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CHAPTER 4
gave no recognition to NAMPO at all, and were not prepared to collaborate with
the organisation.
NAMPO’s Executive therefore launched a dedicated public-relations programme
as part of NAMPO’s image-building project. The dedicated focus in time bore fruit,
particularly as other programmes in the image-building project achieved success.
Women groups and trade unions
Given the important role of trade unions and women groups with respect to
opinion making in the South African society, NAMPO made a special effort to
invite representatives from those groups (on occasion even the top structure of
Cosatu and the ANC Women’s League) to the NAMPO farm. The objective was
to inform them about agriculture and improve their perception of farmers and
agriculture in general.
From NAMPO’s point of view the project succeeded, except that it did not have
quite the impact that NAMPO wanted. The ideal would have been to repeat the
programme more regularly, but due to limited funds and manpower this was
not possible.
Schools programme
As part of NAMPO’s image-building programme a project was launched in col-
laboration with the agricultural public relations officer, Mr Steyn Lureman, to bring
school groups to the NAMPO farm to expose schoolchildren to agriculture and
farming in general. This programme, which was initially sponsored by a fertiliser
company, Omnia, and later also by Northmec, was aimed at changing children’s
perceptions of animals and farming through information and exposure to animals,
grain products and practical grain cultivation practices.
As part of the programme the children had to write an essay and submit a project
on agriculture after their visit to the farm. In this way they could depict in a practical
manner what they learnt during their visit to the farm. The projects were entered
for a competition that had various prizes.
The programme was a great success, to such an extent that the Deputy Minister of
Agriculture, Ms Thoko Didiza, acted as one of the judges at one stage, and theMinister
of Education, Prof Sibusisu Bengu, delegated a representative of the Department of
Education for this purpose.
The Schools Programme was later continued with great success by Grain SA.
In 1996 NAMPO was lauded by the Public Relations Division of the Danish agricul-
tural council for its vision in offering the information programmes to learners.
Economic research unit
Even in the SAMPI era one of the complaints by the industry was that no reliable
information was available on the production costs of maize. This contributed to the
dissatisfaction with the setting of the maize price in that era. NAMPO also identi-
fied it as a gap and tasked Dr Le Clus with developing an economic research unit,
the so-called Development Trust. The brain trust started functioning within this
environment. The information produced was very complete and well researched.
It was provided to producers in various ways as a value-adding service that was
not available before.
Agricultural research
At the direction of the Minister of Agriculture agricultural researchers associated
with government institutions were prohibited from speaking to any representative
of SAMPI in the period before the establishment of NAMPO.
After the founding of NAMPO a project was launched in collaboration with the De-
partment of Agriculture and agricultural research units to determine critical research
needs and identify the best way to provide producers with feedback in this regard.
Product and production research was conducted in collaboration with the Grain
Crops Institute of the ARC. NAMPO’s involvement in research focused particularly