"Farmworker Spring" article

In his article "Farmworker Spring" published by SA The Good News, Christopher Rowbone-Viljoen says:

"One can generally determine the health of an industry by assessing whether the number of players in the industry has grown. In the case of commercial farmers, since 1994, the numbers have declined from 120,000 to 37,000 ... A one-size-fits-all, 51% wage increase is clearly not the answer if government wants to create jobs in an industry that has already shed an estimated 400,000 jobs since 1994.

"Using grape growers as an example, over the past 5 years production costs have steadily increased while grape prices have declined, coupled with unforeseen disasters such as the flooding experienced along the Orange River in 2011. These are marginal farms teetering on the verge of collapse. For many farmers, wages can form up to 40-50% of their entire production cost. In an environment where prices are declining, they will be left with no choice but to close their doors or shed further jobs".

Read an update in this blog.

In The Agri Handbook for South Africa, job creation is a theme is many of the chapters, as well as being a chapter all on its own in the National Issues section. Find it here.

Growing Africa: World Bank agribusiness report

There is space for Africa’s food market to triple in value, says the latest World Bank report Growing Africa: Unlocking the Potential of Agribusiness. The market is currently valued at $313-billion a year.

The report comes in a context of a continued decline in sub-Saharan Africa’s share of agricultural exports. Countries like Brazil, Indonesia and Thailand export more agricultural products than all of sub-Saharan Africa together.

The report encourages countries to “harness investors’ interest in ways that generate jobs, provide opportunities for smallholders, respect the rights of local communities, and protect the environment."

A growing middle class on the continent, more expensive tastes, an anticipated boom in supermarkets and higher commodity prices are given as reasons.

Rice, poultry, dairy, vegetable oils, horticulture, feed grains and processed foods for local markets are identified as areas most likely to do well.

Kenya, Ghana, Cameroon, Malawi and Zambia are mentioned as examples of those already tapping into these markets, and it is farmers with greater access to credit, willing to modernize their practices, to make use of fertilizer, irrigation and new technologies that are leading the way.

Find the World Bank report here.

Relevant to this report in The Agri Handbook for South Africa are the Fertiliser, Speciality fertilisers and Irrigation chapters. There will be several others, of course (there are nearly 180 chapters in all!) Take a look at Precision farming and Hydroponics & undercover growing for example.

Job creation

In its ‘Economic Survey of South Africa 2013’, presented to Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan yesterday (4th March), the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)  emphasised that boosting the country's "dismally low" employment should form the hallmark of all South Africa's policies. It pointed out that our very unsatisfactory educational outcomes aggravate the oversupply of unskilled labour and worsen the income inequality.

That there are problems with our educational system is not news to us, of course.  It is a subject in the National Development Plan, the President's State of the Nation address and we are familiar with news stories like the late delivery of textbooks. [Readers who are interested in what is happening in skills development should take a look at our sister publication and website at www.skillshandbook.co.za].

The OECD survey deals with other aspects too and the reader will find the survey on www.oecd.org.

Job creation is a new chapter in the Agri Handbook for South Africa, appropriately situated in the "National issues" section. Like everything else, agriculture has a context, finding itself uncomfortably affected by processes which we would love to wish away.

Find the job creation chapter here.