MORNING NOTE: Some regions of the Eastern Cape were never truly out of drought
Some analysts, myself included, did not anticipate that the 2019/20 harvest and agricultural performance would be as robust as we have witnessed. This is clear from one of the essays I wrote for Business Day on December 10, 2019, which was titled – Another grim...
MORNING NOTE: Sentiment conditions in SA agriculture and agribusiness
My aim in this morning’s blog post is to discuss briefly the sentiment conditions in South Africa’s agriculture and agribusiness sectors. This follows the release of the third-quarter results of the Agbiz/IDC Agribusiness Confidence Index (ACI). For full disclosure, I...
MORNING NOTE: SA weekly grains data and production prospects for 2020/21
In this blog post, I will briefly reflect on South Africa’s recent weekly grain data releases and also on the upcoming 2020/21 production season, leaning on the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) data that was published on Friday evening.[1] SA weekly...
MORNING NOTE: SA agriculture to buck the trend in Q2, 2020 GDP statistics
This is an important day in the South African economics calendar. At 11h30 this morning, Statistics South Africa will release GDP data for the second quarter of the year. Recent surveys of macro analysts’ forecasts of the second quarter GDP show that the South African...
MORNING NOTE: SA Weekly Grains Data
I’m making it a routine to use this Monday note to reflect on the two weekly data releases in the South African agricultural market, namely (1) the grain producer deliveries and (2) trade activity. For now, the focus on the producer deliveries data is on summer...
What does the African National Congress and Business for South Africa say about agriculture post-COVID-19?
In the second week of July 2020, the Economic Transformation Committee of the African National Congress (ANC)[1] and Business for South Africa (B4SA)[2], released their respective strategy documents for the post-COVID-19 inclusive economy recovery for South Africa....
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.