KwaZulu-Natal is a major agricultural province with significant production of various products such as sugarcane, fruit, dairy, and poultry. Roughly 30% of South Africa’s dairy herd is there along with 12% of the country’s chicken, eggs and pigs. Almost 81% of the country’s sugar is produced in the province. The province is also a major producer of macadamia, among other fruits. These industries were not spared from damage by recent floods. The SA Canegrowers Association indicates a substantial area where fields were destroyed and require a total replant. There was also extensive damage to on-farm infrastructure, which, combined with field damage, brought the total financial losses in the province’s sugarcane industry to an estimated R222m. The survey of the full damage is still underway, which means that this figure could be adjusted in the coming days. Read more in the linked article by Agbiz chief economist Wandile Sihlobo, written for and first published in Business Day.

Most nitrogen fertilisers likely are in place for the 2022 production of spring crops in North America, albeit at much higher prices than in 2021. However, the continuing Ukraine-Russia war can limit fertiliser supplies for the crop that will be planted in South America later in 2022, leading to further upward price pressures for fertiliser used in North America for the 2023 production year. In this article, the authors detail the international trade of nitrogen fertilisers before hostilities in Ukraine-Russia began. Then they evaluate possible changes in supply resulting from the Ukraine-Russia war. Read more in the linked article by the University of Illinois and Ohio State University first published on farmdocdaily.

Energy prices that have soared since Russia's war in Ukraine are a "major concern" for South Africa's economy, Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana said on Friday, while it was too soon to quantify the full impact of last week's devastating floods. Whether high prices of the commodities that South Africa exports, including gold and platinum metals, would counter this was still unclear, Godongwana told Reuters in a video call from Washington at the International Monetary Fund Spring Meetings. "Energy prices are of major concern," Godongwana said. "Fuel prices are pervasive in the economy - they push your food prices up... It is becoming a more worrying threat." Read more in the linked Reuters article.

The Office of the Valuer-General (OVG) was established to provide fair and consistent land values for rating and taxing purposes, determine financial compensation in the case of expropriation, provide specialist valuation advice to government, set norms and standards and maintain a database of valuation information. Whilst private sector was in support of the state creating in-house valuation capacity, there were concerns raised from the start about using a formula reserved for compensation to determine the value of land, as well as the role of the OVG in determining compensation when expropriation takes place. In the linked article, Agbiz CEO Theo Boshoff and Agbiz head of Legal Intelligence Annelize Crosby discuss the concerns about the role of the OVG and the fomulistic approach to applying section 25(3) of the Constitution.

Maize production in some of the sub-Saharan African countries that dominated maize supplies during the 2021/22 marketing year is expected to be lower this coming season. This will bring about some changes in the sub continent’s maize trade in the 2022/23 marketing year, in particular creating complications for Kenya. In the 2021/22 season, Kenya was the largest maize importer in the region. But Kenya has a longstanding policy against genetically engineered maize. This limits the role of South Africa, the subcontinent's biggest maize producer and exporter, in meeting Kenya’s needs. Agbiz chief economist Wandile Sihlobo discusses this subject in the linked article, first published on The Conversation.

A ban on agricultural exports is never desirable, especially by a major player in agricultural markets. Unfortunately, such practices have been common since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war more recently. We have seen this through the temporary curbs on wheat and rice exports, as global prices increased and countries attempted to protect their domestic consumers. In 2020, the G20 agricultural ministers intervened and discouraged countries from banning exports as the practice further exacerbated global agricultural commodity prices and reduced local farmers' incentives to increase production in the next season to fulfil the stronger global demand. The latest country to follow this path of export curbs is Indonesia, which, this past Friday, banned the exports of palm oil. Read more on this situation in the linked article by Wandile Sihlobo.

The excessive rains during the 2021/22 summer season have increased uncertainty about the crop harvest size and quality. At the start of the summer crop season, there were fears that farmers wouldn't be able to meet the usual area plantings. Still, the pause in the rains in January allowed farmers to replant in areas that had experienced crop damages, and thus we ended up with a decent crop area. The harvest size figures also remain encouraging, although we are still trying to understand the full impact of the recent disastrous KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape rains. The figures released this week by the Crop Estimates Committee (CEC) about South Africa's 2021/22 summer crop harvest probably don't mirror the impact of these rains. Wandile Sihlobo discusses the latest data in the linked article.

The floods in KwaZulu-Natal have had a direct impact on agriculture. Agbiz, Business Unity SA (BUSA) and Transnet are working together to address the problems caused to the infrastructure such as ports, roads and rail transport. Wessel Lemmer of Agbiz Grain provides more details on the progress in an interview with RSG Landbou. Please click here to listen to the interview.

Brazil’s Marketing Year (MY) 2022/23 sugarcane crop is forecast to recover to 613 million metric tons (mmt), an increase of six per cent compared to the final estimate for MY 2021/22 (576 mmt), supported by better weather conditions vis-à-vis the previous year. Sugar prices remain significantly attractive which should result in an unchanged sugar ethanol production mix relative to the previous season. The revised estimate for Brazilian exports in MY 2021/22 is 25.65 mmt, raw value. Brazil remains the second-largest recipient of the U.S. sugar tariff-rate quota. Currently, FY 2022 sugar TRQ for Brazil is

allocated at 152,691 metric tons, raw value. Read more in the linked USDA Global Agricultural Information Network (GAIN) report.

