers that the total cost of production in respect of fertilizers alone is R340 million. The hon. member for Parys referred to this. In respect of spare parts, repairs, the amount was R224 million; in respect of diesel, R350 million; in respect of stock-feeds, R400 million and in respect of feed, R90 million. In total the amount in respect of the means of production was R2 300 million. If one is to subsidize that, to what tune must one do it?

Never mind the subsidy. Take the tax away.

I know the hon. member does not want it to be subsidized, but some people say the inputs should be subsidized. With a sound economy, my suggestion is that the farmer should be given an equitable price for his products so that he can pay for his inputs. However, then one has the problem of increasing the price to the consumer, and that at a time when there are people who are jobless. I agree that it is a difficult situation. Hon. members agree that one cannot subsidize inputs and that one cannot subsidize certain food products either. Consider milk, for instance. A subsidy of one cent per litre of milk will cost the Minister of Finance R10 million, and the price of milk is 41c per litre. It is therefore not possible. The only products we can subsidize are maize, certain dairy products and bread.

*As far as the hon. member for Parys is concerned, I must differ with him in respect of certain things he said. He said that the export losses of the Maize Board amounted to R140 million this year. One of the speakers referred to the Financial Mail and quoted from it. But it says on its front page: “Maize surplus mess”. Next to this is a drawing of an ear of maize. When I saw that, I asked myself: But how can that be? Then I saw it was only a sales stunt on the part of the magazine. However, I do not have an action against the Press. That would be like shouting against thunder. The hon. member for Parys spoke about a maize export burden. However, it is not a burden. There is a deficit on the export account. The South African consumer pays R122,40 a ton today. If we export the maize, we lose R42 a ton in freight and overland transport costs. When we import, we are dependent on the world price. This has dropped; the price of yellow maize, for example, has dropped to R108-R110 a ton. There is a temporary slump because there is a dispute between America and Russia about the question of Afghanistan, the Olympic Games and all that jazz. This has caused a temporary slump. The price of white maize is still R190 a ton. Suppose we can get yellow maize on the overseas market for R110 a ton. R42 a ton must then be added in respect of import costs. So one cannot speak of an export loss. What is the position when we talk about export losses?

In 1970, 1971, 1972 and 1973 we exported at a small loss, for example R404 000, R16 million, R1 million, and so on. Then, however, we exported at a profit of R2 million in 1974, at a profit of R82 million in 1975, at a profit of R67 million in 1976 and at a profit of R39 million in 1977. In four years’ time, therefore, we made a total profit of R191 million. Then came the years 1978 and 1979, with the slump in the world price because of surpluses in America. I cannot apply their policy. The American Minister of Agriculture says: “My policy is; get bigger, get better or get out.” That is a real economic argument, but it is not the right argument if one wants to prevent depopulation of the rural areas. In 1978, we suffered a loss of R24 million, and last year we had a loss of R40 million, amounting to a total loss of R64 million over that period, as against a profit of R191 million over the preceding four years. However, what did the farmer do in the years when he was making a profit? He subsidized the consumer to the tune of R3 a ton from his export profit. Now we go to the consumer and we say that if there is a loss on the export account, he must help the farmer, because in the past the farmer helped the consumer out of his export profit. Therefore I do not want the hon. member for Parys to speak of a burden because of a surplus of maize on the export market. It is an asset, a blessing. The hon. member for Bryanston referred to the number of people we have to feed. Therefore it is a good thing if our granaries are full. I say to the farmer: Produce with enthusiasm and fill our granaries.

I also agree with the hon. member for Parys, and so does the hon. the Minister of Mineral and Energy Affairs, that if the private initiative wishes to produce ethanol, they should go ahead. People say we must not bum food. However, have they ever watched what happens when one produces ethanol out of grain? Our surplus of grain sorghum can be used, for example, to manufacture ethanol. The by-products can be used as fodder, and that is extremely valuable. Sentrachem is thinking of embarking upon this, in cooperation with Federale Volksbeleggings. If they want to undertake something of this nature, it will have my blessing, depending of course on what they are prepared to pay for the maize.

The hon. member for Prieska said the consumer should not complain about food prices, but should pray that he will always have food as he has today. One cannot improve on that remark. He also advocated stability in the meat industry by means of a pool system. There are various proposals we can examine. The hon. member said that rains did not wash away the farmers’ debt overnight. If those areas that have negotiated loans now have rains and conditions improve, we do not intend to empty their pockets the first year. We have already said that in some cases we shall allow the debt to extend over a period of four years. We shall give him that period to repay the money. So he can tell his people that they need not be anxious.

†The hon. member for East London North referred to cheaper electricity as a step towards cheaper production costs. He has my full support in asking for co-ops. I think the municipalities should try to help us get cheaper electricity. The farmer should be assisted so that he does not have to make use of stationary diesel engines. It should be possible to help the farmer get his electricity at a cheaper price than the 18% line fees charged by Escom. I would be pleased if he would raise that matter during the discussion on the Vote of the hon. the Minister concerned with Escom.

I would be pleased if you would raise the matter with him as well.

I shall, but it will strengthen my case if the hon. member could also mention this. He also said that the Land Bank should give loans for the erection of electricity equipment, etc. It is the policy of the Land Bank to give a man a loan. It is also the policy of Agricultural Credit and Land Tenure. The Land Bank does not even take a bond on a farm. They register the loan against the deed of sale, and only the amount which is to be paid back by the owner or the next owner of the farm. A man can, however, get a loan for laying on electricity, erecting waterpumps for spray irrigation and various other things under the Land Bank scheme.

*I want to thank the Land Bank for the assistance which the farmers are receiving in this connection, i.e. in switching over to electricity.

The hon. member for Namaqualand thanked us for our understanding of great drought problems of his constituency. The farmers there are used to hard times, and when one looks at their burden of debt, to which the hon. the Deputy Minister will refer, one sees that the Namaqualander, the Bushmanlander, the inhabitants of that area where people are tough, are afraid of debt. If one tells one of those farmers to incur debt in order to feed his sheep, he runs a mile. Those farmers are very frightened of debt and very careful, and I want to tell them that we realize that they have been struck by disaster. In the course of three years, only one inch of rain has fallen on some of those farms. How can such a person get by? However, the hon. member for Namaqualand is quite wrong in saying that Agricultural Technical Services is not interested in promoting water conservation. We have only changed our system of subsidies and said that we cannot go on subsidizing this kind of industry. I want to tell the hon. member for Namaqualand that I know farmers. With the right techniques we have been able to prevent every flood, without having to ask for a subsidy. My policy is: forget about the subsidy and see that the price if such that the farmer will have the money, before paying tax, to improve his soil protection. Many farmers are of this opinion. The Department of Agricultural Technical Services considers it very important that water should be conserved, as does the Department of Water Affairs, because it is of great importance for the future.

I shall reply further to certain problems of the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg South on Monday. I agree with him as far as the co-operatives are concerned.

†He said we should rationalize the control boards. He asked whether it would be possible. Could he give a few examples? I shall refer on Monday to the cost of our control system. It is the best in the world. We have had investigations and, if possible, we can rationalize, but which of these control boards should be rationalized?

*The hon. member said that the average farmer did not show a reasonable return on his investment. Our prices are determined on the basis of an average. The maize price has been fixed on the basis of 2,6 tons a ha. However, there are farmers who produce 5 or 6 tons a ha, and that is our dilemma, because there are also farmers who produce 1,3 tons. Those farmers who produce 1,3 tons a ha will never succeed, and the farmer who produces more than 4 or 5 tons can buy them out. But we want to keep people in the rural areas and we want the kind of man there who has his foot in the stirrup, who has the right attitude. He must actually be a scientist. He must be an engineer, a mechanic who can repair a tractor himself or measure out a canal with a dumpy level. He must have all those qualities and be a bookkeeper into the bargain. He must even have married the right woman. This is the kind of man who will eventually have an above-average production.

The hon. member for Malmesbury explained our agricultural policy. As an economist he also referred to the problem of large monopolies.

I just want to tell the hon. member for Caledon that in the Wheat Board we are looking at the problem with regard to the instability of barley. I want to ask him whether he cannot sound out the barley producers in his constituency so that we can fix a floor price for barley. Why should barley be put in a straitjacket, while the barley price could have a floor which could fluctuate according to the harvest? We can consider whether there should not be a floor price for barley.

They are happy with the Wheat Board.

Very well. I must point out, of course, that the hon. member had a large share in the erection of that malt plant in his town. It will be a tremendous boost for his area when that plant comes into operation.

†The hon. member for Berea spoke about the production of phormium tenax. Tenax is actually a kind of sun hemp. In terms of Government policy, if anyone can produce a jute bag from tenax, he is free to enter into a contract with any farmer for the supply of such bags. The Department of Agriculture has already undertaken experiments with tenax. I have planted tenax and sun hemp on my own farm. Even in the days of Dr. Verwoerd farmers were already experimenting with phormium tenax. Dr. Verwoerd was very keen on tenax experiments being carried out. In the long run, however, it appeared that none of the experiments undertaken with tenax could compete with ordinary paper bags which came on the market later, or with nylon bags used for packing potatoes and cabbages. Later we also began to use byproducts of Sasol for the production of nylon and polyethylene bags, which are much more popular than jute bags produced from phormium tenax. We will, however, investigate the matter further. If we should find that the use of jute bags is more economical than the use of the imported bags, we will certainly reconsider the position. The new bags cost us 70c each. It is stupid to use bags in South Africa for grain storage. We should have enough silos for that purpose. I should thank the Land Bank for granting us additional funds to build more silos. South Africa should not be importing containers at all. We should be able to produce our own. Moreover we should also be capable of building enough silos for the storage of grain. But be it as it may, we shall go into the whole matter again. I must point out though that the price we pay for imported bags is not a secret. We buy jute products even from countries that are boycotting us. Therefore it is not always wise to say in public from what countries we buy these bags and in what way we obtain them. I believe, however, that it will be just fine if we could produce all our containers locally and forget about importing them.

*I come now to the hon. member for Standerton. It is strange that Standerton always produces good people. [Interjections.] Those who are not very good do not stay there. I think the hon. member for Standerton talks the language of a farmer. He said a few very true things. He said, for example, that we should keep the farmer on his land, irrespective of all the problems which this entails. The hon. member knows our language. He knows how to handle it.

