The Eastern Cape is looking up in terms of its 2017 maize harvest.
Rural Development and Agrarian Reform MEC, Mlibo Qoboshiyane, said revised crop estimates show that commercial farms in the province are expected to yield 26 400 tons of white maize, from an earlier prediction of just 10 000 tons.
“As the Eastern Cape Rural Development and Agrarian Refrom MEC, I welcome the new estimated crop estimates of the maize yield for the current season for our province released by the national crop estimates committee,” Qoboshiyane said.
“In our province, the 2016 estimate was that commercial farmers would produce 10 000 tons of white maize from 2000 hectares of land and 66000 tons of yellow maize from 12000 hectares.”
“The new projections estimate that commercial farms in the province will yield 26400 tons of white maize from 4400 hectares planted, while yellow maize is estimated to give us 57000 tons from 9500 hectares of land planted.”
“With regards to non-commercial maize production, which includes projects funded by our department on the main, the 2016 projections estimated a yield of 122 106 tons of white maize from 67 840 hectares of land, 135 705 tons of yellow maize from 64 620 hectares of land,” he said.
“The newly released estimates now project a yield of 223 000 tons of white maize from the 100 500 hectares of land planted and 245 050 tons of yellow maize from 105 500 hectares of land planted,” Qoboshiyane added
He said the “new estimates flow from the recent amount of rains experienced by the province, which allowed us as the agriculture sector to increase the number of hectares we planted.’
“The 2016 estimates limited the number of hectares to be planted because of the drought condition that made it impossible to plant maize in some parts of the province,” the MEC said.
“The increased number of hectares mean that there will be more maize for human food consumption as processed maize meal, feedstock for livestock and enough stock for farmers and producers to sell to the markets to earn income,” Qoboshiyane said.
“The new projected yields will help our food security programmes as more people who participate in our programmes in rural villages of our province, in the Rural Enterprise Development Hubs, Land Reform farms, will now yield more produce.”
“We call on those who will sell maize and other crops not to hike prices because that will affect poor and working class people,” he concluded.
