South Africa’s agricultural sector has not, in the recent past, had a season as good as the current one. This is evident from the Agbiz/IDC Agribusiness Confidence Index (ACI), which in the second quarter of this year reached a record high (since its inception in 2001) of 75, from 64 in the first quarter of 2021.
This week I joined The Finance Ghost and Mohammed Nalla (Moe-Knows) to discuss the investment opportunity in the South African agricultural sector.
I recently sat down with Ms Mbali Nwoko for wide-ranging conservation about South Africa’s agricultural economy, policy, career, writing and more.
CNN International investigated the untapped potential of agriculture in Africa in its regular series Connecting Africa.
Policymakers and senior government officials should remember that effective communication is not “a nice to do” but an integral part of policy-making.
The Beneficiary Selection Criteria for land reform that were first suggested by the Presidential Advisory Panel on land reform is a first step in ensuring gender diversity. The policy proposes that the government should have a bias towards women and youth in its land reform process. In the 700 000 hectares of land that the government is in the process of releasing, we will be able to judge if women and youth are genuinely prioritized.
This week I participated in two podcast series; (1) on the Financial Mail and (2) on Earth Cast. In both sessions, we discussed various aspects of South Africa’s agriculture, land reform and rural development.
I am generally optimistic that South Africa’s food price inflation might not exceed an average of 5% y/y in 2021. The La Nina rains have boosted agricultural production – across all subsectors. For maize, which is essential and discussed extensively, we expect a harvest of 16,6 million tonnes (from 15,3 million tonnes in 2019/20). This will be the second-largest harvest on record and well above the Crop Estimates Committee’s estimate of 15,8 million tonnes.
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.