The hon. member spoke about the maize price. He pointed out that the farmer dared not ask for an increase in the maize price. With some products we have strange problems. The Marketing Act provides, for example, that the approval of the Minister of Agriculture has to be obtained for increasing the price of a product. Some control boards also say that the Minister must announce a price increase. Then there are other products of which the prices are not controlled in terms of the Marketing Act. These are products of which the prices are determined and announced by the Price Controller. Of course, these do not have such an enormous political impact. The price of sugar was raised yesterday, for example. If it had been the price of maize, milk, meat, cheese or butter, there would have been banner headlines in every newspaper in South Africa today—Afrikaans or English, it does not matter.

Of course, the whole situation creates special problems for me. However, it happens now and then, on a day like today, for example, that people do not … Oh, I also want to use the language of the hon. member for Standerton, but I really do not know how. [Interjections.] The hon. member for Standerton also spoke about the sponsorship of advertisements. We shall discuss that again on Monday.

The hon. member for Heilbron is the chairman of the Dairy Board. Unfortunately he cannot be here this afternoon. However, the hon. member is quite right. It costs R65 000 for a 30-second advertisement on television. However, the R65 000 we have spent on an advertisement amounts to a cost of 0,0008c per litre of milk. Have hon. members seen how effective that advertisement is? I have here a whole stack of cartoons based on it. I appreciate the fact that the Press is seizing upon this. I suppose they think they are embarrassing me. Every time the word “milk” is used somewhere in the cartoon. I like that. I am referring, for example, to the cartoon in last Sunday’s Sunday Express. Its caption reads: “Frederickson and Theuns Stofberg play around in Milk Board T-shirts”. And on their T-shirts is printed: “Melk: Ons krag vir elke dag”. Really and truly, I want them to put this slogan on the rugby jersey of every Springbok player, right across the chest: “Drink milk!”

They should put the same on the shirts of the Springbok netball players. [Interjections.]

The hon. member for Pietermaritzburg South criticized me for spending too little on advertising. I shall refer to this again on Monday. Industries with a turnover of R900 million are spending R1 million on advertising, for example. We cannot help endorsing that policy of some people to improve the image of agriculture. We should not concentrate on the negative aspects. However, what is better than to tell a young boy: “Milk: Strength for every day”, instead of: “Lion beer, the sportsman’s choice”? Which one do hon. members prefer? [Interjections.] I have nothing against the beer people.

The hon. member for Paarl spoke about feeding, management and breeding. These three aspects are important. I must thank the hon. member for his contribution.

The hon. member for Bryanston said that there were 200 000 farmers in South Africa. In reality there are 76 000 farmers in South Africa today. The hon. member then asked where the NP got all its votes from. The NP gets its votes from a satisfied consumer public because they can buy cheap food. [Interjections.] The hon. member rightly said that we were not only feeding our 26 million people, but another 5 million people who are not living in this country. We shall give more attention in future to enhancing the image of agriculture. The Agricultural Union has decided to open an office in Cape Town as well to help us keep the housewife informed at times when we announce price increases. The hon. member for Bryanston said that food would be our weapon in the future. I must say that we have crossed swords in the political sphere, but I appreciate the fact that he made such a positive contribution in the agricultural sphere today.

The hon. member for De Aar spoke about the importance of meat production and the floor price of meat. If I told him that I agreed with the floor price, hon. members know what the effect would be if the Press published that. I can only tell hon. members that at the moment we are selling meat at a floor price. However, the price that is realized at the auction is higher than the increased price hon. members have asked for. But the price is determined by supply and demand. I can only tell hon. members that it is indeed true. The production costs of the meat farmer have also gone up. We have had a great many problems with permits. I have said that people should leave the matter at that and not ask for inquiries into the meat industry, for the time will come when the abattoirs at Maitland and City Deep will not have enough to slaughter. The consumption of meat has increased by 16%. Salary increases cause people to eat more red meat. The image of agriculture and efficiency both play a role in this matter.

Mr. Chairman, we have listened to a good speech made by a competent Minister.

Last year a deputation from the South African Stud Book Association met with the hon. the Minister of Agriculture to discuss further financial assistance in respect of the computer services of the Stud Book Association. After that meeting with the hon. the Minister, approximately R50 000 was provided from elsewhere. In this year’s budget, provision is being made for R199 000. The Stud Book Association wants to place on record its gratitude and appreciation to the hon. the Minister and the Department for this.

The Russian wheat aphid has now made its appearance in the Orange Free State for the third successive season.

Communists!

To tell the truth, an Israeli representative alleged that it is thriving in the Orange Free State even more than in Russia itself. Owing to the unsuccessful crop spraying methods of last year and the fact that some farmers had to spray their farms up to four times, I want to advocate that research on the combatting of the Russian wheat aphid be accorded top priority and that the Government should grant financial assistance to combat it. At the moment no guaranteed, effective spray exists. It is estimated that spraying costs can be expected to amount to approximately R60 per hectare this year.

However, this is not the only problem being experienced in the Orange Free State. When locusts appeared in the Western Free State it seemed that the locusts were appearing in all stages and that the flying locusts had not formed swarms. As it is difficult to trace an outbreak of this pest, particularly in the mealie lands, it cannot always be reported at once. I should like to express my gratitude and appreciation for the fact that the hon. the Minister’s department is already engaged in efforts to combat this problem, but I should like to make an urgent request that aerial spraying should be utilized as well. The reasons for this, as I have already said, are the fact that the outbreak is so widespread and the fact that significant swarms have not appeared. I believe that aerial spraying will be extremely effective.

There is another important matter I want to submit to the hon. the Minister. When the Orange River project was announced in White Paper WP62 in 1962, additional water for the Kaffir River irrigation scheme from the Verwoerd Dam was envisaged. When the Welbedacht Scheme on the Caledon River was announced, this undertaking was dropped in 1968 in terms of White Paper WP68 on the second additional Orange River project, and this additional water from the Verwoerd Dam was replaced by purified sewage water from Bloemfontein. As a result of pressure from the occupiers of riparian land on the banks of the Renosterspruit to the east of Bloemfontein, nothing came of this undertaking either. Between the years 1970 and 1979, fruitful discussions were held with the then Ministers of Water Affairs and of Agriculture and a decision was taken to find a solution to the problems, even if it meant that farms had to be bought out to relieve the pressure on the dam, in order to ensure the remaining irrigators of the normal 70% water guarantee. As far back as 1979 a proper and intensive soil survey of the whole area was carried out by the Soil and Irrigation Research Institute and a report was submitted to the Department of Water Affairs. Subsequently interdepartmental discussions were also held. Since July 1979, however, when the annual apportionments were made, only 20% of the full quota, which in any case is a mere 600 mm per hectare, was apportioned to the irrigators. By December 1979, this 20% had already been exhausted and since the beginning of December last year no further water could be released from the dam, and some of the irrigators are really in a desperate position. That is why I should like to put the problem to the hon. the Minister. The problem is that too little water is available for the amount of scheduled land below the dam. At present 1 133 ha are being irrigated at an apportionment of 600 mm per ha, which far exceeds the capacity of the dam, according to data provided by the circuit engineer. According to him only 531 ha can be irrigated at an allocation of 900 mm per ha.

For the past 18 years now the Kaffir River Irrigation Board has been engaged in negotiations with the Departments of Water Affairs and of Agriculture in an effort to find a solution for this pressing problem. Hon. members will understand that some of the irrigators are in a really desperate position as a result of this and that the time has come for this problem to be solved completely. The only solution to the problem is that the scheme be reduced, and the most practical reduction can be achieved by buying out the lower parts, i.e. the points furthest from the dam, and consolidating them into larger economic units, and then making them available again. The reasons why the lower parts should be bought out, are, firstly, that this will mean that the canals will be considerably shortened, which will contribute to restricting the loss, which is at present 30%, to a minimum, and to making the water more economic and more regularly available to the remaining farmers. Secondly, restructuring of the scheme is eliminated, and thirdly, a large portion of the poorer irrigation lands will be eliminated. What this amounts to in practice is that 568 ha of scheduled irrigation land must be bought out as irrigation land and resold as ordinary agricultural land and that a further 4 801 ha of ordinary agricultural land must be purchased. The total surface area which can be consolidated in economic units and made available again, is 5 369 ha. This area lies very near to Bloemfontein and consequently economic units will be much sought after there. I doubt whether the reduction of this scheme will cost the State more than R¾ million. If the solution of this problem is delayed any longer, keeping these farmers on the land could cost the State more without any real or meaningful solution being achieved.

During the discussions with the Ministry of Water Affairs it became clear that the implementation of the proposal, viz. the reduction of the scheme, seems to conflict with information at the disposal of the Department of Water Affairs. That is why I advocate today that the Departments of Agricultural Technical Services and of Agricultural Credit and Land Tenure should investigate this proposal of the Irrigation Board very thoroughly, and subsequently discuss the matter with the Department of Water Affairs, and then come to a decision in the shortest possible time so that it can be implemented. Really, this handful of farmers simply cannot continue like this. Hence this friendly, yet urgent request to the hon. the Minister.

Mr. Chairman, I am glad that I can speak after the hon. member for Smithfield because, as he does, I also serve on the Stud Book Board, and so I also want to thank the hon. the Minister and the hon. the Minister of Finance for their assistance to our Stud Book Association. It was absolutely essential to rectify the position. We say thank you to the hon. gentlemen.

†I would like to come to the second instalment of my speech. I would like to start with point 6, having finished off with point 5 in my last speech. I consider that the Department of Agriculture, which is presently doing an excellent job in assisting the farmer with production improvement techniques, should concentrate far more of its funds and efforts in assisting the farmer in the efficient marketing of his products. The department should work in close contact with the marketing boards in establishing new methods of marketing and create new local and foreign markets. Special export incentives should be considered and provided. Most farmers are generally satisfied with the assistance they have received from the department in producing their crops, but most farmers, with the exceptions of possibly the mealie farmers— complain bitterly over the loss of control over their products, once those products leave the farm gate, and the fact that they meekly have to accept the price that is offered to them for their product. They resent the fact that when they have to purchase anything they have to ask: “What is your price?” But when they sell it, they have to ask: “What am I offered?” That is what they resent. What I request is that the hon. the Minister of Agriculture modify the emphasis of his department. To date the emphasis has been placed on assisting the farmer with his production. It should now concentrate some of its efforts on marketing techniques and help to sell the farmer’s product efficiently, both locally and abroad. I respectfully suggest that the hon. the Minister send a small delegation to other agricultural countries, and I would like to ask him to start in New Zealand, to investigate and report on the methods their Departments of Agriculture uses to assist their farmers in the marketing field.

