The South African agricultural sector continues to be resilient against the tough economic and social challenges it faces. In the second quarter of the year, over 800 000 jobs in primary agriculture were created which resulted in 1% and 2% increases quarter-to-quarter and year-to-year respectively.
Agbiz chief economist Wandile Sihlobo said the data released by Statistics South Africa is painting an encouraging picture of agricultural employment with 894 000 people becoming employed.
On the right path
“This is the highest farm employment level since the last quarter of 2016 and is well above the long-term agricultural employment of 780 000,” he said.
According to Sihlobo, from the regional perspective, the Western Cape, Eastern Cape, Northern Cape, and KwaZulu-Natal were the significant drivers of employment in the sector.
“The robust production conditions of various field crops, forestry and aquaculture were behind the improvement in agricultural jobs in the second quarter. Meanwhile, the livestock industry saw modest improvement, which is unsurprising as the industry still deals with the tail-end effects of the rough period of foot-and-mouth disease and higher feed costs among the industry’s pressures,” he explained.
Sihlobo said the overall improvement in employment in the second quarter was unsurprising as South Africa had a strong field crop and horticulture harvest following favourable rainfall.
“At the start of the season, production was threatened by persistent load shedding. Still, the various interventions to ease the load-shedding burden on farmers, such as load curtailment, expansion of the diesel rebate to the food value chain, and private sector investment in alternative energy sources, all supported the production conditions,” he added.
What needs to be done
Sihlobo said in the coming weeks, the focus would also be on the effectiveness of the recently announced Agro-Energy Fund and the application details to ease the burden faced by farmers with the consistent power cuts.
“The key challenges the sector faces are rising geopolitical tensions, deteriorating infrastructure, weakening municipalities, crime, and energy supply which all influence farm profitability and job prospects.
“The South African government, collectively with the private sector, should address these issues to support long-term growth in the sector,” he said.
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