Steering Committee
The Steering Committee is responsible for addressing governance matters and strategic issues, and is accountable to the Agbiz Council. The Council met regularly to provide mandates for positions on a range of policy matters and issues.
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Dr. Chetty studied at the University of the Free State - B.Sc. in Genetics and Biochemistry, B.Sc. (Hons.) in Genetics with distinction, M.Sc. in Genetics with distinction and Ph.D in Genetics.
Over her academic career, she has been recognized with numerous awards and scholarships from industry as well as NRF. In 2008 she was appointed as Deputy Director: GMO Monitoring and Research at the South African National Biodiversity Institute. She was tasked with developing a GMO monitoring framework for South Africa. Through this programme the first national post-commercial monitoring framework for GMO maize for South Africa was developed.
She is currently the General Manager of the South African National Seed Organization. She is tasked with representing the South African seed industry’s interests nationally and internationally on all matters pertaining to seed trade which amongst others include science and policy issues and phytosanitary matters. She represents SANSOR on the Boards of SACTA (South African Cultivar and Technology Agency) and ISF (International Seed Federation).
She was recently recognized by ISF for her outstanding contribution to ISF in 2023.
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Before he was appointed as Agbiz CEO in January 2022, Theo headed up the Legal Intelligence desk at Agbiz for five years after spending four years in organised agriculture with Agri SA. Under former Agbiz CEO Dr Purchase’s leadership, Theo was part of the Agbiz team that worked as a liaison between the industry and various government bodies to craft policy and legislation that affects the sector. Focus areas include land reform and property rights, natural resource legislation, commercial and competition laws as well as the regulatory environment affecting the primary and secondary agricultural sectors. Theo has represented agribusiness on several platforms such as the AgriBEE Charter Council, Operation Phakisa, and Nedlac’s Development Chamber. He has been involved in several in-depth processes on draft legislation at Nedlac and was responsible for the agricultural sector’s projects at the Jobs Summit, amongst other processes. He holds an LLM in constitutional property law (cum laude) from the North-West University, an LLB (cum laude) and an MPhil degree in Wildlife Management from the University of Pretoria. He is currently studying towards a postgraduate diploma in management with the North-West University’s Business School.
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