For my seventh point I propose that the State should investigate all major monopolistic supplies to the farmer, and to recommend a system whereby both these suppliers and the farmers can obtain similar—and I stress this—and reasonable returns on their investment. I can see no reason why controlled prices should allow huge corporations tremendous profit margins while farmers are scraping the barrel. I can think of nothing that infuriates farmers more than when they hear of the collossal profits fertilizer companies make while their executives are flying around in their fancy jets. Meanwhile farmers have to pay exorbitant prices for fertilizers. They view, with similar disgust, the profits made by others in the meat trade, while they are going broke on their farms. No farmer would complain if he could also be assured of a set profit on his investment, as in the case of companies, but while the farmer is battling to survive, he can see no justice in the present system. It is not only the fertilizer companies that have come under scrutiny, but also the feed companies, the companies which produce veterinary products and the companies that control the farmer’s product after it leaves the farmer’s gate. Last year I pointed out that certain firms were practising conditional selling practices and techniques when they sold bran and pollard to pig farmers, and they are still doing it.

My eighth suggestion to the hon. the Minister is that the State should take over the total responsibility and liability for the costs of the erection of abattoirs. I believe that the State should view these mammoth projects as State projects, similar to, say, an opera house. I use the example of an opera house because I know that the cost of erecting the opera house in Pretoria was in excess of R50 million while the cost of erecting the abattoir at Cato Ridge was almost exactly the same. I therefore see no reason why abattoirs also should not be financed by the taxpayers as a whole rather than directly from the farmer’s pocket. I believe that this would result in a drastic decrease in the cost of slaughtering, which in turn would be beneficial to the farmer as well as to the housewife. This suggestion could have a far-reaching and dramatic effect on the very hard hit and extensive border areas of South Africa. If slaughtering costs could be drastically reduced, the farms in the border areas could become profitable again and many young farmers would return there. These strategic and extensive calf-rearing areas are affected and hit by two major cost items: transport costs and slaughtering costs. I believe the State should do everything in its power to reduce the costs of these two items to a minimum, and it can be done with the assistance of the Government. I am afraid that the attempts to offer special loans and incentives to keep farmers in these areas, will unfortunately come to nought, unless the farming venture itself can be made financially viable. I think that is the crux of the matter. The easiest and quickest way to do this is to reduce these two major cost items which I have mentioned, that is transport costs and slaughtering fees. The hon. member for Standerton made a wonderful plea here today to keep the farmer on the farm. I agree with everything he said. I only wish I could express it in the same words that he did. The hon. the Minister knows what a beautiful voice the hon. member has, and he put his case so eloquently that I almost resent the fact that I do not have the same ability. [Interjections.]

My ninth point is that I believe that the farmer’s entire financial aid system should be investigated, revised and streamlined. I believe that all financial aid, be it emergency finance, short-term financing or long-term loans, should be rationalized and conducted through the single channel of a revised Land Bank and that this bank should be moved to fall directly under the jurisdiction of the hon. the Minister of Agriculture. I know the hon. the Minister has a lot of problems already, but I would like to add this too to his problems. Farmers are presently knocking on far too many doors to obtain the necessary financial assistance. This quite often leads to insecurity and despair. The many doors they have to knock on at present are those of the Land Bank, the Department of Agriculture, the co-ops, the banks, other financial institutions and even individuals. I would like to see one single farmer’s banking system where a wide variety of financial loans, assistance and expert advice can be obtained. I do not think we should underestimate the fact that we need expert advice within the financial ambit of our farming community. Would it not be tremendous if there was a friendly farmer’s Land Bank in South Africa which fell directly under, and was part and parcel of, the Department of Agriculture, a bank which would have all the technical and expert advice at its finger-tips. I believe that the department has this information at its fingertips. Certainly much duplication of effort in the financing system for the farmer could thereby be avoided.

My final point is that I believe that the position of the border farmers, who feel so insecure today, should be clarified by the State as soon as possible. I stress that the consolidation of the homelands should now be finalized once and for all. It should be spelt out in detail exactly how the border farmers would be affected by the proposals and exactly how and when compensation would be made. I have to disagree with the hon. the Minister when he says that he knows of farmers who are prepared to carry on for six years knowing full well that they might be expropriated. I do not agree with the sentiment that they are happy about this and that they are prepared to put their backs into the farm. I have found just the opposite. I can think of nothing that can demoralize the farmer more than insecurity of tenure. A farmer who does not know whether or when his farm will be taken away from him by the State, is a very tragic one. The anxiety and insecurity farmers are at present experiencing in many areas of South Africa is quite frightening. The hon. the Minister is well aware of this. The hon. member for Potgietersrus stated this very emphatically this morning. None of these farmers are prepared to put very much back into their farms, due to their fears of expropriation. Part of the farmers make-up is his optimism and the fact that he is always busy planning, building, improving and dreaming of what his farm could produce and what it would look like in the future. Take away that dream and one has a broken man. I am afraid we are breaking many farmers in South Africa today through insecurity. I realize that the Government is working on these plans and I think it realizes the urgency of the matter. All I ask is that these plans should be concluded and finalized as soon as possible so that the position can be made clear to the farmers.

I should like to conclude my speech by saying to the hon. the Minister that I realize that what I have put to him affects many other Ministers. He is, however, a far more eloquent man than most of us in the House and I think he could therefore persuade the other Ministers to see the plight of and difficult conditions under which farmers live today. My plea to him is for him to take the ball and run with it. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, this afternoon I should like to draw the House’s attention to the tobacco industry. I am doing so because I want us to take note of the achievements of the tobacco industry and the very important place that it assumes in the agricultural sector of our country. I am also doing this because I should like to draw attention to problems facing this industry.

On the occasion of the opening of the congress of the Transvaal Agricultural Union in 1976, one of our important agricultural leaders made a very appropriate remark about the things that are important to the South African farmer. He said that the following things were very important to the South African farmer: Purposefulness, confidence, stability, faith and loyalty. I believe that we all agree with this. If there is one sector of the agricultural industry that endorses this truth 100%, it is the tobacco industry, in spite of a drastic decrease in the number of tobacco producers over the past few years. In 1975 there were approximately 5 100 tobacco producers, and that number has dropped to approximately 3 500 at the moment. Nevertheless, in spite of that, these farmers produced a record of 44 million kg of leaf-tobacco in the 1978-’79 crop year. However, over the past two years the industry has been faced with unsold surpluses of certain classes of tobacco as a result of favourable climatic conditions on the one hand and a downward trend in the consumer pattern of cigarettes and pipe tobacco due to the general economic climate and the escalating anti-smoking campaign on the other. Nevertheless we can say that, in spite of the smaller number of tobacco producers, there was growth and purposefulness that testified to hard work, good planning, confidence and faith in the future of the tobacco industry. In the 1978-’79 crop year, when a record of about 44 million kg of tobacco was produced in the Republic, 38,8 kg was produced by the Transvaal. Another very important fact that is related to this, is that 35% of all the tobacco produced in South Africa, is produced in the border areas of the Transvaal. The fact that the tobacco industry is one of the most labour-intensive industries means that tobacco farmers employ thousands upon thousands of workers. This is extremely important for South Africa. I shall stress this fact once again later on when I ask for the border farmer to be granted border area benefits too, as in the case of the border industries.

The tobacco industry boasts of being 100% organized and having solved its problems in the past itself, with little help from the State. My own experience is that tobacco farmers as tidy farmers, in fact, purposeful farmers that have confidence in the future of their industry.

At the moment, the tobacco industry is in fact experiencing difficult marketing conditions because there is a world surplus of tobacco. However, the industry is asking for the co-operation of the State. The tobacco producer in the Republic is not given adequate protection. Protective measures are urgently required. There are various ways in which the State may be of assistance. For instance, the State must not introduce measures which will have an adverse effect on the local consumption of tobacco. I should like to make a few important remarks in this regard. Excise duty constitutes the bulk of the price of cigarettes. In the past year, the State has collected R280 million in excise duty on tobacco sales. Any increase causes a drop in consumption. This tax was increased recently because sales tax is levied on tobacco products over and above excise duties. Something else that causes a drop in consumption, is the unfair way in which the anti-smoking campaign is being launched by different bodies, such as radio and television services. Facts are being distorted and there is a very subtle campaign which causes the listener or viewer to draw conclusions which do not have a scientific basis. The State must protect the tobacco industry from this.

Another way in which the State can assist in improving the quality of tobacco, is by further combating the pollution of irrigation schemes, and I am referring specifically to chlorine pollution. This is posing a serious threat to the survival of the tobacco farmers, because chlorine lowers the combustibility and is associated with the intake of tar by the smoker. It also has an adverse effect on the acceptability of South African tobacco for foreign purchasers.

Another way in which the State can be of assistance, is to introduce measures to ensure better control over the product. For instance, customs duty on imports must be adjusted since it has not been reviewed for several decades already. All imports must be subjected to the approval of the Tobacco Board. At the moment, buyers can import tobacco freely. The toll-free quotas for Malawi and Zimbabwe must be done away with as soon as circumstances justify it.

I have already said that the tobacco farmers have good reason to be proud of their achievements, and the consumer of South Africa confirms this. If hon. members look at what the consumer has spent on the products of tobacco farming this year, they will see what I mean. I shall mention a few comparable figures. The South African consumer spent R1 656 million on meat, R1 355 on bread and cereal products, R1 028 million on vegetable and fruit, R640 million on milk and dairy products, R1 567 million on alcohol and R594 million on the tobacco industry.

Like other South African farmers, the tobacco farmer is also faced with many other problems. Recently, when he visited the border areas, the hon. the Deputy Minister also made special reference to this. He said that irrigation farmers—and this also includes the tobacco farmers and the border farmers— are scarcely able to continue producing after the tremendous increase in the fuel price.

Order! Hon. members must please converse more quietly.

The hon. the Deputy Minister went on to point out that if electricity is not introduced to these territories at economic tariffs, particularly those areas bordering the Limpopo and Crocodile Rivers, irrigation farming will collapse completely. This is an important truth which the hon. the Deputy Minister mentioned. Tobacco farmers are particularly hard-hit. These farmers are totally enmeshed in the ever-escalating prices of fertilizer, insecticides and herbicides and other chemical substances, the increase in coal prices, high costs of maintenance and repairs and the cost of farm machinery.

