Agriculture business update: August 2013

The AgriBusiness Price Update provides insights in agricultural input prices (irrigation tariffs, fertilisers, fuel prices, electricity tariffs and minimum wages) and output prices (for selected grains, livestock and vegetable commodities). It concludes with the overall agricultural industry performance (terms of trade and gross income discussions).

Click here to view the document.

Courtesy: Standard Bank Agribusiness

Ten years

Does ten years seem like a long time to you? What were you doing in 2003? The course of your whole life can change (or be confirmed) over a period like that.

Perhaps the best indicator of time is our children. You can look at them and wonder what happened to the years. Suddenly (it seems) they are young woman, young man and you know that you yourself are not excluded from the passing of time.

Ten years ago I was part of a small team which begun work on its first agricultural publication, the predecessor of The Agri Handbook. We met with over 400 role players to introduce ourselves and our plans. Ten years later, 2013, saw the publication of the 5th edition of the book which provides an overview on the South African agricultural value chain.

The Bureau for Food and Agricultural Policy (BFAP) released its 10-year look-ahead this month. BFAP is a gathering of individuals from the University of Pretoria, Stellenbosch University and the Provincial Department of Agriculture, Western Cape. Find the agricultural baseline outlook 2013-2022 at www.bfap.co.za.

South Africa to buy food from Angola, Zambia, DRC and northern Mozambique

Writing in Farmer's Weekly (16 August 2013), Dr Anthony Turton (University of the Free State) predicts that arid areas in Southern Africa will expand northwards while the strength of rivers decrease. Within a decade, he says, Angola, Zambia, DRC and northern Mozambique will be producing food for the region.

Two-thirds of the global population will be living under water-stressed conditions by 2025. South Africa will face a shortfall of 30 billion cubic metres at this time. One of the country's major problems is evaporation (we thought we were smart by building all our dams in previous decades: these help us to lose water faster!)

Advice given to farmers (and the country) includes:

• Start to recycle water.
• Do your sums on how your use of water contributes to low-skilled jobs. As water scarcity increases, there will be calls for water to be proportioned away from agriculture to other sectors.
• Store water in underground aquifers rather than in dams.

Find the country's role players in water-related chapters of The Agri Handbook e.g. Water, Irrigation, Rainwater harvesting, Boreholes and windmills and Water storage.

What happened to biofuels?

A few years ago in this country, substantial interest was expressed in the prospects of biofuels. It would give a lift to the agricultural community struggling at the time with very low maize (corn) prices and boost new farmers in the sector. It would create jobs, add to the country's energy security and so on. Most of the fanfare died down when government excluded maize from its National Biofuels Industrial Strategy in 2007.

The bells and whistles may have died down but a certain momentum remained. The focus has been on the use of sugarcane, sorghum, soybeans and canola (rapeseed).

Last week (13 August) the Department of Energy gave an update on the Biofuels Strategy to Parliament. Find the presentation on the Agricultural Business Chamber (Agbiz) website, www.agbiz.co.za or click here.

Biofuels is one of the nearly 180 chapters in The Agri Handbook. Other chapters of interest will be  Renewable energy, Energy and the different chapters like Sorghum, Soybeans, Canola and Sugarcane.

Oranges and lemons ...

Agritrade reports that South Africa is projected to account for 61.9% of southern hemisphere citrus exports in 2013. The country will account for 76% of southern hemisphere orange exports, 30% of mandarin exports, 32% of lemon exports and 97% of grapefruit exports.

"Currency movements have been helping the export of South African citrus, despite rising input costs linked to minimum wage increases (+52%), rising energy and other input costs, and increased transportation and shipping charges (Maersk and SAFMARINE have announced a planned increase of “up to 30%” in shipping charges “to keep up with the demand for containerised shipping” ). Containerised shipping is making local markets and local processing more attractive".

Find the full report here.

The citrus industry in the Southern Hemisphere is represented by the Southern Hemisphere Association of Fresh Fruit Exporters (SHAFFE), and in South Africa by the Citrus Growers Association (CGASA).

The citrus fruit sector is covered here in The Agri Handbook.

Pigs like to live in mud

Do you know that pigs roll in mud to protect themselves against the sun and extreme temperatures, or against flies and parasites? Perhaps you knew, but many think that pigs just like to be dirty and to live in mud. The average person knows little about these intelligent creatures.

Commercial pig farmers in South Africa are represented by the South African Pork Producers Organisation (SAPPO). All agricultural commodity associations are involved, one way or another, in encouraging people from previously disadvantaged groups to farm. Part of SAPPO's mentorship programme to developing pig farmers includes free training opportunities at its training facility at Baynesfield. Qeda Nyoka is responsible for SAPPO's developing farmer projects. Read about SAPPO at www.sapork.com.

The main exporters of pork to South Africa are Germany (40%), Canada (25%), Spain (14%) and France (6%).

Pork is one of the 22 livestock chapters in The Agri Handbook for South Africa (there are nearly 180 chapters in all). Find the link to the chapter here.

Growing meat and houses in science labs

Human evolution has gone hand-in-hand with the eating of meat. Over the centuries, the days and nights around the fires of feasts where meat was cooked must be countless. And the barbeques (braais in South Africa) of today go on.

If you are unfamiliar with the production of meat in laboratories, read more at http://culturedbeef.net or watch the cultured beef video (just over 6 minutes). The research makes sense when you bear in mind the projected growth in the human population by 2050, to say nothing of the environmental (and some ethical) issues around meat production.

Some of you may think "Whatever next!"

Well, you could watch view James Hutson's clip explaining synthetic biology. View the tree that turns into a tree and a house, giving a whole new meaning to "treehouse", what was previously limited to something which absorbed a child's time.

After this, Biotechnology and plant breeding, one of the chapters in The Agri Handbook might seem quite tame, but will bring you back to what, for now anyway, is the present.