We spent the day in Wagga Wagga in south-eastern Australia, visiting experimental farms at Charles Sturt University’s AGRIPARK. They are doing industry-focused research on various value chains, including livestock, wine, grains, and horticulture. The focus of their work primarily responds to the needs of the industry, which helps with the application of the results.
The research’s funding model has some similarities with that of South Africa. The farmers pay a certain amount of levies (as a percentage of the value or volume of their production). We see this in some commodities in South Africa. However, in Australia, the government ensures that every dollar raised by farmers matches the amount raised by farmers. The objective is to continuously boost Australia’s agricultural productivity and strengthen the country’s standing in global food production and trade.
Once the funds are raised, the government and industry share ideas on the research areas and build a common understanding of priorities.
In South Africa, we see agriculture as a sector that could drive our rural economic growth and job creation. This approach of research co-funding and permitting the industry to have a notable say on research priorities would benefit our objectives.
Indeed, unlike Australia, we remain “A Country of Two Agricultures”; therefore, some consideration must be given to issues of inclusivity. Still, the co-funded research would be of benefit to both of these Two Agricultures.
Beyond funding matters, there is considerable scope for South Africa and Australia’s agriculture to collaborate, particularly on issues of digitalisation, biosecurity, and climate-smart agricultural practices. There are advancements in these areas in South Africa that Australian farmers can learn from, and equally for us.
Our countries have similar climate and agricultural production conditions, and face roughly the same issues in global agriculture. This means that, through commodity associations in South Africa and the Department of Agriculture, we may need to explore additional ways to facilitate regular engagement.
9 September 2025
Wagga Wagga, Australia
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It is late afternoon on a Monday (September 8) in Sydney, and I am ending another beautifully sunny day, which has also been quite productive. We had the opportunity to engage with the meat and livestock industry, grain growers, and academic researchers, and concluded the day by meeting with Horticulture Innovation Australia.
What is clear from all our interactions is that there is room for collaboration between South Africa and Australia’s agricultural sectors. From all our interactions today, it was clear that most stakeholders are aware of South Africa’s farming advancements and its contribution to the global food, fibre, and beverages trade.
The same is true in South Africa; we look at Australia with a great appreciation of their contribution to global meat and livestock, wine, wheat, horticulture and other products.
Oftentimes, it may be easy to view each other as competitors, particularly since we produce in the same season, and can look at roughly the same export markets for some products.
Still, I would argue that there is much room for collaboration and complementarity. If one considers the wheat industry, for example, South Africa is working on boosting its production, but over the foreseeable future, it will likely remain a net importer. Our imports are generally around 1.8 million tonnes a year. Australia is one of the key high-quality wheat producers that could continue to supply the South African market.
Similarly, with rice, we don’t produce any, and Australia could, over time, join the likes of India and Thailand in experiencing the million tonnes of annual rice imports in South Africa.
Importantly, this does not need to be one-way and should not primarily focus on trade. The most promising area for collaboration between the two countries could be in research-related matters. Listening to the various industries today and academic colleagues speak about their current focus on research and innovation, it is clear that we can lean on some of their work, particularly because of the similarities in our environments. The work Australia is doing on plant health and seed breeding in various commodities is particularly key to our agricultural efforts in South Africa.
In the livestock industry, Australia has advanced in biosecurity and surveillance, another area of potential collaboration. Admittedly, the fact that the country is an island provides it with a buffer from the various diseases in a way that South Africa is unable to be shielded. Still, the rigorous biosecurity practices are something that we can learn from and implement in our work at home.
On the academic level, there are already various collaborations between some Australian universities and South African ones on agricultural matters, particularly on poultry and nutrition research. This knowledge sharing and partnership are key to strengthening our farming sectors and enhancing the relationship between the two countries.
There is also a lot more we could learn about the agricultural research funding approach in Australia. Both the government and industry contribute financial resources to research, and industry has a notable say on what areas should be prioritised for the good of the sector’s progress. This is one area we are yet to improve in South Africa.
Of course, we have a structurally different agricultural sector, partly because of our various histories. In South Africa, consideration must be given to the inclusion and support of small-scale farmers.
So, while some in Australia or South Africa may have viewed the other country as a competition, there is room for more collaboration rather than competing. The continuation of visits by industry stakeholders between the two countries and the exchange programmes of researchers and academics is an avenue for deepening the relationships and agricultural progress.
While we can learn from Australia’s biosecurity and other aspects, they, too, have a lot to learn from our thriving farming sector.
8 September 2025
Sydney, Australia
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We are yet to engage with the agricultural community in Australia, and will see the livestock, horticulture and grain producers tomorrow. We spent the morning today exploring Sydney and enjoyed a 14km walk (yes – I am showing off by these kilometres). The architecture of the City bears many similarities to that of many South African cities, particularly Cape Town. The friendliness of the people and the excellent maintenance of the area are qualities one wishes for our cities.
