Opinion

Digital technologies and innovations have the potential to revolutionise the world’s food systems. This is why agricultural education and training, particularly in South Africa, needs to be revisited as a...

Largely failed land reform initiatives are leading to increased tension and uncertainty in the agriculture sector as a whole. Veteran rural development expert Jimmy Lonsdale believes commercial farmers have a...

Almost two years have passed since Farmer’s Weekly first published an article exploring the potential to establish a legal farming industry in South Africa for the production of medicinal cannabis.

It would not be fair to say that the dramatic unravelling of Tongaat Hulett these past weeks was caused solely by the larger crisis facing South Africa’s sugar industry.

A new class of emerging farmer working the land on municipal commonages have similarities to the ‘kulaks’, the highly productive, early 20th century entrepreneurial Russian farmers drawn from the peasantry....

Any person who has endured tragedy will know that bewildering feeling that settles in soon after the traumatic event when you realise that for other people, and the world around...

The Agribusiness Africa Conference will be hosted by Farmer’s Weekly for the third time this year in Johannesburg on 10 July.

Honeybees are the world’s best-known pollinators of natural flora and a vast array of food and fibre crops. Yet they are frequently harmed by human activities, writes CropLife South Africa’s...

Africa’s agricultural potential can only be realised if smallholders gain access to finance. But loans cannot be focused on just one aspect of the value chain at the expense of...

From halting agricultural imports to bringing agriculture back to schools and the gathering of a great many minds for a land CODESA, these proposals are all contained in the many...

There is a large shortfall between the amount of food being produced in the world today and the quantity needed to feed an expected 10 billion people by 2050. A...

The ‘Global Warming of 1.5˚C’ report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change highlights several climate change impacts that could be avoided by limiting global warming to 1,5˚C, compared with...

Despite significant improvements in agricultural production over the last two decades, food insecurity has been on the rise for the past three years.

As irrigation schemes are found mostly in areas with high poverty levels, smallholder irrigation presents major opportunities for reducing rural poverty. However, smallholder irrigation is performing below expectations. A new...

A widely held sentiment among farmers and agribusiness leaders is that South African agricultural colleges can no longer be trusted to produce appropriately trained, technically skilled professionals.

Research by the International Food Policy Research Institute and the International Institute for Sustainable Development analysed progress in agricultural development in 117 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America to...

Dr René Uys, director of Thinking Fusion AFRICA, argues that young South African farmers need to have the emotional fortitude to face up to the often harsh realities of agriculture...

According to the Estimates of National Expenditure, which was tabled along with the budget in Parliament when Finance Minister Tito Mboweni delivered his budget speech recently, the money allocated to...

Disruptive change is coming to supermarkets and this will have a ripple effect throughout the food industry supply chain. According to Bjorn Thumas, director of business development at TOMRA Food,...

The South African sugar industry is facing a crisis, and the South African Cane Growers’ Association warns that this R14 billion/ year industry is in danger of “imminent collapse, putting 350 000...