The Committee was briefed by the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform (DRDLR) on its Annual Performance Plan for 2015/16, with the Minister and Deputy Minister in attendance. Due to the complexity of the agrarian transformation space, the DRDLR had developed a rural economy transformation model which would be implemented through the Agrarian Transformation System.

The Portfolio Committee’s Content Advisor provided a summary of the key financial and performance recommendations contained in the 2013/14 Budgetary Review and Recommendations Report, and described those that had been brought to the attention of the Minister of the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF), as well as to the Minister of Finance.

The Chief Land Claims Commissioner from the Commission of Restitution of Land Rights presented the strategic plan for 2015-2020 as well as the Annual Performance Plan 2015/2016 to the Committee. She emphasised that there was still a need for the Commission to be clearly delineated in function and fact from the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform (DRDLR) particularly since the Commission reported directly to the Minister.

The Department of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries is currently developing a project in conjunction with the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform (DRDLR) to create Agri-parks in locations throughout South Africa. These Agri-parks aim to involve smallholders and local producers in the entire process of agriculture to address both food security and poverty. The Department hopes to fight issues such as the 14 million hungry South Africans, unused potential farmland, and the inequality between private agricultural business and the people.

This Policy Brief presents some of the lessons learned from research work related to the search for appropriate mechanisms to manage forest resources, and conflicts arising from contested rights to forest resources in eastern and central Africa (ECA).

In Mwanza district, Malawi, thirteen villages have, for the last five years, been involved in a project to make fruit juice from indigenous species - Baobab and Tamarind. As a result people in the area are now planting more indigenous trees, rather than cutting them for charcoal and firewood.

One of the main technical knowledge gaps for sustainable timber production in tropical forests is the lack of reliable information on tree growth, which is indispensable for defining cutting cycles and estimating harvest volumes. We applied dendroecological methods to measure and model the diameter growth (dbh) of mahogany Swietenia macrophylla and cedar Cedrela odorata in humid tropical forests of community-managed concessions in the Maya Biosphere Reserve, Petén, Guatemala. The width of growth rings was determined in increment cores from 32 trees of S. macrophylla and 27 of C.

Forests and other tree-based systems such as agroforestry contribute to food and nutritional security in myriad ways. Directly, trees provide a variety of healthy foods including fruits, leafy vegetables, nuts, seeds and edible oils that can diversify diets and address seasonal food and nutritional gaps. Forests are also sources of a wider range of edible plants and fungi, as well as bushmeat, fish and insects.

Technical information

The review, coordinated by Bioversity International, presents an impartial, evidence-based review of cacao propagation methods, to serve as a basis for the assessment and implementation of strategies for providing farmers with quality planting materials, adapted to current and future needs (cultural, institutional, technical, environmental and financial). It describes the various propagation methods available for the production and supply of large numbers of cacao plants to growers.