President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Tuesday there was no reason to believe that any country would impose sanctions on South Africa over the government’s plans to redistribute land to address racial disparities in ownership.
Farm prices in South Africa have plunged by a third since the ruling party decided to seek a change to the constitution to make it easier to expropriate land without compensation, and as commodity prices fell due to bumper harvests following a drought.
Only about 43% of SA's adults work. In most countries, the figure is 60% or more'
SA's unemployment crisis is the deepest in the world and the forthcoming jobs summit needs to grapple with the scale and horrendous consequences of mass unemployment. This is something that President Cyril Ramaphosa acknowledged earlier this year when he said that the summit "will need to take extraordinary measures to create jobs on a scale that we have never before seen in this country".
The 2018/19 summer crop production season started on a positive footing with forecast showers in most parts of the country in the week of 20 October 2018. This will help improve soil moisture which will be beneficial for the planting activity.
A large share of the 2017/18 maize crop has already been delivered to commercial silos, hence the weekly producer deliveries have slowed in the recent weeks. Evidently, in the week of 28 September 2018, maize producer deliveries amounted to 48 991 tonnes, down by 24 percent from the previous week. About 51 percent of this was white maize, with 49 percent being yellow maize.
The spread of African Swine Fever (ASF) potentially is the biggest global animal health story that no one is talking about much. But agriculture industry analysts believe it’s a story that should receive a fair hearing from industry stakeholders as China, the world’s largest producer and consumer of pork, battles outbreaks of ASF within its borders.
