Durban - The SA Sugar Association (Sasa) is establishing a company that will facilitate and speed up land reform.
Rodger Stewart, the chairman of Sasa, said the Land Company, as it is called, will facilitate the transfer of land to black farmers on a willing buyer, willing seller basis.
The company will not warehouse land but will help prospective buyers with the various processes needed to complete a transaction and assist with securing finance.
It is hoped that company will be up and running in six months.
Sasa would make an initial contribution and then would look for local and foreign partners. Ultimately the company would have to be self-sustaining.
Stewart said there was enough land available and commercial sugar cane farmers were frustrated with the slow pace of land reform.
"They are aware of what can happen when land reform does not take place," Stewart said, referring to land invasions in Zimbabwe.
One of the biggest obstacles to land reform was access to capital. Sasa had helped many small-scale farmers grow sugar cane on communal lands by providing extension services, and offering financial assistance through Umthombo Agricultural Finance.
There were more than 48 000 small-scale growers in KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga and the Eastern Cape but few had been able to graduate to being a commercial farmer.
Walter Mandlazi is a small-scale grower in Mpumulanga who has managed the leap.
He bought a 50ha farm for R1.7 million using a grant of R720 000 from the Land Redistribution and Agricultural Development scheme and a loan of R1 million from the Land Bank.
He continues to farm on communal land and hopes to increase his freehold farm by another 50ha.