Producing food staples in South Africa : the competition for arable land

The agricultural and food production systems in South Africa have experienced renewed volatility and changing market conditions during the past five years, with both macro-economic as well as climatic conditions playing a vital role in the direction of agricultural markets. These changing market conditions included various macroeconomic drivers, natural conditions, changing consumer behaviour, input inflation, energy related drivers and the continuous impact of global role-players in both the demand and supply side of agricultural goods. These volatile drivers have a relentless effect on the primary production of agricultural goods and more specifically on strategic decision-making at farm level. The decision-making environment of a farm business has thus become a delicate space due to simultaneous interactions of a range of volatile drivers. Yet, this study clearly illustrates that despite all of these simultaneous interactions, a few basic principles still determine the future of a farming operation.Like in other developing countries in the world, the demand for food in South Africa is increasing rapidly and putting greater pressure on South African farmers to produce more food. However, it is not only the rate of increase in food demand that is a cause for concern, but also the changing nature of consumption patterns as people’s income increases. For example, meat consumption experienced the highest rate of increase over the past decade and in future this trend is expected to continue. The rate of increase in the consumption of bread, rice and potatoes is outpacing the increase in maize meal consumption and South Africa is already a net importer of wheat and rice. The problem statement identified for this study is grounded in the basic principle of overlaying production and consumption trends. Although this old principle has been applied by researchers at BFAP for many years, it has only been applied within a sector-wide application, and more specifically the sector model. The sector model uses aggregate elasticities to project the long term shift in area under production. Although these supply response elasticities have been statistically estimated, they present an aggregate view of the total area under production for a specific crop and not a detailed for a specific region. Hence, this study set out to test whether the long term shifts in the areas under production of the various grains and oilseeds are in fact economically sustainable at farm-level taking the range of drivers into consideration that influence the farmers decision. This study can thus be viewed as a disaggregate approach to understanding plausible long term supply response in South Africa. Thus, the need exists to conduct a stock-take of the current position of farm businesses in South Africa and to evaluate the respective impacts of changing agricultural drivers and macro-economic factors. The objectives stipulates that it is necessary to identify representative farm businesses in the key summer producing regions in South Africa and to determine the current production and financial environment of these typical farm businesses. Furthermore, it is necessary to determine whether long-term projections are plausible from a production perspective and whether land utilisation patterns might change in the intermediate and/or long term. By evaluating the current position and impact of long-term projections at farm level, one can determine and revise the various drivers of the farm business’s decision-making environment. The study is introduced in Chapter One, which briefly explains the background behind the study, the problem and purpose statements, the research objectives, context and unit of analysis and delimitation or study assumptions. Chapter Two presents a detailed literature review in order to demonstrate the current resourcegrain and oilseed commodities, the demand for animal feed, consumer trends and analysis and other drivers that impact the decision-making environment of farm businesses in South Africa. Chapter Three clearly identifies the study approach and stipulates the methodology behind modelling resources and the integration of these models. In Chapter Four, a detailed analysis is conducted on representative farm businesses in the North West province, northern and western Free State, eastern Free State and Mpumalanga producing regions. This demonstrates the historic, current and projected financial position given a set of macro-economic assumptions and other decision-making drivers that could influence the farm business structure and land utilisation trends. Chapter Five addresses various macro-economic and production scenarios, which include the concept of farm-level risk management and their respective impact on farm businesses. The key findings of the study are interpreted in Chapter Six.