Today I will participate in a roundtable discussion in East London, organised by the Provincial Department of Rural Development and Agrarian Reform. My focus area will be to provide a brief update on South Africa’s agricultural economy with a key focus on the role that the Eastern Cape can potentially play going forward, particularly from a job creation perspective.

It’s not raining enough in the Eastern Cape and it’s definitely going to have an impact on volumes, citrus growers say. By the end of February there will be more certainty on what can be expected from the citrus season, but across the Eastern Cape – in the Gamtoos Valley, Sundays River Valley and inland in the Kat River Valley – the mood is cautious.

On September 25 and 26 I visited the Eastern Cape on the invitation of The Co-op – an agribusiness based In Humansdorp.

South Africa’s agricultural policy growth path has been clear as far back as 2012 when the National Development Plan (NDP) sketched higher growth potential and labour-intensive sub-sectors that could create jobs and increase the sector’s contribution to GDP.

AFTER a year of being able to draw 85% of their annual water allocations from the Kouga Dam, Gamtoos Valley farmers are facing the bleak prospect of having their water allocations cut dramatically for the coming water year, as the Kouga Dam level sinks below 10% capacity.

Some analysts, myself included, did not anticipate that the 2019/20 harvest and agricultural performance would be as robust as we have witnessed.

The challenges agriculture and agribusiness stakeholders face are the same across SA. I recently spent time with agribusinesses and farmers in the Eastern Cape, along with colleagues at the Agricultural Business Chamber of SA (Agbiz).