Promising: Wheat prices have moderated this year, down by roughly 4% year-on-year.
Over the weekend, when we drove across the Swartland region of the Western Cape, one important aspect we noticed was the encouraging winter wheat crop.
The Western Cape has received excessive rain recently, damaging infrastructure in various regions of the province. In the wheat fields, there are areas where pools of water are visible from major roads. Still, vast sections of the crop look promising.
A few exchanges with agribusiness leaders in the area suggested that the southern regions of Swartland might well be too wet for the wheat but the northern areas should do well.
We will get a better view of the wheat regions when we visit the province again in the coming months. Notably, the question of what this means for national wheat production prospects will also be evident in the next few months.
South Africa’s Crop Estimates Committee will release the area-planted estimate and first production forecast for this season’s wheat crop on 28 August. The committee could adjust these figures during the monthly reviews, depending on how production conditions evolve.
The hope is that the Western Cape will have some slightly warmer days to dry up some of the excess moisture, so that the crop in puddles of water can recover. The wheat in various regions is still in the early growing stages, meaning that improvement is possible even in excessively wet areas, if the weather warms up somewhat in the coming weeks.
We are emphasising the Western Cape, not only because this is the province we drove across, but because of its dominance in wheat production in South Africa. Over two-thirds of the country’s winter wheat crop is produced there. The province is a winter rainfall region.
However, putting the anecdotal views aside, the data tells a worrying story. The Crop Estimates Committee says South Africa’s preliminary area plantings for wheat are at 502 000 hectares, down by 7% from the 2023-24 season. This is the lowest area planting in seven years.
The sharpest declines in area plantings are in the Free State and Limpopo. These two provinces are among the top four winter wheat-producing provinces in South Africa, along with the Western and Northern Cape.
The latter provinces showed a minor decline in area plantings. Other provinces, which are relatively small producers, the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga, also showed a mild decrease in area planting prospects.
The major decline in winter wheat plantings in the Free State and Limpopo is unsurprising. The northern regions of South Africa experienced a harsh mid-summer drought, which led to significant crop losses. The farmers in some of these regions are under financial strain and understandably reluctant to increase winter wheat plantings.
Moreover, wheat prices have moderated this year, down by roughly 4% year-on-year. Therefore, in an environment with reduced soil moisture because of the mid-summer drought, lower wheat prices and some financial pressure, farmers are probably focused on planting for the 2024-25 summer crops in October.
If weather conditions, particularly in the Western Cape, improve for the rest of the season and a five-year average yield of 3,78 tonnes per hectare in 502 000 hectares is achieved, we could have a winter wheat harvest of 1,89 million tonnes. This would be down 7% year-on-year and well below the five-year average winter wheat harvest of 2,02 million tonnes.
Overall, it will be a while before we know what the 2024-25 wheat harvest will be like. The figures that the Crop Estimates Committee releases at the end of this month will provide initial guidance.
Author Profile
Wandile Sihlobo is the chief economist at the Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa and a senior fellow in Stellenbosch University’s Department of Agricultural Economics. His latest book is A Country of Two Agricultures.
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