This was one of the central messages at the launch of Absa’s AgriTrends Spring 2026 report at Nampo Cape in Bredasdorp, Western Cape, this week.
Jade Smith, agricultural economist at Absa AgriBusiness, said the range of factors capable of affecting farming businesses made informed decision-making critical.
“Success is about how you make decisions when uncertainty arrives. A more informed farmer is a more resilient producer.”
Smith noted that six months ago, few would have predicted that conflict in the Middle East would emerge as one of the biggest challenges facing agriculture this year.
Weather presented another major uncertainty, with forecasts pointing to a potentially severe El Niño. Loffie Brandt, executive head of AgriBusiness at Absa Group, told Farmer’s Weekly that while it was difficult to determine how extreme the event would ultimately be, farmers were entering it from an unusually strong position. “Based on the forecasts, this could potentially be the worst El Niño we have ever seen. But we are also going into it with the best conditions we have ever had. Soil moisture levels are high and dams are full.”
Brandt added that while a drier summer was expected to result in a smaller crop, significant carry-over stocks would keep prices lower. International market movements would also influence local prices.
Zama Sangweni, agricultural economist at Absa AgriBusiness, said at the event that Absa expected maize yields to remain slightly above those recorded during previous El Niño events, but below the levels achieved during the wetter recent seasons.
Sangweni said these interacting risks illustrated how agriculture had moved beyond the concept of a VUCA world – volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous – towards what was increasingly described as BANI: brittle, anxious, non-linear and incomprehensible.
She pointed to Middle East tensions as an example of the sector’s brittleness. Despite occurring far from South Africa, the conflict had disrupted freight routes and market access and caused global and local fertiliser prices to spike.
The ‘non-linear’ nature of the current environment meant relatively small events could have disproportionately large consequences for farmer margins, while increasingly unpredictable weather made historical climate data a less reliable guide.
For farmers, the AgriTrends message was therefore not that every disruption could be predicted, but that understanding the forces shaping agriculture provided a stronger basis from which to respond when the unexpected occurred.
