The South African agriculture sector has the potential to be amongst the sectors that will drive economic growth and job creation during the post-COVID-19 recovery phrase. The path to realise this growth does not need new policies.
South Africa is a country of dichotomies and ironies and there is no economic sector that that typifies this more than the agri-food sector.
A ban on the sale of cigarettes in South Africa since the country’s COVID-19-induced lockdown began in March has cost the economy millions of rands daily in the form of tax revenue lost to illicit sales of smokes, a variety of industry officials say.
The South African agriculture sector has the potential to be amongst the sectors that will drive economic growth and job creation during the post-COVID-19 recovery phrase.
The role of the South African and Zambian maize industries in the Southern and East African regions will remain significant in the 2020/21 marketing year which ends in April 2021. Within the Southern Africa region, the recent data released by Zimbabwe’s ministry of lands and agriculture placed its 2019/20 maize harvest at 907 628 tonnes which is up by 17% from the previous season.
I’ve recently cautioned that dryness in parts of Europe and North America could lead to poor grain yields, which would mean that anticipated record harvests in 2020/21 might fail to materialise.
