We have long said that 2025 will be a recovery year for South Africa’s agriculture. This followed a challenging drought last year that weighed on the sector. But this recovery will be uneven. As the field crops and horticulture subsectors thrived this year, the livestock subsector underperformed.
Foot-and-mouth disease has been a significant challenge for the cattle industry, leading to the loss of some export markets. Thus, we welcomed the change in policy to now move towards nationwide vaccination of cattle against foot-and-mouth disease.
The vaccination campaign will be a monumental task. We have a national herd of around 12 million cattle, of which 7.2 million are in a commercial herd.
On December 2, Statistics South Africa will release Gross Domestic Product data for the third quarter of 2025. The data will likely paint an optimistic picture of the agricultural sector’s growth. This will follow another positive print in the second quarter, which showed South Africa’s agricultural gross value added expanding by 2.5% quarter-on-quarter (seasonally adjusted).
This was after the 18.6% quarter-on-quarter in the first quarter of the year. The expansion was primarily due to the improved performance of certain field crops and the horticulture subsectors.
While the likely positive growth figures for the sector will be uplifting, we must view them in the context of a mixed recovery from the challenges I outlined above.
On field crops, South Africa’s 2024-25 summer grains and oilseeds production season has been excellent. We have a harvest of 20.2 million tonnes. This figure comprises maize, soybean, sunflower seed, groundnuts, sorghum, and dry beans.
The harvest is up 30% from the 2023-24 production season. There is an annual uptick in all the crops, mainly supported by favourable summer rains and the decent area plantings.
We also had a reasonably large sugarcane harvest. Notably, the various fruits, vegetables and wine also presented excellent harvests, all of which are key to supporting the growth of South Africa’s agricultural fortunes.
Importantly, as close observers of South Africa’s agricultural sector know, the quarterly growth figures tend to be somewhat volatile, influenced by harvests and crop deliveries, among other factors. Thus, it is helpful to place much attention on the annual figure. Still, these quarterly data are a valuable guide to the sector’s state.
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