Here is the Structure of the South African Sugar Industry
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently released an interesting report on South Africa’s sugar industry. The report covers the supply and demand dynamics for the 2018/19 production season, as well as the structure of the industry. The picture is...
Some Upswing in South Africa’s Soybean Production Estimates
The next eight days should remain cool and dry in the soybean growing areas, which should be supportive of the harvest process. This is at initial stages in parts of Mpumalanga province, and it could soon commence in other provinces as a large part of the crop has...An Improvement in SA Summer Crop Production Estimates
South Africa is in for a fairly good harvest in 2017/18 production season. This was confirmed by the third production forecasts released by the National Crop Estimate Committee this afternoon. All summer crop production estimates were revised up from previous month’s...
South Africa’s 2018 Cattle Slaughter Could Increase by 4% y/y
In 2016, South Africa slaughtered about 3.8 million cattle, which is a 33 percent increase from the number of cattle slaughtered in 2012 (see featured image). This increase can be attributed to a number of factors, but the most notable one is the 2015-16 drought....
A Few Notes on South Africa’s Cattle Farming
The South African cattle industry is characterized by dualism — a well-developed commercial sector and an informal sector consisting of many communal subsistence farmers and a growing number of emerging farmers. In 2016, the South African Department of...
Do Women Perform the Bulk of the Work in African Agriculture?
The World Bank recently released an interesting book which questions a number of data and statements about Africa’s agricultural sector. The book is titled Agriculture in Africa: Telling Myths from Facts. It covers a wide range of topics from smallholder land access,...
Wandile Sihlobo is the Chief Economist of the Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa (Agbiz) and the author of “Finding Common Ground: Land, Equity, and Agriculture.”
Sihlobo is Senior Lecturer Extraordinary at the Department of Agricultural Economics at Stellenbosch University.
He is also a Visiting Research Fellow at the Wits School of Governance, University of the Witwatersrand.
He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Agricultural Economics from the University of Fort Hare and a Master of Science degree in Agricultural Economics from Stellenbosch University.
Sihlobo was appointed as a member of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Presidential Economic Advisory Council in 2019 after serving on the Presidential Expert Advisory Panel on Land Reform and Agriculture between 2018 and 2019.
He is also a member of the Council of Statistics of South Africa (Stats SA) and a Commissioner at the International Trade Administration Commission of South Africa (ITAC).
Sihlobo is a columnist for Business Day and Farmers Weekly magazine.