Event Notification: AMT South African Agricultural Outlook Conference - 30 September 2013

We have attended most of the AMT conferences since 2003 when we began to do research for The Agri Handbook. Since our first edition, we have also had an exhibition stall at many of the conferences.

Each time we have found the AMT conference valuable – not only the scenarios and addresses by experts, but also the interaction which happens at question time or over coffee and snacks after the session. Should you wish to exhibit or attend, you will find the information below helpful. Mention that you found out about the event via this website and you will receive a discount on your booking.

Click to enlarge

Programme:

 Other details:

	English Programme and Afrikaans Press Release
	Keynote speaker - Thad Simons (Novus International)

 Who should attend?

• Agribusiness managers (in investment, finance, and risk management) and directors
• Bankers lending to the agribusiness sector
• Accountants and lawyers to agribusiness
• Government
• Producers and Producer organizations
• Retail: supermarkets, all food industries

For queries or bookings contact:

Minda Reinet Bornman
Communications and Marketing Manager
Aginfo trading as AMT (Pty) Ltd.
Telephone: +27 (0)12 348 8344/27 (0)12 3612748
Cell: +27 (0)82 575 4282
Fax:: +27 (0)866159199

Please Welcome "Die Agri Handboek 2013/14"

Hi Everyone,

I help Craig put The Agri Handbook together and will occasionally be posting here too.

This post is to make you aware of the Afrikaans version of The Agri Handbook, which was launched on 10 May 2013  and is available to view, search and download here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/140582922/Die-Agri-Handboek-2013-14, or you can use this shortened URL to tweet it to your friends: http://goo.gl/QaGCj.

Just for fun we have embedded it below.

Please feel free to embed the publication in your website too. Your readers will appreciate the free information and support on agriculture, and you will increase traffic to your website.

The steps to follow to embed the publication are here. It won't cost you any bandwidth because Scribd.com covers that. Readers stay on your site so you don't loose any visitors. Another nice feature is that you can link to a specific page in the book (such as your advert, if you are an advertiser, or a specific crop if you are a researcher or NGO).

Below for example is the embedded publication starting on page 394, which shows one of Stargate Scientific's adverts on rapid GMO testing. You will notice that the advert is in Afrikaans.One of the many benefits  of advertising in The Agri Handbook is that you can place an Afrikaans version of the same advert in Die Agri Handboek at no additional charge. And then you can embed the publication on your website, starting at your advert in the book.

Die Agri Handboek 2013-14 by Craig Macaskill

If this is too big, don't worry because you can make it smaller like this, or even smaller (using custom dimensions):

Die Agri Handboek 2013-14 by Craig Macaskill

By the way, if you haven't yet booked your advert in our next edition, please download the rate card below and get the benefit of the old pricing by booking as soon as possible.

AHB Advertiser Rate Card

Remember that everything above can be done for the English language edition of the publication as well, follow the same embedding instructions, but substitute The Agri Handbook for Die Agri Handboek.

We will post again here once the hard copy version of Die Agri Handboek is available. For now you can order the eBook CD-ROM which includes both the English and Afrikaans editions for only R150 inc VAT.

The ISBN Number for Die Agri Handboek is 978-0-620-56766-4, and for The Agri Handbook it is  978-0-620-55509-8.

Farming in Cape Town

Have you imagined producing your own vegetables, herbs and fish on a small scale for your own consumption or for a niche market?

In its latest issue, Landbouweekblad reports on something happening at the V&A Waterfront within the Mother City. Moyo restaurant, with initial help from Stellenbosch University, grows its own vegetables, herbs and fish using an aquaponics system.

Aquaoponics uses water from a fish tank to feed plants. Of course it isn't simply ordinary water. Thanks to the fish, it is rich with nutrients, specifically nitrates and phosphates, and these become the primary inputs for the plants. Leslie Ter Morshuizen, the major contributor to the aquaculture chapter in The Agri Handbook, writes that there are several benefits to aquaponics, including healthy plant roots, fewer pest problems, rapid growth and high production levels per unit area.

Read about urban agriculture, aquaculture, herbs and vegetables chapters in The Agri Handbook.

African infrastructure development

The African Development Bank (AfDB) is looking to create a large fund to finance infrastructure in Africa, Reuters reported recently (29 May 2013). The bank estimates that Africa requires investment of $100-billion every year for a decade. Infrastructure allows for economic activity and trade among countries, and the lack of sufficient infrastructure is often cited as an obstacle for intra-African trade.

