The Land Bank’s missed opportunity
I have often wondered, while listening to presentations given at conferences by agricultural economists, whether these learned men and women would make the best or worst farmers.
Farmers, the black sheep of the world?
As part of an in-house project to look at how Farmer’s Weekly has evolved over the past 107 years, a couple of colleagues and I recently visited the National Library...
Stock theft threatens growth in SA’s goat value chain
While common across South Africa, goats remain a largely untapped resource for poverty alleviation and rural development. But efforts to remedy the situation are being undermined by the widespread theft...
New start for land reform department?
As the saying goes: be careful what you wish for. After the appointment of Cyril Ramaphosa as president of the ANC in December last year, and his subsequent election as...
Will technology end hunger?
South Africa is one of those countries in which you rarely have to travel far to witness first-hand the kind of disparity that exists in the supply of food.
Time for the private sector to fight rural poverty
While rural development is supposed to be a key focus of the South African government, the state is failing in this obligation. Veteran rural development expert Jimmy Lonsdale believes the...
SA’s maintenance emergency – time for change
As a journalist working for Farmer’s Weekly, you regularly get to experience the bumps, cracks, potholes and other obstacles that crowd out the smooth and flat parts of many provincial...
Land: SA’s real watershed moment
Ever since the National Assembly voted to pass a revised motion brought by the EFF to launch a process to change the Constitution to allow for land expropriation without compensation,...
Climate change data cannot be faked
Now that all the most crucial changes on South Africa’s political landscape have come to pass, we can turn our attention for a moment to those challenges that will not...
Animal welfare: are consumers wilfully ignorant?
Wilful ignorance is when people consciously avoid information. Many studies have documented consumer attitudes toward farm animal welfare, but few have questioned whether people really want to know how farm...
Land audit reveals no great insight
Since land ownership, and agricultural land ownership in particular, remains one of South Africa’s most contentious issues, we should ideally have clear, independent and accurate data available to inform any...
A letter to farmers in drought-stricken regions
It’s a feeling anyone who has grown up on a farm knows well: the excruciating helplessness of looking out over your parched veld or crops and watching rain fall from...
Global hunger: the price we pay for food
In poorer nations, buying the ingredients for a single meal can use up a significant portion of a person’s earnings. Where there is conflict or economic collapse, it can exceed...
Uncertainty is the new normal
Try to think back, and ask yourself if two years ago you would have believed that a global first-class city would run out of water, or that a US president...
Do we need a new way to measure our prosperity?
Claims have emerged that institutions such as the World Bank are ‘doctoring’ the methods they use to measure food security, competitiveness and other factors in developing countries.
Ramaphosa’s land reform problem
The general feeling of relief that South Africa’s business community may have felt when it was announced that Cyril Ramaphosa had won the ANC leadership race was short-lived for those...
Agriculture is changing and so must agri economists
It’s not only farmers who have to adapt to the fundamental changes occurring in world agriculture, or go out of business. Agricultural economists also have to adapt. This is the...
The one thing that can destroy SA
At the end of last year, two reports were published that exposed findings so disturbing that if this knowledge does not spur South Africans into action to save the country’s...
Black youths must be made aware of agri sector careers
In his BCom Hons research paper, Mlungisi Mama examines why so few black youths are interested in agriculture as a career. His conclusion is that they believe the sector comprises...
We all want land reform. Let’s make it work!
Meaningful land reform is crucial, not only to allay the farming community’s fears, but to help restore the economy and benefit South Africa’s poor.
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