by Wandile Sihlobo | Dec 21, 2025 | Agricultural Production
This rainy weather, while an inconvenience at times in social activities, continues to help us in agriculture. The grazing veld is improving nicely across the country. Those in fruit and vegetable farming also don’t have to irrigate as much as on generally warmer days.
In the grains, oilseeds and sugarcane farming, the rain also helps. Remember, the field crops are primarily rainfed. For example, only about 20% of maize, 15% of soybean, and 34% of sugarcane are produced under irrigation, leaving much of the crop dependent on natural rains.
Of course, there can be such a thing as too much rain. We already have some regions of South Africa that struggled to plant grain and oilseeds due to excessive rainfall. But the warmer weather between these rains has helped, and farmers were prepared to plant quickly whenever there is a window of sunshine and the fields are not too muddy.
We typically say the optimal planting window for summer grains and oilseeds in South Africa is between mid-October and mid-November in the eastern regions, and mid-November through to mid-December in the western regions. The area for these windows, amongst other things, was also a concern due to potential frost damage later in the season. There was always a need for farmers to plant at the right time to avoid the frost and take advantage of the rains earlier in the season.
But over time, we have seen seasons being far later than these windows. In fact, the 2024-25 season in grains and oilseeds, which brought an excellent harvest of 20.08 million tonnes (up 30% y/y), was delayed by roughly a month and a half from the typical schedule.
Therefore, even if the current rains delay plantings in some areas, there should be no significant concerns. We know from recent history that farmers can still plant quickly and enjoy a better season.
Overall, the current rains across South Africa are a welcome development for agriculture. The better agricultural conditions also mean a better path for food price inflation going into 2026.
So, for the inconvenience the rains cause you this summer holiday, you get a positive: moderate food price inflation in 2026.
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by Wandile Sihlobo | Dec 12, 2025 | Agricultural Production
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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by Wandile Sihlobo | Dec 10, 2025 | Agricultural Production
We are receiving optimistic news from the South African wine industry. It appears that the excellent production conditions of 2025 will continue into 2026. South Africa Wine, a wine and brandy producers’ representative body, states that:
“South Africa’s wine industry enters the 2026 harvest season with cautious optimism, as the first official crop estimate from private and producer-cellar growers points to another stable, potentially slightly larger harvest compared to last year.”
South Africa Wines adds that:
“For the second consecutive season, vineyards have avoided major weather setbacks such as frost and flooding, allowing the positive momentum of 2025 to continue. This comes even as the national vineyard area continues its long-term structural shift, now standing at 86,544 hectares, reflecting the replacement of unproductive vineyards with more efficient, fit-for-purpose plantings.”
The favourable weather conditions are the core catalyst behind this optimism about the 2026 harvest in the South African wine industry.
Essentially, these early production insights underscore our view that the 2025 agricultural growth will likely continue into 2026, benefiting from the favourable weather conditions.
We produce our wines mainly in the Western Cape, a winter rainfall region, and in a few areas of the Northern Cape.
In the northern regions of South Africa, which are now in the summer crop season, we continue to receive rains, which generally support agricultural activity. And yes, I know the rains are also making it challenging to continue with field work in some regions, thus slowing plantings.
Still, this doesn’t change the view that we are in a favourable La Niña rainfall period, which will ultimately support crop, fruit and vegetable production, and grazing veld.
Ultimately, the message we are receiving from the wine production industry is a start of what we will likely see in 2026, a broad recovery of South Africa’s agriculture.
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by Wandile Sihlobo | Dec 7, 2025 | Agricultural Production
This weekend, we had a breather from the heavy rains that have been affecting many regions of the country. 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.
We certainly see that some regions in the North West, Free State, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, and the Eastern Cape are experiencing excessive rainfall, which may slow fieldwork. Still, there are no concerns as we still have plenty of time.
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.
As I write this letter this afternoon, looking out my office window here in Pretoria, I can see that the clouds are gathering and will likely bring a return of the rains. Hopefully, some farmers managed to take advantage of the warm weather window we saw this weekend to accelerate fieldwork.
We also hope that during the week there will be more windows of warmer weather, particularly in the excessively wet regions of North West, Free State, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape, which need the warm weather for seed germination and field work.
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.
We have also seen this optimism backed by actual activity, as farmers have increased their tractor purchases. For example, we now have data on tractor sales in South Africa for the 11 months of 2025. Cumulative tractor sales are 7,176 units, up 19% year-on-year. Sales have been generally robust throughout the year.
Amongst other things, the increase in agricultural machinery sales also reflects the financial gains from the better 2024-25 agricultural season, particularly in field crops, horticulture, and wine grape harvests, which were mainly supported by favourable weather conditions.
