New Zealand’s largest apple grower-exporter T&G Global has begun using a robotic harvester on a commercial apple crop in what it describes as a “world-first”.

Nobody wants to be trapped in a menial, minimum-wage job. Yet in commercial and subsistence agriculture alike, these are the vast majority of jobs that the sector offers young South Africans.

The expansion in most agricultural subsectors in South Africa has been export-driven, particularly in the horticultural sector. This sector is labour-intensive, and the expansion also brought jobs.

Dutch grower Sjaak Huetink is enthusiastic about using the Poulsen Robovator camera operated hoeing machine. “We have never sprayed as little or made as few weeding hours. Our plots have never been cleaner.”

South Africa’s land reform programme was supposed to ensure that the impoverished get to own and work the land. Now, only the politically connected and economically included are benefitting.

Temperature rise due to climate change has negatively affected labor productivity in recent decades and will keep damaging it, potentially to a higher extent than what has been estimated in the literature up to now.

South Africa’s tragically high unemployment has frequently been described as a “ticking time bomb”.

The last few years exposed global supply chain fragility and transformed the way many do business.