While growers in South Africa’s early production regions are getting ready to pack their first fruit of the 2019 season, industry leaders are gathering around the country to discuss the major challenges facing them.
A ‘good rotation’ is often thought of as a cropping plan that involves diverse species, cultivars, and chemical actives. But that definition may be expanding, thanks to an ever-evolving understanding of soil health.
Even in the advent of massive textile influx from China and second-hand clothes from other countries, cotton farming is still regarded highly in Zimbabwe.
My first blogpost this year was titled — Can South Africa’s sorghum industry be revived? In it, I highlighted the decline in the production of this crop, with area plantings having reached 28 800 hectares in the 2017/18 production season – the smallest area on record in a dataset starting from 1936/37.
South Africa’s agricultural machinery sales data confirms the Crop Estimates Committee’s view of increased summer grain and oilseed plantings between January and February 2019 in the western parts of the country.
South Africa has opened its 2019/19 avocado season, one that will not repeat what has been called the “astronomical increase” (or “an inundation of avocados”) of last year.