In addition to the improved agricultural production conditions for the 2024-25 season and the promising prospects for the new 2025-26 season, interest rates have eased somewhat from last year’s levels, and the affordable cost of capital supports sales.
Overall, what we are now focusing on most in the South African agricultural sector is weather developments and their impact on farm fieldwork.
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by Wandile Sihlobo | Dec 1, 2025 | Agricultural Production
The soybean industry remains one of South Africa’s success stories in agriculture and is now breaking new records. The country harvested a record soybean crop in the 2024-25 season, estimated at 2.771 million tonnes, up 50% from the previous season. This is on the back of the expansion in area plantings and the higher yields following favourable rainfall.
Significantly, this harvest marginally exceeded the last ample crop of 2.770 million tonnes in the 2022-23 season. This abundant harvest further entrenches South Africa’s position as a net soybean exporter.
Importantly, this is remarkable progress, given that in the 2010s South Africa was a net importer of soybean oilcake, bringing in close to a million tonnes a year. We are now in a far better position than we were in that distant past. We are now a net exporter.
What follows is a brief synopsis of how we got to this excellent position: a superb soybean harvest.
In the 2010s, South Africa experienced a strong demand for soybean oilcake or meal. The growing demand for oilcake, in turn, was underpinned by increased consumption of high-protein foods, particularly poultry products, in the country.
South Africa’s per capita consumption of poultry meat has almost doubled over the past two decades, currently estimated at around 41 kilograms.
To meet the growing demand, South African agribusinesses, supported by the government, invested to increase domestic soybean processing capacity from roughly 860,000 tonnes in the 2010s to over 2 million tonnes today.
This was primarily aimed at stimulating domestic soybean production as part of the country’s import-substitution strategy. South African farmers responded positively to these incentives.
The plantings increased 21-fold over the past 30 years to 1.151 million hectares in the 2024-25 production season. It is this expansion in plantings and favourable rains that have now delivered the 2024-25 season’s record harvest of 2.771 million tonnes.
Notably, technological improvements, such as improved seed cultivars, fertilisers, and better farming practices, also contributed to increased production over the years.
Yield improvements, which doubled from the 1993-94 production season to over 2.41 tonnes per hectare this season, illustrate the contribution of better farming practices and technological advancements.
One of the most notable technological improvements was the adoption of genetically modified seeds (GM) in the early 2000s, which continues to spread across the country.
In the 2024-25 production season, GM seed constituted roughly 95% of South Africa’s soybean plantings. This is the only country on the African continent that produces GM soybeans.
Therefore, it is unsurprising that South Africa continues to enjoy tremendous growth in soybean output while production in other African countries remains pedestrian.
This success is not unique to South Africa; the world’s leading soybean producers, such as the U.S., Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Canada and Uruguay, all grow GM soybeans. About 75% of global soybean production in the 2024-25 production season was GM.
In essence, the investment in expanding South Africa’s soybean processing capacity and improving production techniques has led to a success story in import substitution for soybean meal.
Over 80% of the local soybean meal consumption was imported in the 2010s, but South Africa is now a net exporter. In the 2025-26 marketing year, which corresponds with the 2024-25 season, South Africa’s soybean exports are estimated at 350,000 tonnes.
We are likely to see our production improving in the coming years, as we grow our position as an exporter of soybeans.
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by Wandile Sihlobo | Nov 30, 2025 | Agricultural Production
The wheat farmers in South Africa are working hard to complete the harvest for the 2025-26 season. They have already made impressive progress. But the harvest will likely continue into early January 2026, in some areas.
The farmers have delivered about 960,378 tonnes to commercial silos since the start of October 2025, marking the beginning of this new marketing year. This crop was planted at the beginning of May 2025.
This volume delivered so far equals 47% of South Africa’s expected 2025-26 wheat harvest of 2.03 million tonnes. The expected harvest is up 5% from the 2024-25 season.
The annual improvement is boosted by the expected better harvest in the Northern Cape, Free State, Eastern Cape, and Limpopo.
The Western Cape, which accounts for over half of South Africa’s winter wheat production, is expected to experience a mild decline in the harvest this year compared to the 2024-25 season due to unfavourable weather conditions in some parts of the province.
When the Crop Estimates Committee reviewed the harvest this week, they left the wheat production estimate roughly unchanged from last month (down just 0.3%).
As I noted in my previous letters, the potential wheat harvest of 2.03 million tonnes implies that South Africa may need to import approximately 1.74 million tonnes in the 2025-26 season to meet our annual needs. These imports are expected to be down 5% from the 2024-25 season.
The import activity is not expected to be a significant challenge, given ample global wheat supplies.