And yes, the resources matter, and that is one of the things that weighs on the South African cities and towns, in addition to some inept management of our municipalities.
However, the atmosphere of this place gives us a sense of what we can achieve over time if we focus on revitalising our cities, emphasising cleanliness, infrastructure maintenance, and security, among other things.
The properly run municipalities are generally not just a luxury, but are core to supporting the businesses that operate in them and the households.
In the agricultural regions, proper service delivery, combined with road maintenance and security, among other things, significantly reduces transaction costs and supports both agribusinesses and medium-scale farming businesses.
The agritourism (and general tourism) also benefits under such environments. I often invite people to visit small towns in my beautiful province of the Eastern Cape, as their visits and spending would go a long way in supporting our community. But the reality is that we have municipalities that haven’t been as efficient in service delivery, road maintenance and security in some instances. This contradicts the goal of boosting tourism in the province.
Of course, I am not suggesting our small towns can replicate major cities like Sydney; rather, the basic maintenance of municipalities can have a significant impact. This is clear from many of our small towns in the Western Cape, such as Paarl.
7 September 2025
Sydney, Australia
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When we are affected by animal diseases in South Africa, we tend to make this a challenge that only farmers and those linked to the industry must confront.
But this ought to be a national issue, with all in society aware of it, and the role they play in spreading or helping to control diseases. It is, after all, people who typically unknowingly contribute to spreading some diseases.
I am raising this because it was the first thing that struck me when I landed at Sydney International Airport this afternoon. Biosecurity was a significant issue that was announced and closely monitored. But importantly, people seemed generally aware of the biosecurity matters.
We play our part in this process through border management in South Africa. But a broader public awareness beyond the ports of entry may be valuable, especially as we continue to receive so many disease occurrences. We could build on the message that South Africa’s Department of Agriculture is starting to elevate awareness. Of course, the intervention will need to go further than that so farmers can feel the impact, and things are improving.
Currently, the South African livestock industry is facing economic strain due to the foot and mouth disease.
Beyond the awareness and information. We will still need to ensure we boost our vaccine manufacturing capacity. Livestock accounts for half of our farming economy. This is enough reason for us to be as vigilant as Australians on biosecurity matters.
6 September 2025
Sydney, Australia
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The reaction from fellow South Africans to the speech highlights that Zimbabwe’s land reform was a significant failure, causing economic pain to many people. This is a truth, and Zimbabwe’s agriculture has not recovered since its ill-advised land reform plan in the early 2000s.
While we can all wish Zimbabwe well in its efforts to rebuild, the country’s land reform is no model for South Africa.
South Africa’s land reform is based on market principles. It supports growing investment in our agricultural sector, enabling it to play a meaningful role in resolving our triple challenge of low growth, poverty, and unemployment.
The starting point is the continuous affirmation of the strong property right, and thereafter, a release of the 2.5 million hectares of government land to appropriately selected beneficiaries with title deeds. This could be followed by blended finance and upskilling, collaboratively implemented with the private sector.
The 2.5 million hectares will not be the end of land reform; the process must continue on its market principles under the three pillars of (1) restitution, (2) redistribution, and (3) tenure.
To be clear, the South African government is still buying land from the open market for land reform processes, amongst other things. This is unlikely to change, and we all know that destructive policies won’t help resolve our triple challenges. Instead, it is investment and continuous efforts in opening export markets, addressing biosecurity weaknesses, and improving the logistics and efficiencies of municipal service delivery that will bring shared prosperity in South Africa’s agriculture.
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It is very early to tell what the 2025-26 summer crop season may look like. The farmers will start tilling the land next month, mainly for summer grains and oilseeds.
Remember, we produce all of South Africa’s vegetables and fruits under irrigation. Therefore, when we talk of the rainy season, we typically have in mind grains, oilseeds, and other field crops, such as sugarcane. We also think of grazing veld for livestock. And yes, the rainy season matters for dam levels.
Therefore, when the 2025-26 summer crop season begins next month, in October, we will also intensify our focus on the weather outlook, as it may be a crucial factor to consider when assessing the production outlook.
It is in this regard that I was encouraged to read the South African Weather Service’s (SAWS) Seasonal Climate Watch report, released on 1 September 2025. The SAWS stated that:
“The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is firmly in a neutral state; however, predictions indicate that we may be moving towards a weak La Niña event during the coming summer season.”
Such an optimistic outlook would signal prospects of above normal rainfall, which is favourable for agriculture.
Admittedly, the SAWS were quick to add that:
“It is still a bit too early to make any reliable conclusions on ENSO’s effect during early summer; more reliable interpretations can only be made in the next couple of months as the prediction systems become more reliable.”
This is a fair point. But equally comforting. Remember, we are emerging from a La Niña, which helped ensure a robust maize harvest of 15.80 million tonnes, a 23% increase year-on-year, primarily due to expected annual yield improvements.
