by Wandile Sihlobo | Jun 11, 2020 | Agricultural Production
This essay first appeared on Business Day, June 9, 2020 Some countries in the Southern and East Africa regions will again need large imports of maize in the 2020/2021 marketing year, which ends in April 2021. However, their saviours won’t be your typical major global...
by Wandile Sihlobo | Jun 6, 2020 | Agricultural Trade
The ongoing Covid-19 crisis has brought uncertainty to global trade because of disruptions in supply chains and weakening demand. South Africa’s agricultural sector, which is export-oriented, is one of the sectors I feared would be disrupted by the pandemic. So...
by Wandile Sihlobo | Jun 4, 2020 | Agricultural Production
I’ve recently cautioned that dryness in parts of Europe and North America could lead to poor grain yields, which would mean that anticipated record harvests in 2020/21 might fail to materialise. But data released by the International Grains Council (IGC) last week...
by Wandile Sihlobo | May 28, 2020 | Agricultural Production
This essay first appeared on Business Day, May 26, 2020 As we continue to learn to live in the Covid-19 era, the business of agriculture has to go on and provide much-needed food to the world. The focus for many countries is now on the wheat production prospects for...
by Wandile Sihlobo | May 26, 2020 | Africa Focus
Since the pandemic started several countries have adopted restrictive trade policy approaches such as export bans and export quotas. The justification for such policies was consumer-focused, as the countries needed to ensure domestic food security during this...
by Wandile Sihlobo | May 21, 2020 | Agricultural Trade
Essay by Wandile Sihlobo and Tinashe Kapuya[i] As countries continue to implement “risk-adjusted” responses to COVID-19 and global leaders and analysts alike continue to assess the evolving implications of the pandemic on global markets. What makes COVID-19 unique is...
by Wandile Sihlobo | May 20, 2020 | Agricultural Production
The global wheat market is not out of the woods. While the recent data from United States Department of Agriculture and the International Grains Council brought some comfort indicating prospects of a record wheat harvest in 2020/21, estimated at 768 million tonnes, a...
by Wandile Sihlobo | May 17, 2020 | Agricultural Production
This essay first appeared on Business Day, May 12, 2020 No industry will escape the economic pain of the Covid-19 pandemic. The high-frequency economic data for industries that are classified as non-essential during the lockdown period already shows the negative...
by Wandile Sihlobo | May 14, 2020 | Agricultural Production
This week, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) released the World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates data – arguably among the most anticipated data releases in global agricultural markets. The agency reinforced the message painted by the...
by Wandile Sihlobo | May 12, 2020 | Agricultural Production
This essay first appeared on the Financial Mail, May 7, 2020 As the coronavirus continues to spread around the world, governments have intensified efforts to contain the pandemic by limiting the movement of people and temporarily shutting down parts of the economy....
