What should President Ramaphosa do to boost South Africa's agricultural economy in the near term? The starting point will be to articulate a clear policy framework on land reform and water rights, which will encourage investment in the agricultural sector while ensuring restorative justice, and that underutilised tracts of land are brought into full production to boost growth and employment. This must then be complemented by trade agreements that open up new markets to sell these products, states Agbiz chief economist Wandile Sihlobo in the linked article written for and first published in Business Day.

Since President Ramaphosa took the reigns last year, the focus for growth in South Africa has shifted towards public-private partnerships. It is well known that agriculture is a key focus of the Public-Private Growth Initiative and the policy direction finally seems to be shifting in that direction as well. Last year, the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries published the draft Comprehensive Producer Development Support Policy, a framework policy that sets out the policy direction for farmer support. The policy places a very strong emphasis on blended finance as well as multi-plural extension services. Agbiz head of Legal Intelligence Theo Boshoff discusses this topic in the linked article.

The South African agricultural machinery sales painted a slightly negative picture in April 2019. Tractor sales were down by 6% y/y and combine harvesters down by 21%  y/y;both exceeded our expectations of a 3% respective decline. We think that May sales could show a further decline as factors that underpinned last month's agricultural machinery sales performance still prevail. In the case of tractors, farmers made higher purchases over the past few months, and it is unlikely to increase this month as winter crops plantings have, in any case, advanced in the major producing province, the Western Cape. In terms of combine harvesters, we doubt that there could be a pickup in sales on the face of expected poor summer grain and oilseed harvest. Wandile Sihlobo provides more insight in the linked article.

Chocolate can certainly get one some brownie points, and no way is this truer than in Ivory Coast which in 2018 reported the largest agricultural trade balance in value terms in Africa, an amount of US$5.1 billion. The West African nation exported a higher value of agricultural products than it imports, a situation that is rare in a continent of predominantly net food importers. Trailing Ivory Coast was South Africa with a positive trade balance of US$3.9 billion. Wandile Sihlobo discusses this topic in the linked blogpost.

The Western Cape is the leading producer of South Africa's winter crops, which are wheat, barley and canola. It is also in this province where plantings typically start at the end of April, while in other provinces it's around midyear. The 2019/20 production season is no different from the previous years; farmers have made good progress in planting all winter crops in the Western Cape. About 60% of the intended canola hectares in the province have thus far been planted. Meanwhile, roughly 40% of the intended hectares for wheat and barley plantings are completed.  Wandile Sihlobo discusses this topic in the linked blogpost.