Fund farmers, not food
During the early years of the current decade, encouraging progress was made in reducing the number of people across the world who suffer from hunger, but the gains made have...
Land: access vs ownership
The one crucial point that should not be forgotten by all the organisations and political parties representing, or claiming to represent, the interests of various civil society groupings is the...
Economic slip and unemployment slide
Sometimes I think that if we could only somehow bottle the eternal optimism of the average South African, the profit we’d make would be enough to solve the country’s economic...
Soil erosion: an overlooked threat
The land debate has been dominating headlines in South Africa since December last year, and in the run-up to the national election in 2019, every politician hoping to win a...
Dawn of the DIY democracy
On the rare occasions when I manage to escape the city early enough on a Friday to drive the 450km from my office in Johannesburg to the farm where I...
SA is ruining all hope of real change
Transformation in the farming sector, or any other sector, has not failed because too little effort and money have been invested in it.
Dear Minister Zokwana, you have failed our farmers
Let me start by apologising to all the civil servants working for the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF), those hard-working citizens who show up at the office every...
How do we attract women to agriculture?
This week we celebrate National Women’s Day in South Africa, and I have spent a lot of time thinking about what I want to say to, and about women in...
Getting comfortable with ambiguity
I am still busy processing the vast amount of ideas and information that were shared by the speakers and other participants at the 12th Agribusiness Africa Conference, hosted by Farmer’s...
Let’s talk about farmworkers
Chris Clayton, a journalist from the US whom I met at a conference in Argentina about five years ago, recently wrote a column about a study on the rate of...
Can agriculture really create jobs?
After reading the report ‘Overcoming Poverty and Inequality in South Africa’, which was published earlier this year by the World Bank, I started wondering whether we have begun taking for...
Time to exit the commodity game
For some farmers, this might be easier said than done, but to make a living from farming in the future you will either have to go big or be unique.
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