The International Grains Council forecasts a record 2025-26 global wheat harvest of 827 million tonnes, up 3% from the previous season. These ample global wheat supplies continue to add downward pressure on global wheat prices, which is beneficial to importing countries as South Africa.
An important fact to keep in mind about South Africa is that we have a wheat import tariff, which may minimise the benefit of lower global wheat prices, as it is intended to provide some level of support to domestic producers.
Still, the fact that there are ample global wheat supplies and prices are under pressure supports the view I have long shared here: we are heading towards a continuous moderating path of food price inflation in 2026 in South Africa.
On November 28, 2025, South Africa’s wheat pot price traded around R5,755 per tonne, down 3% from a year ago.
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by Wandile Sihlobo | Nov 30, 2025 | Agricultural Production
I am unsure if most people noticed, but South Africa’s 2024-25 maize crop of 16.44 million tonnes is the second-largest on record. This is up 28% from the previous season, boosted by the better yields.
The area planted for the 2024-25 maize crop is actually down mildly from the 2023-24 season, at 2.59 million hectares. In essence, the favourable La Niña-induced rains are the core factor behind the yield improvement, along with farmers’ efforts to nurture the crops.
About 8.38 million tonnes are white maize, with 8.06 million tonnes yellow maize, for a total of 16.44 million tonnes.
Importantly, the 16.44 million tonnes harvest is well above South Africa’s annual maize needs of approximately 12.00 million tonnes, indicating a surplus and continued net maize exports.
In fact, since the start of the 2025-26 marketing year in May, which corresponds with the 2024-25 production season, South Africa’s maize export activity has been reasonably substantial. From the start of May 2025 to November 21, 2025, South Africa’s total maize exports for the 2025-26 maize season amounted to 1.07 million tonnes.
There is still ample export volume to occur in the months ahead through the end of the marketing year in April 2026. Exports are expected to reach 2.24 million tonnes.
We will likely see more robust export activity later in early 2026, when demand in the region is expected to be strong. For now, some countries are relying on their domestic maize supplies from the 2024-25 season.
Maize exports so far are reasonably diverse but concentrated in a few markets. For example, Zimbabwe remains a leading market, accounting for 30% of the exported 1.07 million tonnes of maize so far this season. Botswana accounts for 13%, while Vietnam accounts for 10%.
Other notable markets include Namibia, Eswatini, Venezuela, South Korea, and Taiwan, amongst others.
In Far East markets, exports are mainly yellow maize, while in regional markets they are mixed, including both white and yellow maize. The Far East markets use the yellow maize as feed in poultry and livestock, amongst other uses.
On November 26, 2025, South Africa’s white maize spot price traded around 3,794 per tonne, down by 39% from a year ago. The decline in prices mirrors the ample harvest.
On the same day, South Africa’s yellow maize spot price traded around R3,694 per tonne, down 25% from a year ago, also due to ample market supplies.
In essence, these lower maize prices bode well for consumer food price inflation.
Beyond these activities, the farmers on the ground are now focused on tilling the land for the next season, and the weather outlook remains favourable.
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by Wandile Sihlobo | Nov 23, 2025 | Agricultural Production
South Africa’s maize exports continue smoothly, supported by robust global demand and improved domestic port operations.
Since the start of the 2025-26 marketing year in May 2025, South Africa has exported maize to a range of countries, including South Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, Mozambique, Botswana, Lesotho, France, and Zimbabwe, amongst others.
But Zimbabwe has been a major buyer of maize from South Africa. Of the 1.01 million tonnes exported so far, 28% went to Zimbabwe, while other countries accounted for modest shares.
Zimbabwe will likely remain a major maize buyer, as we anticipate it will need to import about 700,000 tonnes in the 2025-26 marketing year to meet the annual consumption of 2.0 million tonnes.
While Zimbabwe’s maize harvest recovered this year, it is not sufficient to meet the annual consumption. The country has a maize harvest of 1.3 million tonnes, according to data from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) in Pretoria.
Thus, I suspect we will see strong maize exports to Zimbabwe in the first quarter of 2026. Of course, South Africa may not be the only source for maize. Zambia also has a surplus and may export to Zimbabwe.
Overall, we see South Africa’s maize exports fairly strong and are still halfway through the expected 2.2 million tonnes for the 2025-26 marketing year, which ends in April 206. In the coming weeks and months, we will likely see more robust exports to the world market.
South Africa had an excellent production season. The country’s 2024-25 maize harvest (corresponding with the 2025-26 marketing year) is estimated at 16.32 million tonnes, 27% higher than the 2023-24 season’s crop.
Importantly, these forecasts are well above South Africa’s annual maize needs of approximately 12.00 million tonnes, indicating a surplus and continued net maize exports.
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