Are South Africans Ditching Horsemeat?
I continue to be surprised by an absence of horsemeat imports into South Africa so far this year. This is evident from the data from January 2018 to July 2018. When I wrote about this subject a few months back, I noticed that in the second half of the year – July and...
Good Rainfall, Good Improvement in South Africa’s Wheat Production
Nothing can stand in the way of good news, especially if the good news is “food”. I am currently in Somerset West, Western Cape attending an annual conference of the Agricultural Economics Association of South Africa and had planned to write a brief piece about a few...
A Brief View of South Africa’s Government Spending on Agriculture Between 1910 and 2010
While agriculture continues to be amongst the sectors being discussed as having a potential to ignite growth and create jobs in South Africa, the government spending to the sector as a share of overall government expenditure is nowhere close to the olden days. In the...
SA Farmers Have Embraced Technological Developments
Some African countries are still sceptical about planting Genetically Modified (GM) crops. However, farmers in the southern tip of the continent, South Africa, have long been planting GM crops for over a decade and there seem to be greater benefits in terms of yields...
South African Farmers Are Faced With Rising Input Costs
The 2018-19 summer crop production season will, in a few weeks’ time, start on a bad note. This is not only because of an expected El Niño weather event, but rising input costs such as fertilizer, agrochemical and fuel, amongst others. South African fertilizer prices...
El Niño Return Could Negatively Affect South Africa’s Summer Crops
It is still unclear whether SA farmers will reduce the intentions to plant in the 2018-19 summer crop season because of the expected El Niño.
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.