At the end of August, I pondered the possibility of a canola boom in South Africa for the 2025-26 season. I based my view on the area planting and weather prospects, which were encouraging compared to the 2024-25 season.
However, as many people in South Africa’s canola-growing province, the Western Cape, would agree, the start of the 2025-26 season presented a challenge for some regions of the province. We have seen reports of snail infestations in some areas, forcing farmers to replant, a process that increases production costs.
At the end of September 2025, the Crop Estimate Committee released its second production forecast for canola, indicating a possible harvest of 311,640 tonnes, a 3% decrease from the August 2025 estimate. Notably, this remains 7% higher than the previous season. The annual gains are primarily due to the expansion in area plantings.
I must say, this is not far off from our initial estimate of a 311,661-tonne harvest of canola, which was an 8% increase from the 2024-25 season. Here, we applied a five-year average yield of 1.89 tonnes per hectare to the area of 164,900 hectares, which provided a harvest estimate of 311,661 tonnes.
Still, the expected crop of 311,640 tonnes is a fresh record, reinforcing South Africa’s position as a relatively new exporter of canola products. South Africa is now a net exporter of canola, having recently exported to countries such as Germany and Belgium.
Canola is a relatively new crop in South Africa, but it remains a success story. Since South African farmers began planting the crop commercially on 17,000 hectares in 1998-99, the area has increased to an estimated 164,900 hectares by 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 shift from traditional winter wheat and barley growing areas to canola due to firm demand and price competitiveness. Canola is a winter crop, primarily planted in the Western Cape, a region with winter rainfall in South Africa.
Therefore, while the start of the season has been costly for farmers, and the harvest estimate has been lowered from the initial, bigger harvest, South Africa could still have a record harvest of 311,640 tonnes of canola. This is arguably still a canola boom in terms of a harvest, but it’s a whole different discussion in terms of profitability for farmers.
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