Opinion

Many in the agriculture sector believe that government’s efforts to develop successful black farmers since 1994 have largely failed. Frans Cronje, CEO of the South African Institute of Race Relations, says this is because government spending is incorrectly prioritised, and that not nearly enough is being spent on farmer development.

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 troubles.

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 seat in Parliament has expressed an opinion on the matter.

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 grew up in northern KwaZulu-Natal, I usually pass through Ermelo on the town’s severely battered and potholed main road.

Local and global demand for almonds is on the increase as consumers begin to favour healthier food. Saturated production in the world’s largest production regions presents South African farmers with an unbeatable opportunity to enter the international market, according to economist Gilberto Biacuana.

Transformation in the farming sector, or any other sector, has not failed because too little effort and money have been invested in it.

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 day with an honest intention to contribute in some way to the future of the agriculture sector in South Africa.

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 agriculture, to commemorate this day.

Newly-elected president of Wildlife Ranching SA, Tebogo Mogashoa, says transformation of the game industry and advocating for the legal trade in rhino horn will be among the top focal points for the organisation this year.

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 Weekly in Johannesburg.

Many farmers are investing in new technologies that can help increase production and efficiency at farm level, but the uptake of digital trading technology has been slower. As a result, farmers are losing out on the opportunity to increase their share of profit earned along the agricultural value chain.

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 farmer suicides in the US.

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 granted that growing the agriculture sector would be an effective way to create jobs in Africa.

Global opportunities are opening up for South African vegetable producers and exporters with the emergence of new markets in some Asian and African countries. This is due to an increase in middle-income earners, says Ezra Steenkamp, deputy director of international trade research at the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.

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.

The biggest story coming out of the recent Group of Seven (G7) summit in Canada is the heckling by US President Donald Trump on Twitter, which was directed at other member countries of the G7, and Canada in particular.

A large body of literature claims that where there is a lack of food, conflict is bound to increase as people battle over limited resources. However, researcher Ore Koren suggests quite the opposite, saying that conflict is likely to increase when food sources are abundant.

A friend I met through our mutual interest in farming recently introduced me to the book Letters to a Young Farmer: On Food, Farming, and Our Future, compiled by the US’s Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture.

The circulation of illicit arms has made cattle rustling more violent and harmful. East Africa has lessons to share on prevention, say Duncan E Omondi Gumba and Nelson Alusala of the Institute for Security Studies Africa.

A new study that looks at the water competition between cities and agriculture has found that urban water demand in 482 of the world’s largest cities will increase by 80% by 2050, leading to an acute urban surface-water deficit. However, the study also discovered that in certain instances, even a 10% increase in irrigation water-use efficiency can help to overcome urban surface-water deficits.