A farm that brings hope
Daytona Farm in the Warm Bokkeveld near Ceres was once a prestigious horse stud farm. In the early 1990s, it was sold to government and transferred to a group of previously disadvantaged farmers as part of the Land Redistribution for Agricultural Development (LRAD) programme.
In spite of huge government investment to kick-start fruit production, the project was a failure and ended up being liquidated in 2015.
The founders of Partners in Agri Land Solutions (PALS), a private land reform initiative that started in Witzenberg, became concerned that Daytona might be lost to transformation, so started negotiations with government to keep the property for previously disadvantaged people from Witzenberg.
“Government was creating a list of possible beneficiaries from people all over the Western Cape, which was disconcerting considering the great hunger for land from our own vicinity,” says Yongama Femele, public liaison officer of PALS.
