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The 26 March issue of Farmer’s Weekly, which will be on shelves on Friday 19 March, covers an array of stories such as how the Covid-19 pandemic is still affecting the luxury leather market globally. Erasmus adds that this has an impact on global ostrich and crocodile farmers. 

She says, according to Francois de Wet, managing director of the ostrich goods manufacturer Cape Karoo International, demand on the local market for ostrich leather has declined dramatically. He says this was directly related to weak tourist activity – not only locally but worldwide. In addition to this, the bootwear market in the US and Mexico also went down dramatically. 

Erasmus says the same goes for the demand for crocodile leather. She adds that hopefully, as the world recovers from the pandemic and tourist activity increases, demand for these luxury goods will start to slowly pick up again.

Furthermore, another article looks at South Africa’s dragon fruit industry. Erasmus says that as we’re nearing the second part of 2021, the local dragon fruit season has been negatively affected by very wet conditions – especially in Limpopo. 

She adds that CT van der Merwe, CEO of Al 3 Boerdery, stated that the wet weather has caught them off guard as they have not applied fungicides to their crop. As a result of this, he says they are down about 50% of what they thought the yield would be. Erasmus says this is due to pollination problems as well as low pack-out rates caused by the rain damage to crops.

When looking at the outlook for the wine season, Erasmus says that the harvest season for winegrapes is still looking bare. She says this is the case for wine grape farmers that deliver to larger producer sellers. 

Lastly, Erasmus adds that Diemersdal Estate owner and winemaker, Thys Louw, says that they've recently released the first Sauvignon Blanc wine of the season and states that customers were glamouring for this wine.  With that being said, Louw also explains that the crises in wine sales caused by Covid-19 lockdown measures had not as severely affected wine producers that produce their own wine. 

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