Agriculture minister John Steenhuisen says he is not aware of a single South African farmer accepting President Trump’s offer to relocate to the United States.
The offer came in an executive order by President Trump in which he said “the United States shall promote the resettlement of Afrikaner refugees escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination, including racially discriminatory property confiscation”.
Steenhuisen told reporters that not only did he not know of any farmers accepting the offer, but he didn’t want any to leave, the Daily Maverick reported.
“I don’t want to lose a single farmer from SA — whether they are Afrikaans [or] English; whether they are black, white, Indian or coloured — we can’t afford to lose a single farmer,” he said.
“I’m not surprised that people want our farmers because we have the best farmers and farmworkers in the world. The fact that we are able to compete — as an agricultural sector — against heavily subsidised Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere competitors and still be able to hold our own is a tribute to the fact that some of our farmers and farmworkers are the best in the world.”
After meeting both small-scale and commercial farmers, Steenhuisen said not one of them wanted to leave for the US.
“Every single one of them said to me very clearly, ‘We don’t want to go to America, we want to make this work. But we need your help, as the minister, to help fix some of these problems.’”
Steenhuisen said that South Africa needed to expand its agricultural markets to ensure that the country is not reliant on a single trade partner, in the face of potential tariffs from the US and the possibility of being excluded from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA).
He also noted that US consumers would lose out if the Trump administration cancelled South Africa’s duty-free access to US markets under its AGOA trade legislation.
“South Africa’s agricultural products are of the highest quality and are sought after the world over, which is why we’re able to start accessing new markets… They [US consumers] need our products… If that was to be shut off I think the American consumers would also be denied an excellent quality of agricultural product,” he said.
