South Africa: Dutch scoping mission water & agrofood
Funded by Partners for Water 2016-2021
The team has been operating under the supervision of RVO.nl, in close cooperation with the Netherlands Water Partnership (NWP) and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Pretoria (EKN). The mission took place from March 6 till March 10 2017. Ms. Isobel van der Stoep, irrigation expert (Isowat Consulting, South Africa) and Mr. Peter Prins, expert Water & Agriculture (Land Water Food Consult, Netherlands) formed a team. They got the dedicated support of Mr. Ruben van Dijk (intern at the Embassy of the Netherlands in South Africa). During the mission, 6 provinces of South Africa were visited (Gauteng, Limpopo, Mpumalanga, North-West, Northern Cape and Western Cape) and 15 meetings were arranged. Annex 1 includes the schedule of the mission.
An important entry point for the team was the vision of the Netherlands on Water & Agrofood. The Netherlands, through the Partners for Water program, promotes smart water management in agricultural production, including aspects of soil, irrigation, fertilization and crop management to achieve an effective use of available water resources in a catchment area (www.dutchwatersector.com). Netherlands Water Partnership provided input for the mission by mapping the interests of the Dutch Water & Agrofood network: 28 companies and organisations responded to an online questionnaire. Specific interests are used for the overview of potential leads and matching partners (chapter 5).
Report - Scoping mission, Water and Agrofood, South Africa 2017