by Wandile Sihlobo | Nov 5, 2018 | My categories
THE LONG READ By Wandile Sihlobo, Mzukisi Qobo and Theo Boshoff[i] There is a broad consensus that agricultural development is key to unlocking the economic possibilities of the communal areas in South Africa. The National Development Plan confirms as much. The...
by Wandile Sihlobo | Nov 4, 2018 | My categories
There is a lot of good going for the South African agricultural industry, which often gets overshadowed by policy discussions. Last month, I highlighted the progress South Africa has made in boosting agricultural exports which exceeded US$10.0 billion for the first...
by Wandile Sihlobo | Nov 2, 2018 | My categories
I am sure many will agree that this has been an eventful year for the South African sugar industry, particularly from a trade perspective. A few months ago, hardly a week would go by without seeing stories of sugar imports threatening the local industry. Hence, I was...
by Wandile Sihlobo | Oct 31, 2018 | My categories
We have seen some rather pessimistic media coverage of the SA agricultural sector over the past couple of months due to policy uncertainty. But, on October 16, the Economist Intelligence Unit highlighted the contribution of the SA agricultural sector to ensuring food...
by Wandile Sihlobo | Oct 30, 2018 | My categories
The benefits of improvements in the Western Cape’s weather conditions are evident in the third quarter agricultural jobs data, which boosted the overall sectoral employment by 3 percent year-on-year to 842 000 jobs. The other provinces that made a notable contribution...
by Wandile Sihlobo | Oct 27, 2018 | My categories
In 2017, South African agricultural exports grew past US$10.0 billion for the first time, boosted by growth in exports of edible fruits, beverages, spirits, vegetables, grains and other agricultural products. This is a 15 percent increase from 2016 – a year that was...
by Wandile Sihlobo | Oct 25, 2018 | My categories
On October 11, I wrote a column on Business Day challenging the view which suggested that ‘SA farmers have stopped planting’, possibly due to uncertainty caused by land reform. At the time, I used SA Agricultural Machinery Association data which indicated that in the...
by Wandile Sihlobo | Oct 23, 2018 | My categories
Don’t judge, I like window seats in a plane this time of the year, not because of amazing views or anything like that. But it really is the cheapest way to view from a distance whether there is progress in the fields in terms of planting. So yesterday afternoon on my...
by Wandile Sihlobo | Oct 17, 2018 | My categories
The growing need to boost rural economic activity through agricultural development has re-introduced the discussion on the subdivision of land to create as many small farms as possible that will benefit communities. Some agricultural economists (myself included) have...
by Wandile Sihlobo | Oct 16, 2018 | My categories
October 16th is World Food Day and maybe the most fitting thing to do would be to boast about South Africa’s progress in terms of food security, having been ranked by the Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2017 Global Food Security Index the top in Africa. Perhaps, the...
