Tremendous agricultural growth in SA, but progress is uneven
There are divergent views about the effectiveness of South Africa’s agricultural policies and the extent to which they have been implemented.
The one undeniable fact is that the sector has grown tremendously. Agricultural output in 2022/23 was twice as much as in 1993/94. Whether this growth has been inclusive and transformative is a question I will return to.
For now, it’s important to emphasise the growth of the industry and the drivers of its expansion. Livestock, horticulture and field crops have all seen strong growth.
The production of some crops, notably wheat and sorghum, has declined. This, however, has a lot to do with changes in agroecological conditions and falling demand in the case of sorghum, not policies.
Higher production has been underpinned mainly by new technologies, better skills, growing demand (locally and globally) and progressive trade policy. The private sector has played a major role.
South Africa was the world’s 32nd-largest agricultural exporter in 2022 – the only African country in the top 40 in value terms, according to data from Trade Map.
This was made possible by trade agreements the government secured over the past decades. South Africa now exports about half its agricultural products in value terms.
The country is now ranked 59th out of 113 in the Global Food Security Index, making it the most food-secure in sub-saharan Africa.
Boasting about this ranking when millions of South Africans go to bed hungry may ring hollow.
However, the lack of access to food that most South Africans face is owing to poverty rather than to a lack of availability as a result of low agricultural output, as in other parts of Africa. We need to ensure that households have sufficient income.
The gains we’ve seen in agricultural production over the past two decades have not been equitably distributed across the agricultural industry. Growth has been mainly restricted to organised commercial agriculture, sometimes at the expense of a distinct but heterogeneous cohort of farmers in South Africa.
As I argued in my recent book, A Country of Two Agricultures: “On the one hand, we have a subsistence, primarily non-commercial and black farming segment; on the other, we have predominantly commercial and white farmers.”
The book adds: “The democratic government’s corrective policies and programmes to unify the sector and build an inclusive agricultural economy have suffered failures since 1994. The private sector has also not provided many successful partnership programmes to foster the inclusion of black farmers in commercial production at scale.
“It is no surprise that institutions such as the National Agricultural Marketing Council estimate that black farmers account for less than 10%, on average, of commercial agricultural production in South Africa. This lacklustre performance by black farmers in commercial agriculture cannot be blamed solely on historical legacies.”
However, we cannot ignore anecdotal evidence pointing to the rise of black farmers in some corners of South Africa.
Even with the adoption of technology, employment in agriculture has remained robust. About 922,000 people were employed in 1994, according to Statistics South Africa. This is both seasonal and permanent labour. In the third quarter of 2023, about 956,000 people worked in primary agriculture, a 4% increase from 1994.
As South Africa moves forward, let’s be mindful of the progress that has been made. And in the quest to grow and be more inclusive, we should be vigilant about the unintended consequences of the policies we seek to implement. Equally, we must never be complacent about the dualism we continue to see in the agricultural sector.