A COUNTRY OF TWO AGRICULTURES, the disparities, the challenges, the solutions

201pp., paperback, Johannesburg, 2023

Wandile Sihlobo on why, nearly three decades after the first democratic elections, South Africa has remained a country of ‘two agricultures’: a subsistence, primarily non-commercial, black farming segment and a predominantly commercial, well-resourced and white farming sector with access to domestic and international trade networks. He proposes a framework for bolstering the black farming segment for growth, competitiveness and food security. 

Sihlobo is the Chief Economist of the Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa (Agbiz) and the author of Finding Common Ground: Land, equity and agriculture. He is Senior Lecturer Extraordinary at the Department of Agricultural Economics at Stellenbosch University, a Visiting Research Fellow at the Wits School of Governance, and a Research Associate at the Institute of Social and Economic Research at Rhodes University. Sihlobo was appointed as a member of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Presidential Economic Advisory Council in 2019 (and re-appointed in 2022), having served on the Presidential Expert Advisory Panel on Land Reform and Agriculture from 2018. He is a columnist for Business Day, The Herald and Farmers Weekly magazine.