This is according to Willie Clack, chair of the National Stock Theft Prevention Forum. Netwerk24 reports Clack presented the shocking figures recently in a presentation to the inter-ministerial committee's workshop on rural and urban safety to show how problematic livestock theft is. According to official figures, stock theft increased by 16.5% in the four years to 2020. In the 2016-17 financial year, 188 750 cattle were stolen and this increased to 219 961 in 2019-20. The total losses over the past three financial years amounts to between R1.1 billion and R1.2 billion annually. The value of livestock recovered in the 2019-20 financial year amounts to R99 million.

South Africa's agricultural machinery sales have had a solid start to the year, with tractor sales up by 28% year-on-year with 445 units sold in January 2020. Wandile Sihlobo, Chief Economist at the Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa, Agbiz, says the combined harvester sales in the same month were at the same levels as in 2020. These strong sales are somewhat a continuation of the 2020 activity where the tractor sales amounted to 5 738 units, up by 9% from 2019, with combined harvester sales up by 23% from the same year, amounting to 184 units. OFM News' Elsabé Richard reports Sihlobo says the underpinning driver is the slightly improved farmers' finances following higher agricultural output in 2020, coupled with relatively higher commodity prices.

Sihlobo says the expected large harvest in the 2020/21 production season might not lead to another year of higher agricultural machinery sales. He adds that typically a relatively good sales year is likely to be followed by a somewhat lower sales period as the replacement rate of machinery with new ones would usually be down from the previous years.

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Establishing partnerships between government, the private sector and foreign investors is an important step to launching biofuel projects through innovative financing models in South Africa. This was according to Samukelisiwe Maphumulo, a sustainability officer at the South African Sugar Association (SASA). She said the sugar industry had continuously engaged with policymakers to discuss the policy and investment support mechanisms required by the industry to diversify the use of excess sugar produced every year. Around 800 000 ton of excess sugar was currently being exported at a loss. Furthermore, Maphumulo added that South Africa’s policy environment had not been conducive to the development of the biofuels industry, due to delayed policy development, with the National Biofuels Regulatory Framework and Biofuels Feedstock Protocol only gazetted in February 2020.

OFM News