South African farmer numbers, cultivation areas decline but productivity rises

In the past ten years, the area planted to field crops in South Africa decreased from 6.75 million hectares in 1996 to 4.9 million hectares in 2006. In the same period, according to the reply to a written Parliamentary question, the number of farmers is estimated to have decreased from 52,531 to 42,974.

Despite this, the harvest of all crops only decreased from 35.8 million ton in 1996 to 33.2 million ton in 2006. In fact this represents a productivity increase in the long term trend of 29 percent from 5.2 tons per hectare in 1996 to 6.7 tons per hectare in 2006, the Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs Lulama Xingwana said.

She explained: "There are two important reasons. As South Africa's economy opened up to international competition due to more deregulation of the national and international markets, farmers had to be more market orientated and productive to be internationally competitive. Productivity is continuously being improved through bio-, mechanical-, chemical- and information- and systems-technology."

A set of tables given with her answer shows that while there were substantial increases in productivity for barley, cotton, ground nuts maize tobacco and wheat, there were decreases in the productivity of sorghum, sugar cane and sunflowers.

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