Grain producers to fight South African land move if price too low

South Africa's largest grain producers' group would challenge government efforts to expropriate land for redistribution to blacks if the compensation offered falls below market prices, its chief executive said on Tuesday. The ruling African National Congress (ANC) has brought an expropriation bill to parliament to let the state make compulsory purchases of land to redress racial disparities in land ownership. The bill has yet to be passed into law.
"If there is expropriation taking place without proper compensation then we would go to the Constitutional Court to get a ruling on that," Jannie de Villiers, chief executive of Grain SA, told Reuters on the sidelines of an annual agricultural trade fair in the maize belt west of Johannesburg. Experts estimate about 8 million hectares (20 million acres) of farmland have been transferred to black owners since the end of apartheid, equal to 8 to 10 percent of the land in white hands in 1994 - but only a third of a 30 percent target.
President Jacob Zuma threw his weight behind the bill on Friday, stepping up populist rhetoric before August local polls where his ruling party faces a tough challenge. Under the proposed legislation, the state can acquire land without the owners' consent by paying an amount determined by the office of the Valuer-General, effectively scrapping a "willing-buyer, willing seller" formula.
Owners can challenge the compensation offered in court on a case by case basis but De Villiers said Grain SA would go further by taking the matter to the Constitutional Court, the highest court in the land. Many South African farmers are already having a tough season because of an historic drought. South Africa will likely harvest 7.054 million tonnes of maize in 2016, 29.1 percent less than the 9.95 million tonnes reaped last year because of the drought and late plantings, according to the latest government estimates.
De Villiers said climate change and the loss of cropland to coal mining operations in the eastern Mpumalanga province was forcing the industry to try to expand production of maize, South Africa's staple crop, to new areas. "If you look at climate change it is wetter along the coast and drier in the north west," De Villiers said. As a result, Grain SA was looking at the Eastern Cape province, where 300,000 hectares was regarded as suitable for maize, and KwaZulu Natal province. But there are significant challenges as much of the land that can be used for maize is communal property which no one has a title to, so the people farming it cannot get financing.