The border farmers, who produce approximately 35% of our tobacco, lay just as serious a claim to the same privileges and encouragement as the border industries. We are often asked to ensure that the border areas do not become depopulated. However, then the Government must do much more to encourage people to remain there. In the present budget more than R38 million is being made available to industries for development in the border areas, as well as rail rebates, subsidies instead of income tax concessions, subsidies on transport costs, subsidies on losses with regard to border industry buildings, etc. The tobacco farmers also lay claim to this type of assistance. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, at this stage I should like to associate myself with what the hon. the Minister said about the officials who are going to leave the department and the service that they rendered. We all thank them for the services that they have rendered. I feel it must be said—with regard to certain standpoints adopted by some hon. members on that side of the House—that we do not differ much from them with regard to the general standpoint that they adopted. I also think it is correct for hon. members of this House to criticize constructively, in order to determine whether one can benefit the entire agricultural industry. If one does this, one must also ensure that the facts are correct. Later on in the course of my speech I shall devote more time to discussing a few of the standpoints that were raised.

I want to begin by saying that we as maize farmers want to thank our hon. the Minister and the Government very heartily this year for the price that was obtained for the maize industry as a whole. We are aware of the fact that circumstances were particularly difficult and that the hon. the Minister himself showed a great deal of zeal in being able to bring about that price. I just want to draw attention to a few aspects of the maize industry. One of the major problems in the maize industry was to cover export losses. These are losses which are suffered as a result of the local price at which the Maize Board has to purchase the product, plus the cost minus the price realization that it can obtain abroad too. This would mean that tremendous levies would have to be imposed on the maize farmer in the process, which would have caused his nett price to drop below the true increase in production cost. The hon. the Minister has already pointed this out. In order to obtain R115 and R118 per ton for yellow and white maize, we had to be able to absorb an additional shortage of R75 million on the expected realization. This was general knowledge from the word go. In the process of fixing a price, it was remarkable to see the extent to which the consumer public put up resistance beforehand, in anticipation of a maize price, and criticized the increases that had to be introduced with regard to agricultural products, and the effect that the increase in the maize price would have on other agricultural products, on the cost of living and on inflation.

It is tragic that, at the very time when agriculture comes up for discussion, the general public makes a great fuss about it and tries to use their influence to stop those prices increasing so sharply, or to stop reimbursing the producer for his production costs. This is a general trend. Now, however, they are going beyond that. Some people from the private sector are even recommending that money be made available from the private sector in the form of a loan to cover export losses. Of course, this will be a loan on which the prevailing interest rates will apply. We know what the interest rates in the private sector amount to. These are interest rates which are not profitable to the farmer when they are compared to what he earns in interest on his own capital. Now one wonders why they want to do this. In the business column of the Citizen we now read that they feel that this must be done in order to keep the prices of products low. Coincidentally, the same man who writes this, writes the following in Hoofstad of 23 April 1980 in the annual report of his company—

Now these are manufacturers of agricultural products, who sell the products to the general consumer public, and show a growth rate of 22% per annum over 10 years, and then insist that the producer’s price must continue to drop, or show a minimum increase. This may mean that he might perhaps not even be able to recover his production costs. However, if he does succeed in covering his production costs, they argue that he must negotiate a loan at a higher rate of interest.

However, what did the hon. the Minister accomplish? He obtained a loan of that amount for us, at an interest rate of 4%. In addition, the Government is still subsidizing the interest rate. I believe that we maize farmers must thank the Government for that loan.

A loan for five years.

Yes, for five years. I believe it is our duty to point out that the loan in question is directly linked to export and to the losses on the export in question within the framework of the prevailing price structures. Of course, there is a danger involved here too. We must take note of the fact that the world trade situation may favour us, but that the opposite may also occur, and that the situation may be unfavourable, due to price trends in overseas trade and that we may possibly experience a similar situation of low export prices next year. Then the situation for the maize industry as a whole may be a very difficult one. I believe this is something of which the consumer public must also take note, because it is a situation which may possibly arise.

Since the maize industry has been paying R3 per ton on export profits from the Stabilization Fund annually for the three years between 1975 and 1977, in order to keep the local price low, the local consumer will also have to do his share when real crises arise. I believe that we will have to take note of this, that we will also have to place it on record, that in times of emergency for the consumer, the farmer was prepared to do his share.

Then I just want to react briefly to a few of the arguments raised here by hon. members. In the first place, I want to refer to an aspect that was mentioned by the hon. member for Wynberg. He said that the producers price of maize has increased tremendously over the past year. I want to link this up with what the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg South said recently with regard to the profits being made in the fertilizer industry. This is a proven cost, as determined by the Department of Agriculture. This is a cost that was determined by means of random samples taken in three maize producing areas. Therefore, these are proven costs, costs that were at issue, and which also caused the relevant prices to increase. If there are a few principles in agriculture that are important, then they are the principles that the producer must be remunerated for costs according to his price structure, that we must ensure, and use our influence to ensure that those cost increases are justified cost increases according to the costs which are incurred, and that as regards the marketing of our products, we must also see to it by means of our control boards and our government that the people in the manufacturing industry are not showing excessive growth rates and profits which have to be paid by the consumer to the detriment of the farmers.

However, there is a third aspect that we must look at and this is the question of financing within agriculture. I want to refer to two sources of financing, viz. the Department of Agricultural Credit and Land Tenure and the Land Bank. I think the agricultural industry is very grateful for the services that they render. One aspect to which we may have to give a great deal of attention, is the fact that the cost increases in agriculture with respect to the purchase of land and fixed property, have assumed excessive proportions in the past years. One wonders whether the Department of Agricultural Credit and Land Tenure and the Land Bank have kept pace with the increase in land values to such an extent that they can comply with the conditions of the loan requirements which the farmers need in order to produce cheap food once again. What I have said now, relates to the argument which the hon. member for Wynberg raised. He said that the burden of debt on the farmer has increased a great deal. I want to agree with him. The hon. the Minister was also correct in saying that the relationship between debt and assets is the same. However, one wonders whether the present situation of the Land Bank and the Department of Agricultural Credit and Land Tenure, is such that the farmer can obtain a loan at the present market value of his land which will make it practically possible for him, taking into consideration the market prices, to avail himself of those loan facilities. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, an interesting story was broadcast on the radio this morning. It concerned a farmer in Australia who started a new type of farming. He started frog farming in order to export the skins. He built up a very profitable business. According to the figures that were given on the radio, it seems to me as if he is making approximately R50 000 a year on the frogs. Apparently it is a very easy type of farming. One female frog can lay as many as 250 000 eggs at a time, whilst the mortality rate is a mere 5%. Therefore it seems to me as if it could be a very profitable farming enterprise too.

However, I do not want to talk about frog farming, but point out what the Australian Government did to help the farmer establish a new industry. This is what I want to draw hon. members’ attention to today.

The value of the export of agricultural products reached a record sum in 1978. The value was no less than R1 500 million. Last year this figure dropped slightly, largely because prices abroad were a little lower. However, we farmers earn a considerable sum in foreign currency for our country nevertheless. In comparison with other products, the figure has dropped a little percentagewise over the past years. In 1976 the income from the export of agricultural products was 27%, in 1977 it was 22%, and in 1978 it amounted to 21%. 50% of the agricultural products that are exported, are exported in processed form. An interesting aspect that one does not often think of is the fact that agriculture makes one of the best, most positive contributions of all export products, because the imported inputs of agriculture are very low. The present figure is only 6%. 19% of our total agricultural production is exported, and we will all come to realize that the export of agricultural products is going to become relatively more important in future, because our mineral resources are becoming depleted. However, there is no limit to agriculture.

The Jacobs Committee made interesting discoveries in connection with the export of agricultural products, and made certain recommendations too. I quote—

This is an important finding. The present position is that aid is available for processed agricultural products only. The only aid which is given for unprocessed agricultural products, is the subsidy which is paid for the railage of export fruits. Which agricultural products are we actually exporting? Maize: to the value of approximately R280 million; fruit: R212 million; wool: R167 million; sugar: R169 million; and canned fruit: R131 million. Promoting export products is a complicated matter and I do not want to go into the various categories, as set out by the Van Huyssteen study group, but I just want to point out a few aspects of their findings. For instance, they discovered that, apart from the three categories A, B, and C, another category D should be added here, because it may be a very important aid to unprocessed agricultural products. This is the tax concession with regard to export marketing costs. Other industries have this benefit today. Why cannot agriculture receive it too?

A second matter to which the Van Huyssteen Committee refers, is the ever-increasing cost of freight. The hon. the Minister of Agriculture will be well aware of how freight is increasing because just like myself, he is a citrus farmer. The Jacobs Committee is also concerned about the ever-increasing cost of freight, and they recommend that freight tariffs should come into consideration for selective aid according to category C. This will mean that freight costs will form part of the added value, a percentage of which is repaid to the exporter by the State. One may perhaps think that this is an insignificant matter, but if one realizes that certain products are reimbursed by as much as 175% and 200% in this way, one realizes that it could be of considerable aid to agriculture.

In the third instance, the Jacobs Committee discovered that it is also essential for the income tax concession for the promotion of export, which is only applicable to certain products at the moment, to cover all exports. I am sure that the hon. the Deputy Minister of Agriculture and the hon. member for Carletonville will agree with me on this. At the moment, the position is that export maize, for instance, does not enjoy this advantage, because maize is sold at a fixed price and exported on contract. Wool producers cannot share in this either, because their product is bought and exported by agents. I think it is essential for a very serious look to be taken at this and that these farmers should not be discriminated against in this way.

Another concession to exporters was withdrawn in 1977, viz. the one with regard to expenditure on packaging material, and the Jacobs Committee is also of the opinion that this could be reintroduced to good effect. Apparently, the application of this concession caused administrative problems, but I think that with the computers one has today, it should not be impossible to put this concession into operation once again too. I realize that, as the Jacobs Committee said, this is a complicated problem. They also recommend that it should be referred to the Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs for further investigation. I want to ask the hon. the Minister of Agriculture today to arrange for this investigation to take place as soon as possible. It is very important for our agricultural exports. At the beginning of my speech I said that agriculture is a self-regenerating industry, and in the future we will have much more need of the foreign currency derived from the export of agricultural products.

