Thoughts on South Africa’s food price inflation
The data released this morning by Statistics South Africa shows that the country’s food price inflation accelerated to 4.2% y/y in February 2020, from 3.7% y/y in the previous month. This uptick was mainly underpinned by relative price rises of meat; milk, eggs and...
Good year for SA grain sector
This promises to be a good year for South Africa’s grain sector, at least from a production front. The data released yesterday by the Crop Estimates Committee (CEC) show that South Africa’s 2019/20 summer grains production could increase by 26% y/y to 16.8 million...
Keeping up with SA grain trade
This note is a bit delayed. I had to attend a conference this morning. Here is a Twitter feed for those keen to see what went down. Back to business! It is Thursday – a grain trade day. The South African Grain Information Services (SAGIS) releases the country’s grain...
Benefits of farm productivity
Nowadays we take for granted how the world agricultural productivity has improved over the past couple of decades. Today’s farms produce more maize, wheat, soybeans, etc. per hectare than any other time in history. This has been made possible by, amongst other...
Grain Trade Day
The South African Grain Information Services releases the country’s grain trade data for the week of 7th of February 2020 by midday. The data covers maize and wheat. While these data are important for tracking the movement of grains into and outside South Africa, they...
Thoughts on South Africa’s food price inflation
South Africa’s food price inflation is relatively contained and I am beginning to think that the 3.6% y/y average we expected for 2019 might be an overestimate. The average for the nine months data we have thus far is about 2.9% y/y, which means to average at 3.6% y/y...
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“.
He is a Senior Lecturer Extraordinary at the Department of Agricultural Economics at Stellenbosch University and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Wits School of Governance, University of the Witwatersrand.
Sihlobo was appointed as a member of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Presidential Economic Advisory Council in 2019 (and re-appointed in 2022), having saved 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.
His weekly podcast, “Agricultural Market Viewpoint with Wandile Sihlobo“, is available on all podcast platforms.
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.