by Wandile Sihlobo | Aug 31, 2020 | Daily Notes
The Zimbabwean government made an important statement about its maize production ambitions last week, which if fulfilled, would have implications on South Africa’s maize exports. The government aims to encourage farmers to plant 1.5 million hectares of maize,...
by Wandile Sihlobo | Aug 30, 2020 | Daily Notes
Aside from various data publications that I wrote about last week, we also had two important releases in the South African agricultural market that I didn’t get to explore. Therefore, I will start this week by focusing on these data, namely (1) the weekly grain...
by Wandile Sihlobo | Aug 28, 2020 | Saturday Read
SA’s agricultural sector had a solid start to 2020, with first-quarter gross value-added growing 27.8% quarter on quarter on a seasonally adjusted and annualised basis (see Exhibit 1). I noted then that the succeeding quarters would be likely to continue to show...
by Wandile Sihlobo | Aug 27, 2020 | Daily Notes
We now have further evidence that the good rains that the Western Cape received over the past couple of months will have a meaningful contribution to South Africa’s 2020/21 winter crop production. The data released by the Crop Estimates Committee on August 27 shows...
by Wandile Sihlobo | Aug 26, 2020 | Daily Notes
South Africa’s food price inflation accelerated to 4.6% y/y in July 2020, from 4.5% y/y in the previous month. This was primarily underpinned by a slight uptick in bread and cereals; fish; and oils and fats. With the current higher maize prices, which yesterday...
