WANDILE SIHLOBO: Bigger planting area is ultimately good news for South Africans

The good news keeps pouring in for SA’s agricultural sector, at least from a production perspective. Figures released on October 28 by the Crop Estimates Committee (CEC), a government crop forecasting body, show that SA farmers intend to increase the area planting for summer grains and oilseeds in the 2020/2021 production season 5% year on year to 4.15-million hectares.

This comprises maize, sunflower seed, soybeans, groundnuts, sorghum and dry beans. There is an intention to increase most of these crops’ plantings except for sunflower seed, whose area could fall 4% year on year, in part because of an anticipated shift to white maize planting...