Understanding competing countries and potential customers is an important aspect of global agriculture. To learn more about agriculture in foreign countries, farmers and agribusinesses frequently travel abroad.
David Miller, the director of research for the Iowa Farm Bureau, recently traveled to South Africa to scout the country for a future trip with farmers. During his time there, he learned about the continued murders of white farm families, the ongoing drought, the effect of the low-value of the South African rand, and about livestock farms being converted to game preserves.Would you tour South Africa to learn more about the country's agriculture? Join in the discussion here.
When apartheid ended in 1994, white South Africans, who made up less than 10% of the population, owned 90% of the South African land. Through land reform, South Africa hoped to transfer 30% of agriculture land to black farmers by 2014.
At this point only 8% of land has been transferred, leading some to believe the land reform policy is not working quickly enough. With the current land reform policy, a willing owner can choose to sell his or her land, and then the land is redistributed to an emerging black farmer.
“There is a lot of growing sentiment in a fraction of the African National Congress (South Africa’s governing social democratic party) to do it by force or to take the land without compensation,” says Miller. “There are other factions within South Africa that have become violent.
“On average, a white farm family is being killed every 5days,” continues Miller. “It seems the murders have been underreported because some are listed as robberies, but it has been very brutal. All of the farmers we talked to were very much aware of it.”
Farmers are increasing security, setting up observation cameras, and always leaving someone at home so farms are continuously guarded.
There are also families that are fleeing the country. “Some are going to Zambia. One of the families we visited is considering moving to Canada,” explains Miller. Violence isn’t the only reason white farmers are packing up.
“There is a high amount of uncertainty in regard to their status of land ownership and the amount of land they can own,” adds Miller.
“The issue of land reform is probably going to take another decade or more to sort out in South Africa,” sums up Miller. “The violence that’s associated with it and the possibility of land reform changing from voluntary participation to forced is very much on the minds of farmers and everyone involved in agriculture.”
South Africa’s corn crop suffered this year from a widespread drought that disrupted pollination and reduced yield potential. The corn crop will be down to 11.5 million tonnes, one-quarter less than last year’s harvest, according to the USDA’s monthly WASDE report.
