The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Land Reform said his office's work will be completed once every farmer is considered a commercial farmer.

Dr. Mac Hengari remarked this at an introductory meeting to set the tone for his tenure, highlighting the ministry's core mandate of ensuring food security and self-sufficiency for Namibia.

Hengari addressed his staff, who packed the auditorium hall as they eagerly listened to his maiden remarks to them. 

"To succeed is to remain perennially employed, to live day-to-day, and to be subject to the work and subject to climate, and we all know the impact of climate change. So our key measure of performance should be how many farmers we are moving from subsistence to commercial and how many commercial farmers we are moving to global competitors. Then we know our work is done."

He pointed out that the ministry, being the largest in terms of land and sea management, has a critical role to play in reshaping the nation's agricultural landscape.

"I must point out that as a country, at a fundamental level, it requires food, water and energy, and as a country we have a lot of work to do in terms of that, and all of us here have that duty to ensure that there is food security for the country within the shortest time."

Another key focus of Dr. Hengari's speech was the issue of ancestral land, where he acknowledged the lingering impacts of colonial land policies. 

He expressed the ministry's commitment to addressing these historic injustices and restoring the rightful ownership of land to indigenous communities.

"We need to develop ancestral land policies in order to ensure a framework to implement the recommendations of the ancestral land commission. It is a matter of justice for our people, and when we link that to commercial agricultural farms, one of the things is to acquire agricultural farms next to the farms to provide having this significant plan from rural to urban and also acquiring land that is contiguous to expand activities within a communal land."

The minister also challenged his deputy, Ruth Masake, to take action on the surplus production of mangoes in the Zambezi Region.