The Quarterly Labour Force Survey data released by Statistics South Africa today showed that in the third quarter of 2021, agricultural employment increased by 3% y/y to 829 000.
The six-minute discussion focused on South Africa’s agricultural conditions, exports activity and jobs in the sector.
In a year of large crop harvests following good rainfall, a few people probably thought consumer food price inflation would accelerate as we have witnessed in the past ten months, averaging 6,6% y/y (compared with 4,5% y/y in 2020).
As the government pushes to complete its Agriculture and Agro-processing Master Plan process and move towards implementation, it is important that the communication strategy becomes one of the priorities.
The agricultural exports were up by 8% y/y to US$3,4 billion in the third quarter of 2021. This puts South Africa’s agriculture, food and beverage exports for the first three quarters of this year at US$9,6 billion. The top exportable products were citrus, maize, wine, apples and pears, nuts, sugar, fruit juices, and wool, amongst other products. These products will likely continue dominating the export list in the fourth quarter of the year.
Raising of inlet canal wall to Brandvlei Dam is still awaiting the department of water & sanitation approval. The Brandvlei dam is located about 100km from Cape Town as you drive towards Worcester, and is the second-biggest dam in the Western Cape. At present about 26,000ha of fruit and wine grapes are irrigated from the dam, making it a critical resource for the entire district. The dam is unusual in that it is an off-channel dam — it is not built on a river but receives its water through divergence from two small rivers and a feeder canal.
At the start of every agricultural production season, one of the major concerns for farmers is weather conditions over the course of the season and how these will affect yield. But for the 2021/22 season, another important concern that has been on farmers’ radars since the start of the season has been the rising input costs, which is the prices of fertilizers and agrochemicals.
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.