With growing populations and limited resources, producing enough food while keeping the land healthy is no easy task. That’s where agricultural planetary boundaries come in, as a simple way to understand the limits of what the environment can handle so farmers can keep their land, water, and biodiversity in balance.
Dr Ndeke Musee, founder of Beyond Genβ Solutions, explains what planetary boundaries mean for everyday farming. He shares how they can be applied on the farm and how using this approach together with laws, such as the Preservation and Development of Agricultural Land Act (PDALA), can help South African farmers farm sustainably, protect their land, and secure food for the future.
What are planetary boundaries?
Planetary boundaries are scientific thresholds that indicate how far human activities can go before upsetting the planet’s life-support systems.
Musee explains, “Planetary boundaries help us define the limits within which we can operate safely without destabilising the Earth’s systems.”
He compares them to everyday guardrails. “Think of the guardrails along a staircase. They guide you so you don’t fall off. Planetary boundaries guide us in the same way, to meet our needs without causing extreme impacts.”
These boundaries help farmers understand how land use, water use, biodiversity, emissions, and chemicals interact with the environment.
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Applying planetary boundaries on the farm
On a farm, planetary boundaries are a lived reality. Farmers work directly with land, water, and biodiversity every day, and those interactions need to remain within sustainable limits to maintain a resilient production system.
For example:
- Water use must remain within safe extraction levels. “If you over-extract borehole or surface water, you destabilise the surrounding ecosystem,” he notes.
- Soil management must protect fertility and structure.
- Fertiliser and chemical use must minimise greenhouse gases and pollution, correspondingly.
“Every activity, from fertiliser use to use of tractors, has an impact. You must ensure you are farming within your environmental limits,” Musee says.
Is there a policy supporting this?
Although the concept of planetary boundaries is relatively new to South Africa, there is one major policy aligned with this thinking: The Preservation and Development of Agricultural Land Act (PDALA), Act 39 of 2024.
“If applied correctly, PDALA becomes an enabler, not a punishment, to help us produce food sustainably.”
How PDALA supports sustainable farming
The goal of PDALA is to protect high-potential agricultural land from competing uses like mining or residential development.
According to Musee, “Its core purpose is to ensure that agricultural land is preserved and protected from all non-agricultural uses.”
This data mirrors what’s required for planetary boundary assessments. “The same information used for PDALA can show whether farmers are operating within planetary boundaries.”
How do farmers know whether they are within the boundaries?
Musee explains that this framework is anchored in scientific evidence and depends strongly on accurate data. It requires an expert to analyse a farmer’s information, such as water consumption, land use, emissions and biodiversity impacts, and evaluate each planetary boundary individually.
He adds that his company, Beyond Genβ Solutions, has already built tools for this purpose, including the Agricultural Planetary Boundaries Audit Framework (AgPBAF), designed to help South African farmers understand where they stand in relation to these limits.
However, Musee emphasises that national oversteps do not automatically mean farms are in breach. “Just because a boundary is exceeded nationally does not mean every farm has exceeded it. We assess each farm on a case-by-case basis.”
The nine planetary boundaries explained
Musee groups it into two main categories:
1. Natural resource-based boundaries
- Freshwater use
- Biodiversity
- Land use
These are essential, Musee notes, “when you want to do anything – mine, farm, produce energy – the first three things you need are water, biodiversity, and land.”
2. Waste-linked boundaries
These arise from inefficiencies and pollution:
- Climate change
- Ozone depletion
- Ocean acidification
- Atmospheric aerosol loading
- Nutrient losses
- Chemical pollution
Using the example of fertilisers, he explains, “Some of the nutrients feed your crop, a portion becomes runoff, which then impacts on a waste-linked boundary- chemical pollution.”
Benefits and challenges across the agricultural value chain
Planetary boundaries offer consistency and transparency on sustainability assessment from farm to retailer.
Musee illustrates this with beef production: “You can determine the planetary boundary performance at the farm, the feedlot, the abattoir, and the retailer. It’s consistent across the chain.”
This matters because “planetary boundaries offer absolute environmental sustainability, not just comparisons between farms.”
The main obstacle is the quality of data. Musee emphasises that if a scientific framework is applied, the information feeding into it needs to be reliable and consistently measured.
Different regions must be measured and assessed consistently. “You cannot compare KwaZulu-Natal water challenges with those of the Northern Cape,” he says, as an example.
This is where training, support systems, and shared tools become essential.
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