Chief Economist Wandile Sihlobo says farmers this year planted more than they did the previous season which shows a bit of optimism.Sihlobo says, “It is from the beginning of February where we did not receive any of the rainfall. At the time, we needed rain badly in farming in South Africa because that’s where the crop goes to pollination or flowering, which is where all the grain formation happens.
“So since then there hasn’t been any rain, which is why the figures that were released yesterday they showed that we may be down by roughly 20% if you were to compare us to the previous season, with, of course, a harvest of around about 13.2 million tonnes.” Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies.