Although I use peanut butter almost daily, for some reason I had not looked at its production pipeline in the past couple of months until today when I received a call from a Zambian trader looking to export peanuts (groundnuts) to South Africa. This prompted me to do some back of the envelope calculations on the South African supplies for the 2019/20 marketing year, which starts on 01 March 2019.
Significant rains were received during the first two weeks of February 2019 covering most of the summer rainfall areas. However follow up rains in the next two weeks is critical to ensure sufficient soil moisture to assist crop development and minimize crop damage until the end of season.
Where are the onions? This is the question that many onion traders around the world have been asking. As a result of the dry, hot summer in Europe, the harvest in the north of the continent is much smaller. In the US, the rain in the late summer had a similar effect on the harvest figures.
In the Aussenkehr Valley of southern Namibia, where early summer temperatures have already reached 40°C and the annual rainfall is about 35mm, vineyards are flourishing on the banks of the Orange River.
In recent months, there has been a big crisis in the citrus production sector, especially in the case of oranges and mandarins, with prices falling below the production costs and plantations left unharvested.
The initial estimate for the 2018/2019 avocado season is between 15.5 and 16 million equivalent 4kg cartons, says Derek Donkin, CEO of umbrella body Subtrop. That is a reduction of around 6 million cartons on last year’s record crop, due partly to unfavourable weather conditions.
