South African farms are employing more people, despite some data suggesting the opposite. This is according to the Bureau for Food and Agricultural Policy (BFAP).
Meanwhile, according to StatsSA, the country managed to continue to record growth in the number of employed persons by adding around 204 000 jobs to the economy. The narrow unemployment rate now sits at 33%, while the broad definition for unemployment is 43%.
“Although improving on a trend basis from the previous quarter, the fact that 7.7 million South Africans are unemployed and another 3.5 million abled-persons have stopped looking for work remains a serious cause of concern,” said Louw Pienaar, senior analyst at BFAP.
According to BFAP, compared to quarter three in 2021, those employed in the agricultural sector increased by 5.2% for the current quarter. The 873 000 agricultural workers are marginally more than the average level of 861 000 employed in 2019, he said.
Top performing provinces
As expected, the Western Cape employs the largest number of farmworkers with 186 659 jobs, owing to the relative high concentration of labour-intensive industries, mainly irrigated fruit orchards and vineyards.
“Western Cape farmers, who produced around 20% of farm income in 2021, employed some 23% of the farmworkers in the country in 2021. This level was similar to that recorded in 2020.
“In 2020, Limpopo was the second biggest employer of farmworkers, but due to a recorded 8 200 decline in jobs, fell to third behind KwaZulu-Natal in 2021, which now have a total of 105 076 jobs or 13% share of total farm employment,” Pienaar said.
Besides Limpopo, the only other province that experienced job losses was North West, while all of the others saw decent growth in the number of employed individuals working on farms.
Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal and the Free State were the top performing provinces in terms of employment growth in the past year.
Finally, between 2020 and 2021, the employment growth in the agricultural sector came mainly in the form of more female workers employed, pushing the gender share of female workers from 39% to 41% of the total number of jobs.
Healthy employment rate to be smaller
In terms of farmworkers, the current total of 738 000 is also around 3% higher than the same quarter last year and 2% higher than the average for 2019.
Pienaar said that these numbers support their view that there were no large-scale job losses during the initial stages of the pandemic response, contrary to what was suggested by the data in 2020.
According to the Agricultural Survey, there was a lot of job creation, especially between 2020 and 2021.
However, this does not mean that this trend is set to continue indefinitely due to several factors.
“The healthy employment base, suggested by the Agricultural Survey, will in all likelihood, be smaller by the time the 2022 results are published next year,” Pienaar said.
ALSO READ: Ramaphosa: ‘Our actions shouldn’t harm agri’
Sign up for Mzansi Today: Your daily take on the news and happenings from the agriculture value chain.
