According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the world population will reach 9.1 billion by 2050, and to feed that number of people, global food production will need to grow by 70%. For Africa, which is projected to be home to about 2 billion people by then, farm productivity must accelerate at a faster rate than the global average to avoid continued mass hunger.

From the invention of hoes, scythes and ploughs to the introduction of tractors, innovation is at the heart of agriculture. Today, a number of digital technologies — from autonomous robots that pick fruit to subterranean farms — are helping transform the industry.

Joint work by the University of Pretoria and the Agricultural Research Council (ARC) for the international Agricultural Science and Technology Indicators in 2014 estimated that South Africa in that year spent about R2,5 billion on agricultural research – by public, university, and private-sector agencies.

The Department of Agriculture transfers an annual total of R1 billion to the Agricultural Research Council to operate its various programmes to support the agricultural sector. This is roughly 10% of the total budget of the Department of Agriculture (excluding land reform).

But is this sufficient and in line with global norms? We know from previous work that South Africa's agricultural research spend as a share of the budget and value of agricultural output is the highest in Africa, with only Nigeria coming close.

There are, of course, questions about the efficiency of the spending on agricultural research: how much goes to overheads and other non-research expenditures; does the ARC focus on relevant research focus areas and appoint the best scientists, and how well does it maintain its laboratories and experimental farms? This requires detailed studies and evaluation reports to understand whether we are getting value for taxpayers' money.

Recent efforts to increase spending on R&D in agriculture

Over the years, role players in the agricultural industry realized that the funding to the ARC and the delivery of critical technical improvements have been insufficient and slow. Therefore, the various commodity organizations ask: How much do these industry bodies allocate to agricultural research?

From the National Agricultural Marketing Council's 2023 report on Statutory Levies in the agricultural industry, we learned that these organizations use R460 million (or 45%) of the R1,022 billion levy income to fund specific research programmes.

Table 1 below provides a detailed breakdown and comparison of the research spending by the top 12 industries in South African agriculture. These 12 commodities contribute a significant share to South Africa's total gross output value in 2023. Poultry, sugarcane, and maize industries fund their research activity from different sources.

Table 1: Research expenditure by the 12 largest commodity groups in South African agriculture

Source: NAMC, DoA, and various sources

Note: We could not analyse the research expenditure for maize, poultry, and sugar as this is funded outside the levy proceeds. Grain SA does however provide R11 million funding from their voluntary levy/membership fees to support research in all the grains.

Table 1 illustrates some stark realities about how the various commodity organizations focus on research. The R156 million allocation to research by the Citrus Industry via Citrus Research International (CRI) shows the industry's commitment to research.

The growth in the citrus industry in terms of area planted, production efficiency (volume/tree), combatting diseases, and how to deal with the strict demands from export markets have been the backbone of a well-funded, focused, and successful research programme.

Researchers find a new use for biochar: filtering microplastics from farm soils

This is a substantive research activity implemented mainly by universities and their scientists. The deciduous fruit, table grape, wine, and nut industries follow with similarly designed and funded programmes. Soybeans and wheat industries also spend significant amounts of the levy income on research. The soybean industry has benefited from decades of funding by the Protein Trust as well as from imported technology in seed genetics and cultivation improvements.

More revealing is the column in the table that shows research funding by the industry expressed as a share of total gross value. The deciduous fruit industry spends almost 1% of Gross Value on research, followed by citrus with 0.4%.

It is worrying that the red meat industry allocates only R6,8 million to research – about 0.01% of the industry's total value. Given this industry's many issues and problems, one would expect a much bigger research fund. Just one decent research experiment would take about half of the budget. If one takes the example of citrus fruit and spend at least 0.5% of the value of the industry on research, then there should be about R233 million available for red-meat research. This is substantially more than the current R6,8 million and could stimulate the much-needed growth in the industry.

Conclusion

Overall, we deduce from this data that South Africa needs to review its budget allocations for research and ensure increased spending. Climate change has brought new diseases and various challenges for agriculture. There is also a need for better production methods and breeding programmes, all of which will require careful and well-funded research. This is the responsibility of both the government and the private sector.

Minette Batters, a beef farmer from Wiltshire in southern England, is becoming the public face of farming in much of Britain.

Agriculture and climate change are deeply intertwined. The effects of global warming on food supply are dire, whilst world population is increasing. It's time to change the way agriculture affects the environment, and vice versa.

The agriculture sector survived a year of rising uncertainty in 2018, but with the national elections and the threat of drought looming, 2019 will be every bit as challenging. 

A point that we South Africans always overlook is that South Africa, like the rest of Africa, is a neocolonial society. We like to think of ourselves, if not as a developed country, at least as very close to being one.

So much more goes into feeding the planet than the assembly of ingredients on our plates. Whether it’s soil quality, availability of clean water or climate change, the global farming community is constantly having to overcome challenges to grow fresh produce in a sustainable manner. From autonomous robots to satellites and cutting-edge science, farmers around the world are deploying new technologies to help them work in smart and cost-effective ways.

Precision Agriculture Company Aerobotics and major farming co-operative based in Humansdorp, The Co-op (also known as “Die Koöperasie”), have formed a partnership that will make Aerobotics’ leading tree crop analytics technology and software available to 1,300 farms in the Eastern Cape. This partnership is the first of its kind in South Africa and is set to serve as a template for others like it in the future.

When policymakers talk about “green jobs,” they tend to default to examples in solar power, wind and other sources of renewable energy—or perhaps manufacturing and supply chain management. They’re less likely to talk about agriculture.

The decrease in the total gross producer value (GPV) of maize for 2019 will be limited by increased maize prices. Due to the severe drought in 2016 the increased price levels maintained the gross producer value of production. It is thus expected to be the case in 2019 as well.

So much more goes into feeding the planet than the assembly of ingredients on our plates. Whether it’s soil quality, availability of clean water or climate change, the global farming community is constantly having to overcome challenges to grow fresh produce in a sustainable manner.

In 2017, there were nearly 40 million more people living in hunger than there were in 2015, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)—a number that sets global progress against undernutrition back nearly a decade, despite a global, UN-led commitment to eradicate extreme poverty by 2030.

The United Nations reports that about 1/3 of the food produced globally each year is lost or wasted, and I’d reckon that number is not too surprising.

By now there is little doubt that the younger generation is rapidly changing the look and feel of the agricultural industry. Although inevitable, it still may be tough to swallow the fact that millennials now outnumber the baby boomers in this country. We’ve often talked about what this all means for the farmer and for food production in general. For this generation of up-and-comers food is personal. How, where and by whom food is produced matters a lot to them.

Agriculture has become a carbon-intensive endeavour. Crop, livestock and fossil fuel use in agriculture account for about 25 per cent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

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.

Imagine “carbon emissions”, and what springs to mind? Most people tend to think of power stations belching out clouds of carbon dioxide or queues of vehicles burning up fossil fuels as they crawl, bumper-to-bumper, along congested urban roads.

The Department of Agriculture in the Western Cape is at the forefront of using technology to enhance sustainable farming, and as part of its initiative to embrace the fourth industrial revolution, has introduced Sentinel-2 earth observation technology.