Paul Makube, senior agricultural economist at FNB, said that while other sectors of the economy posted growth, agriculture plunged by 9.7% in the final quarter of last year. Agriculture’s gross value add for 2023 was down by 12.2% year on year, he said in a Bizcommunity article.
Despite massive challenges, South Africa’s economy managed to expand by 0.6% in 2023. With a rebound of 0.1% quarter-on-quarter in the final quarter of 2023, South Africa avoided a technical recession. The extent of the agricultural slowdown was, however, unexpected.
“Although our expectations were still for a slowdown on the back of disease-induced production cuts in the livestock sector, particularly poultry, this magnitude of contraction surprised deeper on the downside.
“South Africa’s summer crop harvest was magnificent, with maize topping 16.4 million tonnes (+6% year-on-year) and soybeans posting a record high of 2.8 million tonnes for the 2022/23 production season. We saw a similar feat in the sugar subsector, which outperformed the previous season by 3% to 18.5 million tonnes.”
Makube said the agriculture outlook had turned negative following a relatively good start to the 2023/24 crop season with good rains, which saw farmers increase their planted area for summer crops by 1.2% year-on-year to 4.4 million hectares.
“Inclement weather with excessive heat caused a lot of stress and wilting of crops during the critical growth stage, thus negatively impacting potential yields. A lower summer crop harvest will lead to another contraction in agriculture performance in 2024,” he concluded.