I do not want to approach matters from the standpoint that we must turn our farmers into weaklings and always subsidize and help them. I want to adopt the approach that farmers must be prepared to compete on foreign trade markets. However, I believe nevertheless that it is essential for us to help our people to capture foreign trade. The everlasting insistence on the part of farmers on higher prices is disturbing, particularly if such prices are higher than those that can be obtained from foreign trade. In the long run, of course, this creates an unhealthy economic situation. Our farmers must try to keep production costs low. They must produce what they can sell, and always keep an eye on the world price. Foreign marketing is not easy, but we must continue to compete. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for Humansdorp has made a speech with which, I think, both sides of the House will agree. It concerns the export of agricultural produce. I must say this has been a most remarkably tranquil agricultural debate. Nobody has quarreled with anybody. I have heard the hon. the Minister congratulating members from my party for their contributions. I regret that I am perhaps going to introduce another note into the debate, because I am going to quarrel with the hon. the Minister. [Interjections.]

Last year in the agricultural debate we raised the question of an agricultural policy. The hon. the Minister was quite interesting in what he said earlier this year when, during the discussion of a private member’s motion on vertical integration in the agricultural industry, he said one could not have a policy in agriculture. I think it was also said by that hon. member of the “Mielie Mafia”, the hon. member for Carletonville, who does not appear to be here. [Interjections.] He said that one could not have a policy for agriculture because it had so many diverse aspects. He asked how one could have a policy. That is one of the most ridiculous things I have ever heard in my life. Of course one must have a policy. Any Government has to have an agricultural policy. The hon. the Prime Minister has talked about free enterprise. In an interjection, during question time today, the hon. the Minister of Agriculture supported that. He spoke about free enterprise when the hon. member for Wynberg asked about the prices of mealie-meal, and things like that. The hon. the Minister said that his policy was to rely on free enterprise. However, this is not practised in agriculture.

And back is the Mealie Mafia!

I am glad the hon. member for Carletonville has returned to the House, because I shall be talking about the maize industry a little later. [Interjections.]

Seeing that the hon. member has returned, let us talk about mealies. I should like to ask the hon. the Minister what his policy is with regard to mealies, because this year we are faced with a situation where there is going to be something like 3 million tons of surplus maize produced by the South African farmers. [Interjections.]

He will put up the price.

Four million tons.

Four million tons? One appreciates that farmers have additional costs and that input costs have escalated enormously, that part of the price the consumer is going to have to pay will be caused by the fact that we have to export the surplus mealies at a loss. There is no way, with the world market as it is at the moment, in which we can get the price we should like to get. Probably—and the hon. the Minister will know better than I do—we are going to lose something like R35 per ton on every ton of mealies we are going to export. My point is that surely the hon. the Minister can have a policy for this. Surely there should be a policy and he should decide either, as far as South Africa is concerned, that we are going to curtail mealie production and that some farmers must stop providing that much mealies …

Will you provide the rain?

The hon. the Deputy Minister must please wait until I have completed my argument. He must decide either that or whether he is going to use the mealies for something productive in South Africa, like the production of ethanol. What is his policy? Are we just going to keep on producing more and more mealies at a loss all the time and expect the South African consumer …

Yes.

If that is the hon. the Minister’s policy I regret to say that I cannot support it.

It is a very good policy.

The whole question of the mealie industry is a very crucial one for South African agriculture because, as has been mentioned, the agricultural industry itself is the greatest user of mealies. Chicken farmers, pig farmers, cattle farmers— everybody—use mealies. Possibly even our exports are reaching the stage where they might go further …

You are not quite correct.

Let us then say they are big users of mealies, if that will satisfy the hon. member for Carletonville. Look at the mess the mealie industry is in at the moment as far as the organization of the mealie farmers themselves are concerned. I am referring to the old Samso/Sampi fight. As the hon. the Minister knows we get a considerable amount of very convincing literature from Sampi pointing out that they, as a voluntary organization can produce more money from voluntary donations to run Sampi as a speciality organization concerned with mealies, than the South African Agricultural Union can produce from all their members. It is quite interesting that in the financial year which ended on 31 December 1979 Sampi’s income of R389 755 came entirely from voluntary contributions from their members. This is a healthy surplus. This is what one means when one talks about private enterprise. Sampi is a voluntary organization which gets stuck in because it wants to do a job for the mealie farmers—and they do a very good job indeed. Their quarrel is that they have made application for affiliation to the South African Agricultural Union, but the South African Agricultural Union will not have anything to do with them, not Samso, because Samso regrettably represents a sort of vested interest. They call the hon. member for Carletonville a member of the Mealie Mafia, and that is exactly what they are. It is interesting to me to see exactly who the people are.

Mr. Chairman, on a point of order: Is the hon. member for Orange Grove entitled to allege that the hon. member for Carletonville belongs to a “mealie mafia”? [Interjections.]

Mr. Chairman, I withdraw that and say that he belongs to a Mealie Broederbond. I do not think the hon. member will take exception to that term. [Interjections.] I am interested to see exactly who Samso represents, because in terms of what they get on a voluntary basis from their members and through membership subscriptions they get virtually nothing. Where does the South African Agricultural Union get its money? They get it all from compulsory levies on membership. I think at the moment they are getting something like R900 000 per year in all. [Interjections.]

I cannot deal with all the questions that are being asked at once. The hon. the Minister of Agriculture and the hon. member of the mealie broederbond are both asking questions at the same time. We have also had the accusation levelled that it has to do with the Broederbond and that all the members of Samso are members of the Broederbond …

You are an instigator.

… and I am not referring to the Mealie Broederbond. All the members of Sampi are not…

Mr. Chairman, on a point of order: May an hon. member refer to the hon. member for Orange Grove as an instigator?

Who referred to the hon. member for Orange Grove as an instigator?

The hon. member for Smithfield. [Interjections.]

Order! The hon. member for Smithfield must withdraw it.

Mr. Chairman, I withdraw it.

The hon. member for Orange Grove may proceed.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The point I am raising is actually a very serious one. I know some hon. members are considering this with considerable levity, but the situation in the mealie industry is not funny at all. I do not believe the Government has an adequate policy as far as mealies are concerned. I sometimes wonder what the hon. the Minister regards as his responsibility with regard to the portfolio he occupies. Does he regard himself as being a representative of the farmer and that his job is to do what the farmers want, or does he represent the broader South African society and says that we must have a healthy agricultural industry and he must do his best for the consumer?

Yes.

I am glad he says that. If that is the situation, I believe part of his responsibility rests in getting together with Sampi, because it is quite apparent to me that Sampi represents more mealie farmers than Samso. That is without a doubt the case. One cannot argue about the figures.

But you said, as it were, that he had no agricultural policy. [Interjections.]

I do not know what that hon. member is saying. I wish he would stop muttering in the background.

I have very limited time left, but I still want to raise one point with the hon. the Minister. It has to do with sunflower seed oil.

Whose side are you on?

I do not care whose side I am on. I just want them to get together. That really is the answer. At the moment I believe that Samso are the fly in the ointment, because they are the ones who do not want to get together. They represent the vested interests.

It would be the wedding of the year.

I want to talk to the hon. the Minister about sunflower seed oil and the mess he made because he went off half-cock about sunflower seed oil as a fuel. We saw a pretty picture on television of the hon. the Minister driving a tractor with plenty of sunflower seed oil. Every farmer who could plant sunflowers made application for seed. They all decided they were going to plant sunflowers. Then the Oil Seeds Control Board got a terrible fright and decided that a very dangerous situation was going to develop. They then advised the farms to hold their horses and not to plant too many sunflowers because so many sunflowers would be produced that we would just not be able to market the produce. Everybody then pulled back. They restrained themselves and now we are in a situation where I believe it is even possible that we might have to import sunflower seed oil—as a result of that hon. the Minister not choosing his words carefully, not deciding what should be done and not having a policy in respect of sunflower seeds. [Time expired.]

On Monday you’ll get it in the neck my friend.

Mr. Chairman, this afternoon the hon. member for Orange Grove raised a matter which he knew absolutely nothing about. Let me say that if we want to see a fine mess in this country, we should let that hon. member loose to try to settle the fight between Sampi and Samso. That hon. member and his party cannot even settle the fight between Harry Schwarz and Helen Suzman, to say nothing of the fight between Samso and Sampi. I want to tell him that he can carry on as he likes in Orange Grove with the policy of the PFP and everything they are doing there, but he must leave this “private fight” of the maize farmers alone. We shall straighten things out ourselves.

That’s telling him!

I represent a constituency in which there are many Sampi members, but not one of them has ever joined that hon. member’s party. Those Sampi members still support the NP and they are still loyal to agriculture in South Africa, despite the decision taken in regard to levies. Surely there is no reason to drag this question of the disputes between Samso and Sampi into the political arena. We must refrain from doing that. It is not a political issue. The Sampi members in my constituency enjoy the same representation in this House as any member of Samso in that constituency. Just as I hold meetings with organized agriculture, I also meet members of Sampi to discuss their needs with them. We must not try to turn this dispute, which has lasted for years now, into a party-political issue. It is enough if we have to contend with the HNP, which is trying to get the Sampi people on to its side. It knows it can perhaps achieve something on a small scale there. The hon. members opposite, however, know that they cannot achieve anything with those people. Why are they trying to do so them?

Although the hon. member told the hon. the Minister today that we do not have an agricultural policy, I do not wish to become technical now in order to demonstrate that we do. We do have an agricultural policy, but we say time and again that it is not easy to have an agricultural policy in South Africa. If South Africa had not had an agricultural policy, I want to know from the hon. member how it is possible that we have then been able, with land of the same potential which it had 20, 25 and 30 years ago, to progress from a situation of shortages to a situation in which there are surpluses? How does one explain that if South Africa does not have a progressive agricultural policy? We need only consider what is being spent in South Africa on agricultural research. If that is not policy, I do not know what policy is. By means of research what is expected of the South African farmer is being clearly spelt out. If surpluses are a disadvantage in South Africa today, the increasing productivity of the South African farmer must also be regarded as a disadvantage. Despite the fact that land has been ceded to homelands, and the fact that the productivity of that land was reduced when it was incorporated in those areas, the White farmers of South Africa have nevertheless succeeded in raising their productivity. We must not consider any surplus food in South Africa today to be a burden to this country.

