I’m happy about the warm, sunny weather today and hope for a few more days of it so South African farmers can accelerate fieldwork. Some regions of the country are excessively wet, particularly in KwaZulu-Natal, the Free State, the northern Eastern Cape, and north-eastern Mpumalanga.
We are in the summer grain and oilseeds planting period. The occasional warmer weather helps agriculture by promoting seed germination in areas that have been planted and allowing planting in areas that have not been planted due to excessively wet weather conditions.
Realistically, while not a preference, some regions could still plant through to January. The typical optimal planting period for maize and soybeans is between mid-October and mid-November in the eastern regions of the country. For the western areas, it is between mid-November and December.
Still, we have had many seasons when plantings were more than a month behind this typical window and yet still received excellent harvests. For example, most recently, the 2024-25 production season was roughly a month and a half behind schedule.
Yet, we managed to harvest a record soybean crop of 2.771 million tonnes (up 50% from the previous season) and a second-largest maize crop on record, about 16.44 million tonnes (up 28% from the prior season). We saw an excellent harvest also in other crops.
This ample harvest provides us with confidence that, even if the current 2025-26 production season for summer grain and oilseeds experiences some delays due to wet weather, the country will likely be able to take advantage of frequent warm-weather windows to accelerate plantings.
What we can do at the moment is monitor the weather conditions; nothing to worry about. We have known we would experience a rainy period, as we are in the La Niña weather phenomenon, which typically brings above-normal rainfall across South Africa and the region.
The 2024-25 season of excellent harvest was also a La Niña weather period. Favourable rains supported the agricultural recovery. The gains were across the sector, and not limited to grain and oilseeds. We saw excellent fruit and vegetable harvests, wine production, and grazing veld, all of which benefit livestock.
South African farmers are optimistic; they plan to plant about 4.5 million hectares of summer grain and oilseeds in the 2025-26 season, up by 1% from the previous season.
What we need is more days of warm weather to allow for field work and seed germination.
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