It is a vital issue within individual countries too. When food prices are high and employment levels are low, it is time to do something about infrastructure. Infrastructure and agrologistics is a chapter under the National issues section of The Agri Handbook for South Africa.

Tales from Nampo

We live in a world where much clamours for our attention, proclaiming importance and significance, putting us in the wrong or making us feel uncertain. The sought-after result is for us to back whatever and whoever the speaker is, and to hand over our money.

The issue may be very important indeed, but the challenge is to discern what has substance and what consists mostly of noise and show. You may fly the right flag (good) -- what are you really offering?

There are media and event companies in agriculture which fly the transformation flag, and pretty much empty the marketing budgets of well-meaning role players in the process. Is their contribution to the sector and to the so-called emerging farmer sector real? At Nampo, one such company came to collect a copy of The Agri Handbook for South Africa. We duly handed over a book, albeit with great reservation.

There were no such misgivings when dropping off books at the Grain SA building and meeting three members -- one person in particular -- of the team responsible for farmer development. Surely the chances of success for training a new generation of farmers are heightened by the involvement of people like this! But go meet them yourself. Do some checking up on the work they are doing. Speak to people involved on the ground and form your own opinion.

When we pronounce on the moral right of an individual or company to exist we wander into dangerous territory. More often than not, persons we praise either have a fall ahead of them or have earned their stripes elsewhere on the journey.

Yet how thrilled we are when appearance and essence are the same! It may be just one individual in the organisation, offering up his or her work from an undivided self. Agriculture -- indeed the world -- is better of for their being here.

National Development Plan (NDP) - back in the spotlight

As the name suggests, the National Development Plan (NDP) is a plan -- surprise, surprise -- to develop the nation. It identifies the challenges facing the country and sketches solutions in order to triple the economy by 2030 while reducing unemployment and inequality levels. Although it is central to the Plan, the NDP goes beyond the economy looking also at issues like national unity. Find the National Development Plan (NDP) here.

In a meeting at the Chris Hani Institute recently, attended by both Jeremy Cronin and Bobby Godsell, attention has once again been focused on the NDP. Cronin is the deputy minister for Public Works, deputy general-secretary of the South African Communist Party (SACP) and an African National Congress National Executive Committee member.

Cronin's criticisms include:

• The negligible target for reducing inequality (from 0.7% to 0.6& on the Gini coefficient over the next 17 years). Not much of a target, is it?
• That the NDP forsees the manufacturing sector shrinking from 12% of gross domestic product to 9.6% in 2030.
• The NDP is not a state planning commission so how will the Plan be implemented?

For Cronin a broad vision needs to be built around reindustrialisation, the provision of infrastructure and the developing of skills.

Godsell, the current Business Leadership South Africa chairperson and someone well known in business circles, urged the meeting to view the Plan as a living document. The Plan was "eminently debatable".

There was agreement that a State planning entity working alongside a more independent, non-government body was a good thing. Godsell saw Government-only planning as having the tendency to be non-integrated (operating in silo's) and thus ineffective. It was good to have people not in government, thinking out of the box in addition to a State planning entity.

Both saw the NDP's planning for the long-term as a positive.

Agriculture, the Agricultural Business Chamber (Agbiz) in particular, has held the NDP as holding much promise for the country. Find the article written at the beginning of 2013 by Dr John Purchase here.

The NDP is covered in the Job creation chapter of The Agri Handbook for South Africa (in particular, see the "Ideas to promote economic growth" heading). In addition, many of the crop and livestock chapters have some reference to that particular sub-sector's potential to contribute to job creation, including the areas identified in the Industrial Policy Action Plans (IPAPs) like rooibos and organic produce.

We would like to think we are contributing to the debate.

Nampo time again

"What's Nampo?!"

Someone not familiar with the agricultural world may ask themselves this question, but for those of us who have been before it is a time of expectation, of seeing old faces and meeting new ones.

Nampo is covered in the Agricultural shows and events chapter in the Agri Handbook for South Africa 2013/14, and there are a few notes on Grain SA, the organisers, in the general Grain & oilseeds one.

Like this publication, Nampo is a gateway to agriculture in South Africa and draws mainly a farming audience from this country and beyond.

On several occasions, on having come across our publication at the show, visitors have said: "Now we can go home!" The comment is caused by the book's thorough coverage of the agricultural value chain in the country, and if you have the book or CD you can relax a bit more and enjoy the day.

Wear comfortable shoes because there is much to see and you will do a lot of walking! The event's website is www.nampo.co.za. Should you wish to look me up, you will probably find me near the ARC stalls at the PNS hall.