Hear, hear!

If we did that we would be making the biggest mistake of our lives. As far as I am concerned, we can keep on producing surplus foodstuffs. The taxpayers of this country will simply have to contribute towards this, because we do not know what the morrow will bring. That hon. member should preferably stay out of these things, because he knows sweet Fanny Adams about them. [Interjections.] However, I should now like to discuss another aspect.

No, man, tell him off a little more. [Interjections.]

I should like to touch on another aspect, and perhaps I shall have to tell the hon. the Minister off a little!

Reference has been made to the situation of border farmers. In the second speech which I made in this House during the discussion of the then Bantu Administration Vote, I discussed the position of border farmers. We have made a commendable attempt, on the basis of the recommendations of the Steyn report, to try to remedy the situation of the border farmers. The consolidation history of South Africa demonstrates that more and more border farmers are being created every year. That is the situation. Let us look at the example of the Transvaal. More than 52% of the borders of the Transvaal are also the borders of Black States, and here I am not even mentioning the non-independent Black States. I am referring only to the independent Black areas.

Whose policy is that?

Despite all the praise I have for the ideas contained in the Steyn Commission report on remedying the situation of border farmers, I nevertheless want to say that we are engaged in a tremendously expensive project, a project which is going to cost us a vast amount of money. In this connection I should like to make an appeal. We know what the situation there is, and that it is going to escalate. I want to associate myself with the hon. member for Marico and say that we should look at these border farmers from the same point of view as we looked at industries which were being centralized and moved to border areas. I am also saying this, in my capacity as chairman of the Commission of Co-operation and Development. We have reached an absolute impasse. It is not pleasant when Black Cabinet members come to see one and say that they demand a certain part of the Transvaal because there are no longer any White people there, or because the White people who own the land there, live elsewhere. They point out that the terrorists are in fact coming across those areas to attack us, but that no terrorists are coming through their areas. What must one say when they ask us rather to give the land to them, because they have an over-abundance of people whom they will settle there to stop the terrorists? It is not easy to say these things today, but these are the hard facts. We know that this problem will perpetuate itself. Consequently we must make timeous provision. If we can begin timeously on a small scale to apply benefits which are similar to the border industry benefits which are being made available to border industries, it is not going to cost us this vast amount of money. It is going to cost us money in small but frequent quantities. It will not be necessary for us to spend large amounts annually, since the S.A. Development Trust will be able to buy out land from the White farmers where new border farmers can in turn be resettled. In this way the entire border farming policy can be adapted to and geared to the purchasing programme of the Development Trust. We must know that if we establish a border at a certain point today, and we consequently have a new border farmer, we are creating a new situation within a radius of 20, 30, 40 or 50 km from that border. After all, it is not simply a matter of whether that person is on that piece of land or not. There are other factors that go with it. We know what the position is. The hon. the Minister of Transport Affairs must close down the small stations there. The small schools must be closed down. Entire communities are affected. Within the next year South Africa will have to take among the most important decisions in its history relating to this matter. We as farmers are in duty bound to ensure that we as farmers are not left behind in this process. I am not asking today, I am pleading. I do not wish to argue the matter any further with the hon. member for Orange Grove, because his arguments were concerned with matters which are not important, but this matter is so important to us that we have the situation today that we have to call upon our farmers, in the interests of South Africa, to make sacrifices in order to confirm consolidation in this country. It is difficult for us to speak to our farmers about this matter. We cannot argue it away. Everyone can see what has happened in those areas. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, I should like to associate myself with the plea which the hon. member for Schweizer-Reneke made to the Minister of Agriculture, viz. that very serious consideration be given to the position of the border farmers in our country. I also wish to associate myself with his plea, and that of the hon. member for Marico, that these farmers should be considered to be border farmers and dealt with on the same basis as border industries. I should like to say here today that I am very grateful that the hon. member for Orange Grove is not also a farmer, because I am certain that if the hon. member for Orange Grove walks into a garden, all the flowers will wilt. If he walks past a cow shed, the milk will turn sour and if he walks through a herd of cattle they will go down with foot-and-mouth disease. I want to thank the other hon. members of the PFP and the other Opposition parties for the wonderful contributions which they made here today and for their co-operation. The only false note in this debate today was sounded by the hon. member for Orange Grove.

I should just like to make a brief plea. The Department of Agricultural Credit and Land tenure is at present buying out land for Defence Force purposes in the Northern Cape. We have been experiencing a certain problem in those areas. I should now like to avail myself of this opportunity to convey my very sincere thanks to the hon. the Deputy Minister of Agriculture and to the Secretary to the Department of Agricultural Credit and Land Tenure for their sympathy and for the assistance which they have rendered to our people under those circumstances. We have had cases where farming units were divided in two when land was needed for the Defence Force. The hon. the Minister and his department were very sympathetically-disposed to us in this respect that we cannot leave a farmer with an uneconomic farming unit and we must help him by buying out the other part as well. There were certain situations where farms were to be purchased in two phases, where one portion of a person’s land was purchased in one year and the other portion was perhaps to be purchased the next year. In this respect, as well, I want to thank the hon. the Minister and his department for the great sympathy with which they acted in such cases. I wish to address a request to the hon. the Minister and the hon. the Deputy Minister today, i.e. that although it has been announced that this land is to be purchased in various phases, it should preferably be purchased simultaneously in the ensuing year.

Then, too, I wish to raise another matter which we have already broached with the hon. the Deputy Minister. Most farmers whose farms are purchased wish to continue their farming activities. These are not farmers who wish to leave their farms. They must vacate their farms as a result of a request by the State. A farmer whose land is purchased by the State, and who would still like to continue to farm, must of course purchase another farm elsewhere. When he purchases land again, he once again has to pay transfer duties and the conveyancing costs. Now I wish to ask the hon. the Minister, when the State purchases farms, to consider transfer duties and conveyancing as an expenditure which the farmers in question can, in their turn, recover from the State, and which they can claim as an expense.

Not only do I wish to make an appeal for this concession in my part of the world, where land is now being purchased for the purposes of the Defence Force, but also for areas where land is going to be purchased in future, with a view to the consolidation of the national States. Last year the hon. the Minister paid a visit to the Northern Cape, and we know that through his mediation an investigation was instituted into the possibility of the Kalahari pipeline. Organized agriculture has also been working to this end for years. As MP for Gordonia, the hon. the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs has also been working to achieve this for years. Consequently I wish to request on this occasion that the entire Northern Cape area adjoining Botswana should also be considered by the hon. the Minister as an area to which the Population Promotion of the Density of Designated Areas Act ought to be made applicable.

If the idea of the Kalahari pipeline can be realized, I believe that it could make a tremendous contribution to increasing the population density in that part of the Kalahari adjoining Botswana. I trust that the hon. the Minister will find it possible to be of assistance to us in regard to these few matters.

Mr. Chairman, I should like to make use of this opportunity to associate myself with the thanks expressed by the hon. the Minister to Mr. Van Schalkwyk, who is retiring, and also to mention how helpful he has been to me in the short time that I have occupied this post. In the second instance, I want to convey my thanks to Mr. Paul Nel who is leaving the service of the hon. the Minister and joining a different department. To be the private secretary of a Minister is no easy task. To be the private secretary of the hon. the Minister of Agriculture is doubly difficult. [Interjections.] Therefore, on behalf of my staff and myself I want to convey my sincere thanks to Paul for his outstanding co-operation. It has been a pleasant 18 months in which I have had the privilege of working with him.

In the third instance I should like to associate myself with the hon. the Minister by saying to Mr. Van Blommestein that it has been a pleasant year. I do not think I have had a more pleasant experience in my life than co-operating with Mr. Van Blommestein. He is leaving our service at the end of this month and entering that of another department. Allow me to say that my loss is that department’s gain. If there is a better official anywhere in the Public Service, I have yet to meet him. I do not know him. I want to convey my sincere thanks to Mr. Van Blommenstein for the wonderful service he rendered the department and myself.

Now I should like to react to a few of the speeches made by hon. members and to some of the questions they have asked.

I want to begin with the hon. member for Wynberg, who devoted a short section of his speech to financing. In general I agree with him. However, I want to make the statement that on analysing many of the applications, I found that farmers undertake many of the long-term obligations they enter into using short-term capital. I should like to sound a warning today. It is impossible to purchase land with short-term capital, with an overdrawn bank account, unless one has enormous capital. It is a dangerous practice which will catch up with one eventually. In the normal course a bank registers a mortgage in regard to such short-term obligations. We know that the policy of the Land Bank with regard to overdrawn bank facilities is a sound policy. Recently they have adjusted their policy to be able to grant a little more. Hon. members must understand clearly that the bank keeps a covering mortgage in regard to an overdrawn bank account. If all its money is not paid—and sometimes it is not possible—it will not give up its first mortgage, with the result that that man is also unable to make use of the Land Bank loan. This is a dangerous practice and I want to warn against it. People must not incur long-term obligations and then try to finance them with short-term money. That is a very dangerous practice.

I also want to say to the hon. member that the maximum production loan, as he probably knows, has been increased to R40 000. In this regard too, however, many of our people are labouring under a misconception. Only a person who can prove that his previous harvest was a failure qualifies for the maximum production loan of R40 000 from the Department of Agricultural Credit and Land Tenure.

I now wish to refer to a matter raised by the hon. member for Potgietersrus. The hon. member asked to be excused. Unfortunately he is not able to be present this afternoon. The hon. member for Marico also raised it in the Second Reading debate of the budget. The hon. member for Schweizer-Reneke made a suggestion to which I shall react. The hon. member for Kuruman also raised certain matters.

With regard to the issue of the border areas I want to say to the hon. members that there was major disappointment—and I believe it was justified—among the border farmers when the recommendations of the Steyn Committee and later the Jacobs Committee, and the provisions of the Act were not carried out However I want to say that after we had investigated at great length the prescriptions contained in the Act and the financial implications thereof in conjunction with the Treasury, we came to the conclusion that it was simply impossible to implement the Act at this stage.