Efforts to redress the dispossession of black people of their land by centuries of colonialism and decades of apartheid have yielded limited progress 28 years into democracy, despite the introduction of a raft of policy changes and amendments to the legal framework governing land reform. This is the opinion of Peter Setou, chief executive of the Vumelana Advisory Fund, a non-profit organisation that helps beneficiaries of the land reform programme put their land to profitable use by establishing commercially viable partnerships between communities and investors. In the Oxford Handbook of the South African Economy, agricultural and business scholars Wandile Sihlobo and Prof. Johann Kirsten estimate that of the 77,580-million hectares of farmland owned by white farmers, 13.2-million hectares (or 17%) has been transferred away from white landowners to the state (3.08-million hectares) or black owners (10.135-million hectares) through private and state-supported transactions, including land restitution (Vink and Kirsten 2019). Read more in the linked article by the Vumelana Advisory Fund, first published on TimesLive.

This week, the European Union’s (EU) Standing Committee on Plant, Animal, Food and Feed (SCOPAFF) will discuss and, possibly vote on, new and arguably misinformed regulations on false codling moth (FCM) which pose a major threat to Southern African orange exports. If agreed to by member countries, these new regulations will have a devastating impact on orange exports from South Africa to the region. This could lead to large gaps in the supply chain and higher prices for European consumers, at a time when the region faces the real risk of food insecurity due to the ongoing Ukraine-Russian conflict. In South Africa, these new regulations will put the sustainability of the industry at risk and the 140 000, mostly rural, jobs it sustains. The proposed legislation requires exporting African countries to implement a drastic mandatory cold treatment (0°C to -1°C for at least 16 days) for oranges headed to the region. Read more in the linked article, first published on FreshPlaza.

Minister of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development Thoko Didiza has met with industry stakeholders on 20 April 2022, to discuss several challenges facing the livestock industry regarding the outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD). During the meeting, several challenges were outlined regarding the current FMD outbreaks which have spread from Limpopo to KwaZulu-Natal, North West, Gauteng, and the Free State. The minister assured the industry that government is doing all it can to address the outbreak in the country and she has engaged with all affected MECs and relevant officials. “I will intervene personally on some of these matters to ensure that they are resolved.” Read more in the linked DALRRD media statement.

In April, international shipping and logistics company, the CMA CGM Group, launched a new service allowing the export of citrus fruits in reefer containers from Mozambique at the Port of Maputo, to Asia at Singapore and Tanjung Pelepas through CMA CGM’s Asia Mozambique Express (MOZEX) service. This innovative solution represents a new sustainable solution as a citrus gateway port to the world. This new export corridor through Maputo offers citrus fruit exporters from the northern region of South Africa, Mozambique as well as Zimbabwe and Swaziland lower CO2 emission, improved transit times, higher fruit quality at the destination, and reduced logistics costs to reach new markets and get the most value from their produce. Read more in the linked article, first published on FreshPlaza.

Together with widespread rain over the summer rainfall region, temperatures have trended downwards during April as is typical for autumn. There’s already been a number of cool mornings with minimum temperatures in the lower single digits as far north as parts of the Free State, North West and Mpumalanga. Given the medium-term outlook, the relatively frequent invasion of cold fronts into the interior from the southwest will continue until the end of the month. More autumn thundershowers are expected during the next few days, but there is no indication yet of a repeat of the cloudy, rainy situations that occurred during the last few weeks over the major summer grain production region. Read more in the latest edition of Cumulus, published by AgriSeker.

Since last Thursday no citrus – lemons and the first soft citrus at the moment – have been packed in the Eastern Cape’s Sundays River Valley as an illegal strike, accompanied by numerous incidents of arson, has paralysed the community in a repeat of the strike of July 2018. The Sundays River Producer Forum is in ongoing negotiations with South African National Civic Organisation (SANCO) representatives on its demand for an R30 increase over the national minimum wage. Habata Agri, with extensive citrus and melon operations in Kirkwood and Addo, as well as citrus enterprise Wicklow Farms have obtained court interdicts following arson attacks, while the Sundays River Producer Forum has also now obtained a court interdict against individuals identified as responsible for incitement and obstructing workers from returning to work. Read more in the linked article by Carolize Jansen, first published on FreshPlaza.

A new and exciting hospitality initiative for smallholder farmers was launched at the SA Agri Academy’s head office in Jamestown, Stellenbosch on 20 April 2022. In order to enable these farmers to diversify and broaden their focus beyond primary production, the SA Agri Academy expanded its training and coaching offerings to include courses in the hospitality sector. Smallholder farmers focusing on a primary production value chain can now add a hospitality value chain to their activities, including a B&B, guest house, on-farm holiday experience, small farm kitchen restaurant, farm stall, and a food truck, to name but a few. This new venture will enable them to diversify income sources and mitigate risk by not focusing only on primary production but exploring a collaboration with the hospitality value chain. Nine farms in the Western Cape were part of the first rollout of the programme. Read more in the linked SA Agri Academy media statement.

The Citrus Growers' Association of Southern Africa (CGA) has been engaging closely with government and stakeholders across the citrus value chain on efforts to return the Durban port back to full functionality, following the catastrophic rains and flooding in KwaZulu-Natal. We are pleased that there has been significant progress achieved over the past week with the Department of Public Enterprises (DPE), Transnet and Ethekwini Municipality working speedily to repair the extensive damage caused by the flooding. In this regard, these government entities have managed to reopen Bayhead Road, which is the main feeder road to the container port terminals. The flooding had caused a length of two ingoing lanes of Bayhead Road, over a canal, to wash away. Thankfully the outgoing lanes weren’t severely impacted and once these had been assessed in terms of safety, the lanes were reopened (ahead of schedule), under strictly controlled conditions, so cargo could move in and out of the port. Read more in the linked CGA media statement.

The Citrus Growers' Association of Southern African, shares the latest news in the citrus industry in its weekly update - From the desk of the CEO. Please click here to peruse.