Livestock traceability key to driving SA beef exports
In the afternoon today, I will present brief remarks at a conference about the value of traceability in monitoring livestock. Essentially, I will attempt to show why traceability[1] is key to fostering the trade of livestock and livestock products. Traceability is...
Growing optimism about SA maize harvest in 2019/20
Today, South Africa’s Crop Estimates Committee will release its preliminary planting estimates for 2019/20 summer crops. This is important data as it will give an idea of the potential size of major grains harvest, such as maize. In our (Agbiz) weekly note, we...
Africa faces a poor wheat harvest in 2019/20
We rarely talk about Africa’s wheat production due to its size relative to other regions of the world. Africa produces only 3% of the world’s wheat, compared to the European Union region which produces 20% of the world’s wheat and Back Sea region which produces 17%....
Locust upsurge threaten Kenya’s already vulnerable food sector
If you read the international news on Africa this past weekend, you probably noticed that Time magazine (here), The Guardian (here), New York Post (here), The Japan Times (here), and the Financial Times (here) ran a similar story about the worst swarms of locusts...
Optimism about SA’s maize harvest
Two major organizations in the agricultural world, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the International Grains Council (IGC), released their views about South Africa’s 2019/20 maize crop. The USDA anticipates a maize harvest of 13.3 million tonnes,...
South Africa must get on China’s agricultural radar
One of the key themes that dominated agricultural markets in 2019 was US-China trade tension. This caused trade diversion, as Chinese agricultural traders looked at other markets for goods they would have imported from the US. One of the countries that benefited most...
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.