News

The wine industry has expressed relief that the ban on wine sales by wine cellars on Sundays has been lifted, reversing regulations published in the Government Gazette on 15 December, prohibiting wine tastings and sales on Sundays.

The Competition Commission’s (CompCom) third essential food pricing monitoring report has found that retail food prices have not returned to normal, following increases during the initial ‘hard’ lockdown in South Africa to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.

Players in the international biotech industry have been working on a synthetic alternative to palm oil in an attempt to replace natural palm oil in various products.

South African livestock producers need to vaccinate animals against insect-borne diseases such as lumpy skin disease, three-day stiff sickness, Rift Valley fever, and bluetongue disease as soon as possible.

Despite continuing to face legal actions aimed at achieving a permanent halt of shipboard livestock exports from South Africa, Kuwaiti company, Al Mawashi, has indicated that it is already planning another such shipment in the first quarter of 2021.

Companies and industry organisations in South Africa’s legal tobacco value chain have welcomed the recent judgement of the Western Cape High Court that found that government’s five-month COVID-19-related ban on the legal sale of tobacco products was unconstitutional and, therefore, unlawful.

Water resource management in South Africa is in crisis, and this may have serious implications for agriculture. This was according to Prof Anthony Turton of the Centre for Environmental Management at the University of the Free State.

Progress in the private prosecution of Thandi Modise, speaker of Parliament, for alleged animal cruelty on her North West farm is reportedly being hindered by “political agendas”.

The Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development (agriculture department) announced recently that more than 75 000 subsistence producers would be supported with farming input vouchers.

Tractor sales increased significantly in November compared with the same period last year. The latest report released by the South African Agricultural Machinery Association (SAAMA) indicated that 593 tractors were sold in November, up 39% on the 427 units sold during the same month last year.

Sharing their report on the latest iteration of the Expropriation Bill (B23-2020), Free State Agriculture (FSA) held a media conference on 11 December, highlighting their concerns should the Bill succeed in Parliament.

Chinese pig producer Muyuan Foods grew its profits by 1 413% in the first nine months of 2020 to 21 billion yuan (about R48 billion), after the company started operations at the first of 21 buildings on its new pig farm in Neixiang county, Henan province, during September.

Members of South Africa’s five-year-old Wagyu South Africa beef cattle society have expressed excitement about the rare 15 marbling score recently achieved by a locally produced 490,4kg and DNA-verified Wagyu x Angus carcass.

Roughly 95% of South Africa’s table grape crop is exported, and as a result, the current delay experienced in harvesting has resulted in a rush to get the fruit to the markets in time for the Festive Season.

South Africa’s farming sector continued its positive growth and contribution to national gross domestic product (GDP) during the third quarter of 2020 (Q3 2020).

South Africa’s soils are extremely degraded, and over the past 100 years, the country has lost up to 50% of the carbon content in cultivated soils.

Very high levels of water stress or very high drought frequency affect about 1,2 billion people living in agricultural areas globally.

The Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development has urged farmers in the Free State, Northern Cape and Western Cape to report any sightings of locust swarms so that these can be prevented from spreading throughout the country.

While the increase in diesel prices would usually be felt by grain farmers in the process of planting, good rain has allowed farmers in the central and western parts of the country to plant earlier, helping them stave off the effects of the recent diesel price increase.

Although current sentiments for South Africa’s agriculture sector are generally positive, parts of the sector, such as the tobacco and wine value chains, are now feeling the financial aftershocks of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated national and international lockdown restrictions.