Beyond the vagaries of the weather and the impact on crops, the year ahead offers a range of promising developments, as well as escalating difficulties if problems aren’t addressed.
South Africa’s tractor sales for 2021 amounted to 7 680 units, up by 26% from the previous year. The combine harvester sales amounted to 268 units in the same period, up by 46% from 2020.
A recent survey done by Grain South Africa show that farmers in the Free State, Mpumalanga, North West, Limpopo, and KwaZulu-Natal ranked excessive rains as their biggest risk to crops this year.
The year 2021 was one of critical conversations about global agrifood systems – the processes and methods through which farming produces food.
A drive from Pretoria to the Eastern Cape in December always offers an opportunity to assess the country’s agricultural conditions after the first few months of the summer season.
Food prices often dominate the headlines in South Africa this year. On several occasions this year, some people questioned the rise in South Africa’s consumer food price inflation in a year of abundant agricultural harvest.
The year 2021 has ended positively for South Africa’s agricultural sector. Farmers experienced a unique season characterized by bumper yields, and higher agricultural commodity prices, particularly in the grains and oilseeds industries.
Wandile Sihlobo is the Chief Economist of the Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa (Agbiz) and the author of “Finding Common Ground: Land, Equity, and Agriculture.”
Sihlobo is Senior Lecturer Extraordinary at the Department of Agricultural Economics at Stellenbosch University.
He is also a Visiting Research Fellow at the Wits School of Governance, University of the Witwatersrand.
He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Agricultural Economics from the University of Fort Hare and a Master of Science degree in Agricultural Economics from Stellenbosch University.
Sihlobo was appointed as a member of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Presidential Economic Advisory Council in 2019 after serving on the Presidential Expert Advisory Panel on Land Reform and Agriculture between 2018 and 2019.
He is also a member of the Council of Statistics of South Africa (Stats SA) and a Commissioner at the International Trade Administration Commission of South Africa (ITAC).
Sihlobo is a columnist for Business Day and Farmers Weekly magazine.