During this period, we often fear that the La Niña season may be followed by its opposite, an El Niño, which typically brings below-normal rainfall.
Therefore, as long as there is no mention of a strong El Niño possibility, we look forward to the 2025-26 summer season with optimism for South Africa’s agriculture.
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I have an opportunity to address members of the South African Parliament, mainly the portfolio committee responsible for agriculture, tomorrow, September 2, 2025. When I received the invitation to reflect on the sector’s operating conditions and the impact of geopolitics, I thought it would be a good opportunity first to highlight the changing structure of South Africa’s agriculture.
However, as I prepared my notes over the weekend, I realised that there are some vital policy matters to address in my speech, and I can perhaps present the key points about the sector’s structure succinctly in this letter.
The reason I am considering the structure of the sector is that I have seen, in several cases, pronouncements about South Africa’s agriculture that don’t accurately reflect its reality. Such instances remind me of the concept of “Zombie ideas“, which was popularised by the Nobel laureate, the economist, Paul Krugman, which is also the title of his new book, Arguing with Zombies.
This term refers to “ideas that keep being killed by evidence but shamble relentlessly forward, essentially because they suit a political agenda”.
We have many such “zombie ideas” in South Africa’s agriculture. This may seem petty, but some of the things I have heard, for example, are that:
South Africa has more or less 40,000 commercial farmers
Then there are more or less 2.5 million small-scale farmers
And a further 2.75 million people who perform some form of agricultural activity for home consumption or sale to the market
This is all incorrect.
My joint work with Professor Johann Kirsten of the Bureau for Economic Research (BER) has, over the years, endeavoured to reduce inaccuracies about land reform and the size and structure of the agricultural sector. Some of these efforts are evident in our chapter in the Oxford University Handbook on the South African Economy, in our latest book, The Uncomfortable Truth about South Africa’s Agriculture, and in numerous newspaper columns.
First, we need to deal with definitions:
A commercial farmer is any individual, entity, or household involved in agricultural production with the intention of selling to the market and therefore buys inputs to produce the commodity.
Large farmer: typically a farming enterprise that has an annual commercial turnover of R22,5 million or more.
Medium-scale farmer: Commercial turnover of between R13,5 million and R22,5 million
Small and micro farms (commercial): Turnover below R13.5 million.
Subsistence farmer/household: A Household that produces mainly for home consumption, usually in addition to social grants and migrant wages. Virtually no commercial sales.
Household: There should be roughly 4 to 6 people per household.
Here is the thing. The 2017 Census of Commercial Agriculture used the 40,102 farming enterprises registered for VAT as the sample frame. As we will show later, not all commercial farmers are registered for VAT, as the current threshold for VAT registration with the South African Revenue Service (SARS) is R1 million in annual turnover.
Fact: The 40,000 figure only refers to VAT-registered farm enterprises. They are distributed according to the definitions as shown in the Table below. Approximately 46% of all commercial farms (the majority of which are owned by white individuals) registered for VAT are classified by Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) as micro-enterprises or family farms.
We are fortunate that Stats SA released the latest numbers on agricultural households on 31 July 2025, extracted from the 2022 Population Census. This makes for fascinating reading but also requires careful interpretation to avoid the same mistakes alluded to earlier.
The most crucial observation in the report can be summarised as follows:
Households producing only for sale (thus commercial farmers): 106,753
Households producing mainly for sale (also commercial): 177,530
Households primarily producing for own consumption and households only for own consumption: 2,2 million (this is subsistence farmers, backyard gardeners and livestock keepers with few chickens and other animals)
In summary, these data indicate that South Africa has 284,283 commercial farming households, as estimated from the agricultural questions in the 2022 population census. This number corresponds to the 254,956 farming households we reported in our chapter in the Oxford University Handbook on the South African Economy, which we estimated from the 2017 Agricultural Census and the 2016 community survey.
So, we can now kill the “Zombie ideas” in South Africa’s agriculture by remembering the following facts:
Fact 1: There are 284,283 commercial farming households in South Africa, of which only 40,000 are registered for VAT.
Fact 2: 98.5% of these households are classified as small and micro farm enterprises
Therefore, as we engage with agricultural matters, we must be cognizant that it is a sizable sector, with many farmers who are commercialised. Importantly, the sector serves a large number of people. Therefore, policy-making in the sector must be rooted in reality, and we must avoid leaning on “zombie ideas”.
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He is a Senior Lecturer Extraordinary at the Department of Agricultural Economics at Stellenbosch University.
Sihlobo is also a Visiting Research Fellow at the Wits School of Governance, University of the Witwatersrand, and a Research Associate at the Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER) at Rhodes University.
Sihlobo was appointed as a member of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Presidential Economic Advisory Council in 2019 (and re-appointed in 2022), having served on the Presidential Expert Advisory Panel on Land Reform and Agriculture from 2018.
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, The Herald and Farmers Weekly magazine.
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.
