Tomorrow, August 27, South Africa’s Crop Estimate Committee will release its first production estimate for the 2025-26 winter crop season. The season has generally been fair, with favourable rainfall in much of the Western Cape, a province that accounts for more than two-thirds of South Africa’s winter crops.
In other provinces, the winter crops are mainly produced under irrigation, and the favourable summer rains helped to improve the dam levels, enabling irrigation.
One of the crops I will be watching closely is canola. While for farmers in some regions of the Western Cape, canola may not be as profitable this year because of higher input costs, it could reach a new record level in terms of output.
The big challenge for farmers in some areas of the Western Cape this year was the infestation of snails in the early stages of the season, forcing farmers to replant the crop, thus increasing the input costs.
Currently, we know that farmers planted 164,900 hectares, down 0.5% from the previous season. This area may also be revised when we receive the new data tomorrow.
But if we assume that it holds, the relatively favourable weather conditions could still bring a bigger crop than the last season. For example, if we apply a five-year average yield of 1.89 tonnes per hectare on the area of 164,900 hectares, South Africa could harvest 311,661 tonnes of canola, representing an 8% increase from the previous season.
This would be a fresh record, reinforcing South Africa’s position as a relatively new exporter of canola products. South Africa is now a net canola exporter, having recently exported to countries such as Germany and Belgium.
As I have written recently, canola is a relatively new crop in South Africa, but it remains a success story. Since South African farmers planted the crop commercially on 17,000 hectares in 1998-99, the area has increased to an estimated 164,900 hectares in the 2025-26 season.
Over the years, the catalyst behind the increase in canola plantings has been a rise in domestic demand or usage for oils and oilcake.
There has been a switch from traditional winter wheat and barley growing areas to canola because of the firm demand and the price competitiveness. Canola is a winter crop, principally planted in the Western Cape, a winter rainfall region in South Africa.
Anyways, we will know more tomorrow where things are, but I wanted to put it out that I remain an optimist.
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