I recently joined Peter Bruce for a wide-ranging conversation about South Africa’s Agriculture and Agro-processing Master Plan and the ANC’s policy views on agriculture and land.
The data released by Statistics South Africa this past week showed that the country’s consumer food price inflation decelerated to 6,3% y/y in April 2022 from 6,6% y/y in the previous month. This is on the back of relatively softer price increases in meat; milk, eggs and cheese; and vegetables.
The book also brings home the reality of the slow progress of land reform in South Africa. In 1994 when the country became a democracy, white farmers owned 77.580 million hectares of farmland out of the total surface area of 122 million hectares.
The rising interest rates and various input costs imply that South African agriculture and agribusiness will, in the coming months, have to be focused on cost management even more than has been already been the case.
These are not perfect plans by any stretch but are better than no plans. Perhaps, the better way of viewing the documents is through the lens of “better is good”, which means having a policy document that is better than a current position is good, to an extent.
The world has been in a period of surging food prices for several reasons. These include drought in South America and Indonesia, rising demand for grains and oilseeds in China, and, more recently, the disruption of the global grains and oilseeds exports following the Russia-Ukraine war.
Rail and road network, water and electricity supply and the efficient functioning of municipalities need to be addressed to ensure South African agriculture’s sustainability.
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.