I do not want to say anything more about it, except just to make one thing very clear once again, and that is that it was a joint decision. One department alone did not decide on it; we decided on it together and reached this conclusion because we realized the dilemma of the country as a whole and also realized that a balance had to be maintained with regard to the expenditure of funds. We took all those things into account and reached the conclusion that we could not possibly spend such an amount on this one action at this stage. Accordingly we had to sit down and think about a scheme that we could in fact implement in those areas. Eventually we came to the decision that it would be better to set aside special funds in terms of the Agricultural Credit and Land Tenure Act with which farmers in those areas could be assisted. The hon. the Minister of Finance then allocated R10 million to us with the promise that if it was not sufficient, we could come and ask for more. I think it is perhaps as well that one should just analyse the situation as it stood the day before yesterday, in other words up to 30 April, and just provide figures in order to point out to hon. members that whereas some people thought that this scheme had no viability and I said that we should give the scheme a chance, I now go so far as to say that it has exceeded our wildest expectations. Up to 30 April, 242 people applied for assistance. 43 of these applications are still being considered; in other words, 199 applications have been considered. I want to give hon. members an analysis of the various applications. Land sales: 57 applications have been granted up to a total sum of R4 316 000. The number of applications refused is 59. Therefore, approximately 50% have been granted, and that is a very high percentage. Hon. members must understand clearly that in view of the Press publicity given this scheme, several people, including non-farmers, applied. In any event, 57 were granted, amounting to R4 316 000.

Payment of debt, in other words the consolidation of the debt of existing farmers: 47 were assisted; 29 could not be assisted, on the one hand because their position was too poor, and on the other because they perhaps did not fall under Agricultural Credit but fell under the Land Bank. May I also just say in passing that we have the absolute assurance of the managing director of the Land Bank that they will co-operate with us wholeheartedly with regard to this effort of ours. An amount of R1 600 000 was granted to the 47 who have been assisted.

Purchase of stock: 24 were assisted with an amount of R350 000 and 11 were not assisted.

Purchase of implements, waterworks, harvest production loans, improvements etc.: Hon. members must understand that this scheme in fact operates from 1 April, but we announced that farmers could apply as from 1 January. The vast majority of applications only began to stream in towards the middle of February and the beginning of March. Loans totalling R6 495 000 were granted to 142 farmers. Hon. members will note that this is already almost R6½ million already allocated out of a budget of R10 million. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, I rise merely to afford the hon. the Deputy Minister an opportunity to complete his speech.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the hon. member. The number of farmers from remote areas who have been established totals 11; in other words, we have established 11 new people in this short period. Of the number of farmers who were formerly lessees of land in these areas, 24 have now been assisted to purchase the land, in other words, permanent establishment.

There are cases where father and son farm together and where the land is too small. By assisting the son to obtain a piece of land we make the unit as a whole economic and cause the son to remain there. In the fifth instance, there is the case of the landowner who does not occupy his land on a full-time basis due to the fact that it may not be an economic unit, that it is too small to make a good living or that he has too few livestock. Some of these people have been assisted to establish themselves permanently.

We have also announced that in the granting of loans in the border areas, the norm applied by the Agricultural Credit Board will be adjusted to some extent to meet the needs. In my speech on the border areas I said that the means test would be substantially adjusted and I want to point out three categories to hon. members where we have substantially adjusted the means test. For example, terms of 30 years are granted, but only interest need be paid for the first three years, in other words, there is no repayment of capital in the first three years.

In the second place I refer to the purchase of small farms which are not necessarily economic units. Hon. members know that it is the policy of the department not to finance uneconomic units, but in this regard we also adopt the standpoint that if a man is willing to make a living on a smaller farm, we shall provide him with the financing because it will enable him to obtain an economic unit at a later stage. Accordingly we also finance people who have uneconomic units, but at the same time we make the unit more viable by giving him a cheaper interest rate and a longer repayment term.

In the third place I refer to livestock. The aid usually provided over a five-year term is at present being provided over a 12-year term with interest for only the first two years.

Sir, my time is very limited but I do just wish to refer hon. members to a few cases which have come up, just to illustrate my point. A man applied for R30 000 for the purchase of land. On 5 May 1979 he purchased the land for R35 000. He paid a deposit of R5 000 and pays interest at R200 per month. The balance of the purchase price has to be paid by 31 May 1984. He has already spent approximately R9 600 on the farm on irrigation equipment, deforestation, etc. The board gave him R30 000 over a period of 30 years, of which the first three years involves only interest.

I do not want to go into all these cases. Perhaps I could just refer to one which I found extremely interesting. Mr. Manie Maritz, the former wrestler, gave another man at Thabazimbi the opportunity to establish himself on the border by employing him. He paid him R100 per month and gave him a piece of land as well as irrigation equipment and all the implements necessary to cultivate his land which was under irrigation. Moreover he received the yield from his land and in addition received a heifer as a present, just to obtain this man’s services to repair his machinery. The board granted this man a production loan of almost R12 000 although he had no security.

This is the kind of man we are establishing there now. I always knew that we could achieve success by means of this scheme if we gave careful consideration to every applicant and sought out our people by way of agricultural credit committees, who know a great deal about this, and by means of inquiries we have instituted so that we may place high-calibre people on the borders.

I also wish to refer to valuations. The hon. member for Potgietersrus also said a few words about valuation. As the hon. members for Schweizer-Reneke and Kuruman rightly said, one of the most sensitive matters one could ever deal with is taking people’s land from them for use for other purposes. It may be a family farm in the Eastern Cape which has been in the family for 120 years. Such things are heartbreak cases, and therefore we always try to carry out the valuation in such a way as to cause the person the least possible inconvenience. However, hon. members know that it is a recognized fact that when the State purchases land, the people push up their claims. This department—and I say it without fear of contradiction—approaches this matter with great compassion, and gives the assurance that there is constant consultation with the valuators of the department in this regard.

The hon. member mentioned that the budget of the Department of Co-operation and Development for the buying out of land had been substantially increased. The department is attracting more valuators from the private sector in an effort to appoint skilled people. We are going to appoint another five valuators to the establishment—this gives a total of 10 valuators on the establishment of the department—in an effort to accommodate the increased allocation to the Department of Co-operation and Development. However, hon. members must bear in mind that to determine the valuation of land is a lengthy process. An analysis has to be carried out, a report has to be written, there are possible inquiries to be disposed of and interviews are conducted. Therefore this is a long process and cannot be disposed of within a day or two. When one values land, one has to be quite sure that no misunderstanding can arise with regard to the matter.

The hon. member for Kuruman asked what the policy was when a person’s land was bought out and a line was drawn which could cause him to be saddled with an uneconomic unit. I state categorically that if a person is saddled with an uneconomic unit and the norms of the Department of Agricultural Technical Services show that it is an uneconomic unit, the State will have to buy out that entire unit. It is the policy that the State must then buy it out. If there are cases where hon. members are of the opinion that a person is saddled with an uneconomic unit, they must please bring them to the attention of the department so that attention may be given to them.

The hon. member also referred to transfer duty and transfer costs. The policy is that when a person’s land is bought out, he has a proven claim with regard to transfer duty and transfer costs for new purchases. He can therefore claim for transfer duty and transfer costs if he wants to purchase land again. However, hon. members must also understand that it is not possible for the State to tell the person that when he buys land again some day, the State will repay his transfer duty and transfer costs. That is not possible. When a person buys land again immediately, that affords an easy solution, but if he buys a piece of land again after a period of five, six or seven years, it is impossible. The policy is that the State pays a person’s transfer duty and transfer costs based on the valuation of his land and on what it would cost him to purchase another piece of land at the same price. I want to state very clearly that this is a fair policy and where such a claim is not accepted, it is a deviation from the policy.

The hon. member for Carletonville also discussed valuations. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, with regard to what the hon. the Deputy Minister has said about the policy in relation to the establishment of farms on the border areas, I think we have heard a real cry from the heart of the hon. member for Schweizer-Reneke here today when he said that this was not a situation that was going to ease. I agree. It is not a situation which can be solved simply in a matter of days or in a couple of years. It is something that is going to go on and on and which is going to become more and more serious as the pressure on us is increased by people who want to enter our country from outside, as is inevitably going to happen. I think we are not simply dealing here with a farming matter and it is quite impossible for us simply to say that this is a matter which the hon. the Deputy Minister and the Department of Agriculture will have to solve. I think we have to accept this as being part of the national strategy we are always talking about and realize that if specific steps have to be taken, the hon. the Minister, the hon. the Deputy Minister and other Government departments have to be involved in this because in effect we are protecting our borders. We are not asking farmers to enter those areas simply to be farmers. I think it is vitally important that we should realize this. The farmers who enter those areas know, as every hon. member in the House knows, that they can sometime, possibly soon, be involved in a situation similar to which our farmer friends in Zimbabwe were involved in.

I will discuss that aspect on Monday.

I would welcome a discussion on that point with the hon. the Minister. May I just raise with the hon. the Deputy Minister, while we are discussing the matter, the legislation which was passed here last year with regard to the resettlement of people in the border areas. I think it is accepted that it cannot be applied. Are we now going to withdraw the legislation, are we going to repeal it or is it going to remain on the Statute Book because it might hopefully be applied at some stage in the future? The hon. the Deputy Minister mentioned some figures. If one takes the value of land at R50 per hectare, R10 million is not going to buy many farms. One is not going to get many farms for that amount. One can perhaps buy out 50 farms and make them into economic units. One will be able to recover one’s money, but it is going to be on a long-term basis. Therefore the amounts of money involved in this scheme to resettle farmers in the border areas are astronomical and far exceed the amount of money for consolidation that the hon. member for Schweizer-Reneke was talking about. Therefore I do not think that we should expect an easy or quick solution to this matter if the State has to buy farms and consolidate them, making them economic units, which would be the ideal solution if we could do it. However, as was said by the hon. member for Standerton, this is not simply a question of getting farmers to go there. Farmers will go there if there is an economic living to be made there, if they can show a profit and if they can rear their families in decency and dignity. One of the problems is that the farms have become too small. The rising cost structure, the input structure, and numerous other factors have made what was previously an economic farm unit uneconomic. One must therefore from that point of view accept that the numbers of farmers are going to shrink. It is unavoidable. They have to become fewer because more land is going to be required to make a living. However, the problem lies in the number of people who cannot make a living there and are leaving the farms. Only if we can maintain a healthy number of farmers there, farmers who will be economically placed, will we have enough people there to maintain the kind of border situation that we want. The problem is that many people have simply left and their farms are lying there and are occupied by Black people who do not have the direction which the White man can give them. That is the cardinal point of what we are trying to achieve, viz. White farmers in those border areas to rally around the Black people who are living there in order to knit together an elastic defence. That is what we want. Those farmers could play an absolutely vital part in this whole effort. I am interested in what the hon. the Deputy Minister said, viz. that people can get land over a 30-year period with the first three years free of interest, etc. However, it is only going to work if one can provide the people there with an economic existence. They will have to be placed in a position to make a profit out of it. I wonder whether we realize that so many of these border communities are dying communities. The schools have closed down, people have left and stations have closed because the number of people participating in the economic life have been steadily decreasing. One now has the additional threat of people crossing our borders for the purpose of waging war against us. I wonder whether it would not be possible, if we want to keep the farms going and it is not possible to settle enough people there at the moment, to use national servicemen as a short-term measure to bolster the confidence of the people who are there. One could put one or two servicemen on certain selected farms, scattered across the districts, so that there would be a trained reserve of people on those farms. I am sure the hon. the Minister of Defence could find enough people who are farmers. One could quite easily find that in this way one would be able to run a farm even for an absentee landowner. The hon. the Deputy Minister was quoted as saying that absentee landowners would have to make sure that there was a White person living on the farm in order to maintain the White presence. This is not always possible from an economic point of view, but it might be possible to help with a military trained person who could be maintained there at the expense of the State to keep that property going, in order to help us solve this problem of the defence of our borders while we are obtaining a new crop of people. The point that I want to make is that the old generation of farmers there are dying out, according to all the information I get, and the young have left.

