Opinion

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 operations and stewardship manager, Dr Gerhard Verdoorn.

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 others. Antois van der Westhuizen, managing director of John Deere Financial, suggests ways to design integrated financing models for smallholders.

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 promises made by political parties as to how they will ensure that agriculture thrives and land is shared fairly should they be voted into power.

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 World Resources Institute report suggests it is possible to produce enough food sustainably to cater for the rapid increase in demand, but achieving this will require major changes to the way we grow and consume food.

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 2˚C or more. For example, at 1,5˚C warming, the Arctic Ocean is likely to be free of sea ice in summer just once a century on average, whereas at 2°C global warming, the likelihood rises to once a decade.

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 study explores the reasons for this.

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 understand which policies have succeeded or failed. It then provided policy guidelines to help countries still at the subsidence farming stage to transform their agriculture sectors.

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 in this country. In short, they have to be both skilled and brave, which is why self-development is crucial.

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 the Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA) for its climate change and biodiversity and conservation programmes does not inspire much confidence that South Africa will be able to adequately protect itself from the looming global crisis of total environmental breakdown.

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, technical innovations online and in-store, combined with shifting consumer demands, will reshape the supermarket of the future.

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 jobs at risk”.

The farming sector has a long tradition of depending on co-operative models that, in essence, offer groups of smaller or medium-sized farmers the same scale of benefits that would otherwise have been available to only large, corporate farming businesses.

When agriculture sneezes, the whole economy catches a cold, the saying goes. We saw clear proof of this in 2018, when South Africa experienced a technical recession after the country’s GDP declined during each of the first two quarters of the year due to a massive drop in agricultural output.

Professor Cyril Nhlanhla Mbatha of Unisa’s Graduate School of Business Leadership outlines some key production and marketing strategies to help promote the economic sustainability of smallholder farmers, and therefore more successful land reform in South Africa.

According to Ed Treacy, vice-president of supply chain efficiencies for the Produce Marketing Association (PMA), blockchain technology holds great possibilities for improving efficiency and traceability in the fresh produce sector. In particular, it optimises supply chain operations, enhancing quality management, increasing market and business intelligence, reducing costs, and fostering brand protection.

Last year, the UN General Assembly proclaimed the Decade of Family Farming for the period from 2019 to 2028. The purpose of this initiative is to provide a framework for countries to develop public policies and investments to support family farming.

Overpopulation and managing population growth are some of the most difficult subjects to write about.

Zimbini Coka, a junior lecturer at the University of the Free State’s Department of Agricultural Economics, visited areas that became part of the Ciskei homeland through consolidation in the 1970s as part of her master’s research. In this article, she shares her views on the lessons learnt from the past process of homeland consolidation and what these mean for South Africa’s land reform process.