Honorary UKZN Professor Delivers Prestigious Commemorative Lecture

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UKZN alumnus and Honorary Professor at UKZN, Professor Mike Lyne, delivered the 26^th F.R. Tomlinson Commemorative Lecture on the Pietermaritzburg campus.

The event, hosted by the Agricultural Economics Association of South Africa (AEASA) since 1986, recognises a Lecturer, who is nominated by their peers, for contributions to agricultural economics in South Africa. The Lecturer receives a Standard Bank FR Tomlinson Commemorative Medal after presenting the address.

The Lecture is named after Professor Frederick Rothman Tomlinson, who is considered the Father of Agricultural Economics in South Africa.  Tomlinson was a founding member of the foundation of AEASA in 1961 and held a PhD in Agricultural Economics from Cornell University as well as a DScAgric from the University of Pretoria.

This was only the fourth time the Lecture has been held in KwaZulu-Natal and, with more 100 guests from various agricultural sectors, it was one of the best attended ever.

The event was co-ordinated by AEASA members at UKZN, Professor Gerald Ortmann and Dr Stuart Ferrer of the Agricultural Economics Discipline and the Agricultural Policy Research Unit (APRU), with assistance from the Friends of UKZN Agriculture Alumnus Association.

Lyne completed BScAgric (1979), MScAgric (1982) and PhD (1990) degrees at the then University of Natal, majoring in Agricultural Economics.

He joined the Department of Agricultural Economics as a Lecturer in 1982, and was promoted to Full Professor in 1998. In 2007 he was appointed Associate Professor of International Rural Development at Lincoln University in New Zealand, and Honorary Professor of Agricultural Economics at UKZN.

Lyne chairs the Faculty Research Committee at Lincoln University, serves on the Faculty Management Team and represents the University on New Zealand’s Development Studies Network.

Lyne’s address, titled “20 Years of Land Reform in South Africa: Insights from an Agricultural Economics Perspective”, covered the objectives of the restitution and redistribution aspects of land reform policies implemented after 1994 at the advent of democracy in South Africa, and how they had performed in the past 20 years.

The event was attended by the new MEC for Agriculture, Mr Cyril Xaba, who spoke in response to Lyne’s speech. Xaba noted the importance of consistently re-evaluating the results of these sorts of policies and encouraged those representing various agricultural sectors to engage in dialogue with his department so that the sectors worked together to address challenges facing agriculture in the province and the country.

 

-          Words and photograph by Christine Cuénod