We have to repopulate, if not the entire area then as large a part of it as possible, with young people who want to make their living there, start families there and who are also willing to build up the border areas again. One of the problems of course lies with young city women who marry farmers and then refuse to accompany their husbands back to their farms in the border areas. They do not seem to be willing to live there under the present circumstances. Fortunately, I believe, these people represent only a minority. Most people are prepared to make that sacrifice and to work themselves into the ground in order to make a success of life there. Of course, everyone who begins farming today should realize precisely what he is letting himself in for, and should also be prepared to face all the trials and tribulations that are part and parcel of a farming career. It is a hard life.

Moreover, if someone has to go farming in the border areas with an additional sword hanging over his head—the ever-present danger of terrorist incursions from across the border—what is expected of those people is, I submit, quite excessive. Therefore I think we would be well justified to look at a system such as this and try to work out how a fully trained reserve of people could be settled in the border areas, even if it is as few as 15 people to a district. However, they should be people who are fully trained in things such as radio communication, detection of landmines, etc. I believe this is something which is going to be of increasing importance in future. People must be persuaded to settle in border areas as soon as possible. Certain concessions have already been granted in this respect, and we welcome them. These people may, for instance, buy stock at favourable rates. I believe that if we are going to send people to settle in the border areas they should be able to obtain cattle at reasonable rates.

There is something else which, I believe, which is also essential. That is that special attention should be given to the border areas from the extension point of view. One thing we have to admit is that every farming area has its own unique problems and also has its own specific requirements that have to be met in order to make a success of farming in that particular area. One can travel 50 miles or a 100 miles along the border and see how the situation changes from area to area. What I should like to see is a welding together, if I may describe it in this way, of the extension departments with their specialized knowledge and the older and more experienced farmers who also have a specialized knowledge of farming problems in their particular areas, a knowledge which has been acquired by way of practical experience over many years. If these two entities could be unified, far better ways could be established of giving assistance and invaluable advice to new farmers settling in such areas, farmers who do not yet know farming conditions in the particular area, farmers who have been sent there by the State, at considerable expense to the State, and who should be able to draw on the experience of both the extension departments and the older farmers in the area by way of liaising on an organized and well planned basis.

It often happens that young farmers who have all the academic knowledge and necessary university training, establish themselves on farms. What happens, however? It often happens that they suddenly find themselves clashing head-on with the expertise and the know-how of the older, more experienced farmers around them. In a situation like this, I believe the department would be well advised to ensure not only that the extension advice is available, but also that the advice and the assistance of the local community is drawn in, that these two factors are put together in order to make absolutely certain that the new farmer has every chance to make a living.

In cases where the State has made it possible for new farmers to move into the border districts, bearing in mind the considerable amount of public money involved in such a project, I should like to ask the hon. the Deputy Minister … [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, I agree with most of the things that the hon. member for Mooiriver has just said. Of course, I believe that one must guard against a psychosis arising and the danger in the border areas being exaggerated. Basically, however, I am in agreement with the hon. member.

Both the hon. the Minister and the hon. the Deputy Minister have asked us to criticize them where possible. If I were to judge the general spirit and atmosphere of the debate thus far, it seems to me as if there is not much criticism to be expressed about the two hon. gentlemen. They are receiving more thanks than criticism. It seems to me as if we are very satisfied with these two leaders. We are continually negotiating with them, but it seems to me as if they are simply not giving us any problems. They are being nothing but helpful towards us.

On behalf of the banana farmers of Natal I should also like to convey a word of hearty thanks to the hon. the Minister. Over the past two years, the banana farmers of Natal have been attempting to have themselves included in the marketing scheme. Our Natal banana farmers have, of course, always been known as the “banana boys”. [Interjections.] However, we have our problems too. I believe that the banana farmers realize that they cannot market their products in an orderly manner today without some control. During this period, the management of the Banana Control Board has been particularly good to us. The reason why it unfortunately dragged on for such a long time, was because the Marketing Board was preoccupied with political problems. There was a faction, consisting of Indian farmers and people with established interests, such as ripening interests, who opposed the scheme. It is a pity that they gave these people a hearing. The Banana Control Board, however, pursuaded the other banana farmers to donate some of the funds to us in order to buy out those established interests. We want to convey our sincere thanks to them. I want to make the promise that the Natal banana farmers—and there are many of them—can pull their weight. Fortunately, we can still produce bananas in dry land conditions, and I do not think it will be long before the Natalians will become the “Banana Boys” once again. They say there that we produce all the good things that begin with a “P”. [Interjections.] “Piesangs”, pananas, pawpaws and pineapples are all good things which our country produces. [Interjections.]

The Marketing Board has also bent the Marketing Act so that the Indian farmers can retain their established markets, like the Indian market in Durban and the market in Clairwood. I think that the problems that were experienced with regard to the Indians, have been ironed out completely. We bent over backwards to help them, and I am sure that the Indian Council is satisfied too today. I think that the Indian banana farmers will realize that this was to their advantage too.

I should also like to mention something about the guidance services that are provided in South Africa today. There are sections of the country, for instance the Highveld, where only a third of the vacancies are filled, and I would not be surprised if it was even less in Natal. However, this may perhaps be ascribed to many factors. I also understand that a controversy has arisen in this regard. The one group, the co-operative group, and the private entrepreneurs and the department are accusing one another of enticing one another’s guidance officers away. A good guidance officer is hard to come by. He is a person with a very good training. If he wants to reach a certain level of promotion, he must have an Honours and a Masters degree besides his B.Sc. degree. They are not only instructed in agricultural technical aspects, because if they study further, they also study the human sciences, like psychology, education and sociology. They are people who have undergone further training in industrial management. The result is that these people are in very high demand. There are a good number of hon. members as well as an hon. Deputy Minister here in the House, who used to be guidance officers. Hon. members will see that the directors-general and the people who hold the top posts, are people who were employed in the guidance service. They know agriculture through and through and they also know the problems of the farmers. They are balanced people with a knowledge of mankind.

In a report which was drawn up a few years ago by the Human Sciences Research Council, I saw that, taking into account the duration of training and other criteria that are applied, after clergymen, the guidance officers are the most poorly paid of all professional groups. However, I do think that the clergymen have other advantages, which the report did not take into account. It is possible.

I do not think I can offer the solution to these problems today. The position today is such that the department has to maintain its guidance services. The people who are in private business, are commodity-orientated. A specialist in a certain direction has to promote his commodity. However, there is not a single man in the field of agriculture who is a specialist in running a farm as a business. It often happens that a farmer can be misled by a certain guidance officer, who tells him that he must produce this or that, whilst he does not take the rest of the farming activities on that farm into account and is not acquainted with all the economic facets of agriculture. First of all I want to talk about the problems that exist there. I am referring here to Landbounuus and some of the problems mentioned in it by Dr. Erasmus. He talks about guidance in South Africa being at the cross roads. There must be overhead planning in agriculture. Today, the position is such that the research services are also suffering, because even the research officers are being used for guidance by the co-operatives and other private bodies. Consequently, that basic research is not being carried out. If I were to consider the situation in Natal, I could refer for instance to the meat industry, the dairy industry and all the various commodities that have specialist guidance officers at their disposal. Then, in all modesty, if I could perhaps make a suggestion, it would be that one should close most of the guidance offices today and concentrate them in one place in the agri-ecological regions. For instance, there is a research station in Dundee, North Natal. Concentrate our guidance officers there, train them to be specialists in what ever the chief farming directions in that region may be, for instance in the groundnut industry, agronomy or the wool industry. Similarly, one could concentrate people in the midlands of Natal, at Cedara, and train the guidance officers there in the dairy industry or in pasture science. Similarly, in Griqualand East, for instance, one could train people according to that region’s requirements. Then one could possibly retain the guidance officers in the isolated regions only, where there are no research stations. I think that one could possibly think along these lines; definitely in Natal. Then the problems with regard to laws that must be administered, could possibly be solved in another way too. One has to solve this in one way or another, for instance in co-operation with the magistrate’s offices—and here I am referring specifically to the agricultural credit committees, the Weeds Act and the Soil Conservation Act— or in another way in which these laws as such can be administered there. I do not think it is worth the trouble today to keep guidance offices where the research stations are situated in the agri-ecological regions. One must concentrate one’s team in one spot, because guidance is so refined today. For instance, one makes use of team work, a computer and all sorts of similar things. This is a very extensive problem and I am very grateful that I was simply able to draw attention to it, and to put it on record too. I still think that the department is providing a good service with the few people at their disposal. Nevertheless, one must think rationally. I think all the various bodies, the co-operatives, the private bodies and the department, must agree today, and I also think that these people must be concentrated according to agri-ecological regions, at the research stations that exist there.

Mr. Chairman, since it is Friday and there are many hon. members who want to apply our fine agricultural policy on their farms tomorrow, I now move—

Agreed to.

Mr. Speaker, I move—

Agreed to.