By Jessie Scott, AAEA InfoExpo Chair
“South African farming is not for sissies.” When I first heard that line from a farmer in Delmas, Gauteng, a northern province in South Africa, I chuckled at the bluntness of the line as well as the subtle insinuation that farmers in other parts of the world are sissies.
It wasn’t until I heard several farmers repeat the exact same phrase that I realized this wasn’t just a quip from one sharp-tongued farmer. It was a mantra, a way farmers there face the realities of the lifestyle and profession that they love.
While farming is never an easy line of work, South African farmers do face an extraordinary combination of challenges. Land reform laws continue to be tweaked, working to right the wrongs of the past by returning ground or providing compensation to families who lost their land. However, in a country where political uncertainty is one of the only certainties, this creates instability for farmers and potential agriculture investors. With unemployment rates as high as 25%, theft and violence continue to be an endemic problem for farmers. Growing crops in South Africa’s sandy soils with little rainfall has always been a challenge, but it’s one that climate change has compounded. And when rain doesn’t fall, as farmers in the North experienced last year and those in the Western Cape are dealing with today, there are no subsidies available to help farmers make it through drought years.
Despite this, the South African farmers I spoke to seemed optimistic, resilient, and determined. Part of this stems from living in a country that has undergone a dramatic transformation during the past 25 years, transitioning to a democracy, repealing apartheid, and adopting a new constitution. And some of the positive attitude certainly comes from the fact that South Africa is leading the charge to feed Africa’s growing population, which will jump from 1 billion today to 2 billion in 2050.
To understand how South Africa is making that happen as well as where some of that optimism comes from, you need to know these three things about South African agriculture.
1. South Africa is moving from subsistence to large-scale commercial farming.
2. South Africa is the only food-secure country in Africa.
3. South Africa is the largest corn producer and exporter in Africa despite challenging conditions.
“The fact that South African farmers produce in less-than-perfect environments compared with other regions and that there are no subsidy levels is incredible,” says Francois Strydom, CEO of Senwes, a South African agriculture company. “Our farmers have to box above their division.”
For more details on each point above, read the full article on Agriculture.com.