About Producer Farmer Register 2021

The Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development (DALRRD) started the process of developing a comprehensive national register of producers/ farmers, with special focus on smallholder producers/farmers in the country,namely the Producer/Farmer Register (PFR). This exercise emanated from the inaccurate/ misrepresented and outdated statistics on producers/farmers across the country.

Since the dawn of democracy in 1994, the development or empowerment of smallholder farmers has become the main thrust of the South African government. To this effect, various programmes and policies were introduced to advance the development of the agricultural sector. Furthermore, these various programmes were intended to enhance the provision of support services to promote and facilitate agricultural development targeting the beneficiaries of the land and agrarian reform programmes, e.g. Comprehensive Agricultural Support Programme (CASP), Ilima/Letsema, LandCare, etc.

Regardless of all of these programmes, government still did not have a comprehensive database of smallholder farmers in the country. It was therefore, imperative that a project on the register of producers/farmers be undertaken for better planning and policy development. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), through the World Programme for the Census of Agriculture, encourages countries to conduct agricultural censuses and keep records of the farming operations.The survey aims to provide geographic, demographic, production, employment and related information forsmallholder farmers in South Africa. The estimates in respect of the PFR, 2021 are available in various formats.