Opinion

Over the past two decades, commercial farmers in South Africa have made significant strides in improving the working and living conditions of farmworkers.

Professor Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal, former president of the Royal Society, and emeritus professor of cosmology and astrophysics at the University of Cambridge, looks beyond 2050.

The SABC’s Hlaudi (Good-news) Motsoeneng has joined the philosophical school of thought popular with political leaders such as President Jacob Zuma and EFF leader Julius Malema, which contends that if you are unfamiliar with something, it simply does not exist.

Government’s land reform policy will not rescue South Africa from its 36% unemployment rate, nor is it a true reflection of the real needs and wants of black emerging farmers. By John Kane-Berman of the Institute for Race Relations.

Someone recently showed me a photograph that a friend of theirs had posted on Facebook, showing an aerial view of a city burning.

Facebook can be daunting for those farmers who say they were born BC (before computers). However, it’s an excellent way to share ideas with other farmers and stay in contact with family members.

The United Kingdom (UK) voted on Friday to withdraw from the European Union (EU), sending the pound and the rand diving, and David Cameron, former UK Prime Minister, running.

Highlighting the effects of rural road conditions on agricultural cargo is one way of enhancing the visibility of rural road research, according to Prof Wynand Steyn, an associate professor in civil engineering at the University of Pretoria.

While the topic of food security is being increasingly discussed in many parts of the world, it appears that in Africa this vitally important subject receives far too little attention, says renowned conservationist and environmental consultant, Dr John Hanks.

A few months ago, I wrote about Zero Carbon Food, an urban, vertical farming initiative in London using hydroponic systems and LED technology in an old World War II bomb shelter where they harvest up to 20 000kg of greens a year.

It was the Greek philosopher, Plato, who first said “necessity is the mother of invention”, but Albert Einstein later famously changed the phrase slightly to “necessity is the mother of all invention”.

Preferential access to the EU should be fully exploited by Botswana’s beef producers and feedlots. More cattle need to be exported, with local demand being met by imports from South Africa, say Absa’s Wessel Lemmer and the BMC’s Dr AK Tombale.

South Africa’s economy has stagnated, and by the time you read this, Standard and Poor’s may well have downgraded the country’s credit rating to...

Sending or sharing files over the Internet or cellphone networks can be a tedious affair, especially with a poor rural network connection.

The SA fruit and nut markets are driven by global supply and demand. Ezra Steenkamp, deputy director of trade research at the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF), and an associate researcher at the department of agricultural economics at the University of Pretoria, discusses research findings on trade opportunities for the SA fruit and nut industries.

More and more evidence suggests that the actual demand for agricultural land in South Africa is not only being vastly inflated by those in power, but that government presently owns enough land to meet current demand.

I recently took my DJI Phantom 3 Pro drone to a farmer’s day in Komga to demonstrate its capabilities.

Multinational agricultural companies have the capacity and expertise to provide African countries with the inputs needed to grow farming operations – even in challenging climatic conditions, according to DuPont Pioneer president Paul E Schickler.

The planet’s human population is growing at an alarmingly rapid pace, and nobody knows this better than farmers.

As I’ve noted before, drones are growing in popularity amongst farmers.