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Free State Agriculture (FSA) urged farmers and landowners to prepare in earnest for the coming veld-fire season. The first few notable fires of the season had already occurred in, among others, Bethlehem, Clarence and Wesselsbron.

In a significant crackdown on stock theft, the commercial farmers of the Ugie, Maclear (Nqanqarhu) and Elliot (Khowa) areas in the Eastern Cape witnessed a breakthrough.

A new proposal by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has outlined a framework clarifying how competition rules will be enforced in that country’s meat industry.

The Guava Producers’ Association (GPA) has adjusted its guava production estimate down from 25 200t to 22 500t, making the harvest 16% smaller than the 26 641t harvested last season and the smallest harvest in the past three years.

During President Cyril Ramaphosa’s recent cabinet announcement, he stated that the Department of Agriculture, Rural Development and Land Reform would be split into two ministries.

Farm attacks and murders spiked in June and have continued with a bloody start in July. A 65-year-old farm manager was stabbed to death in the early morning hours of Monday on a farm near Porterville in the Western Cape.

The BXB, crossbred from Braunvieh and Brahman cattle, will add value to virtually any beef production concern in Southern Africa, according to Auroa Braunvieh owners Lourens and Henriette Le Grange, who pioneered the BXB in Namibia. They attribute this to the combination of both breeds’ outstanding traits.

South Africa’s new cabinet ministers for agriculture, and land reform and rural development, might hail from different political parties, but their ideologies are much aligned in theory to that of the ANC.

Following a wide-ranging compromise reached with farmers, industry leaders, labour unions and environmental groups, the Danish government has announced the introduction of a tax on livestock carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from 2030.

In the recently released World Bank and S&P Container Port Performance Index 2023, the Port of Cape Town fell from 347th place in the 2022 rankings, when only 348 ports were ranked, to the bottom of the list at number 405.

The Agbiz/IDC Agribusiness Confidence Index (ACI) has fallen by 2 points to 38 in the second quarter of 2024, indicating that agribusinesses remain downbeat about business conditions in South Africa.

Namibia has been battling severe drought conditions since 2012, with the past few years proving especially dire. Although there have been occasional years of good rainfall, most have seen extreme dryness and minimal precipitation.

Extreme weather is resulting in degraded land in some parts of the world being pushed beyond use. In some of the most deprived regions around the globe, this is reaching a tipping point, which could mean that this land will no longer be able to sustain crops, according to Martin Frick, director of the World Food Programme’s global office.

The elephant in the Competition Commission’s Fresh Produce Market Inquiry (FPMI) has yet to be addressed despite the provisional report being released on Wednesday.

An untenable environment in which farmers have to operate has been cited as the reason transformation has mostly failed within the fresh produce sector in South Africa, and why participation from small-scale and historically disadvantaged persons (HDPs) is low in the market.

Former agriculture minister Thoko Didiza was elected National Assembly Speaker at the first sitting of the National Assembly on Friday. In her place, Senzo Mchunu, the minister of Water Affairs and Sanitation, was appointed acting minister of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development.

Namibia is experiencing a serious drought, with the lowest run-off recorded in the past 100 years. This is an indication that groundwater resources would become less reliable in future.

With domestic consumption of pork in the US declining sharply, experts are hoping that increased demand from Mexico and other trading partners could strengthen prices.

Proposed methodology to measure the environmental footprint of apparel and footwear are threatening the feature sustainability of natural fibres.

Botswana is seeking to import grains from international suppliers to supplement its supplies after this year’s devastating drought. According to a Bloomberg report, the country is experiencing its worst drought in 40 years.