South Africa will have an expected 2.7 million tons of maize for export this year, up 89% year on year, according to Wandile Sihlobo, chief economist of the Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa (Agbiz). He said with some 30% of that already exported since the season started in May, some of South Africa’s key maize buyers had returned after being oddly quiet in the 2019/20 exporting year. Leading markets include Botswana, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Eswatini. Taiwan, Vietnam, Japan and South Korea were also big purchasers of South African maize, said Sihlobo.“Our increased export volume is being driven by the second-largest maize harvest in the history of South Africa at about 15.5 million tons.”While the country is a net exporter of maize it remains a net importer of wheat. “From October last year to September this year we will roughly be importing around 1.8 million tons. As of mid-July we had already brought in about 1.5 million tons, constituting around 80% of the total imports,” said Sihlobo. “This represents an increase of around 28% year on year in our wheat imports and is due to the lower domestic harvest we had on the back of unfavourable weather conditions in the Western Cape.”He said wheat was largely coming from various parts of the Black Sea, including Russia and the Ukraine, as well as from Poland and Germany.Sihlobo pointed out that while several countries in the northern hemisphere had revised downwards their wheat outlooks for the year, indicators pointed to large global supplies, something from which a wheat importing country like South Africa stood to benefit. “The import volume requirements for the 2020/21 marketing year, which starts on October 1, will be clearer once we have a reliable estimate of the size of the harvest of the crop which is currently under way. It is this marketing year that consumers will benefit from both a cost and availability perspective from the expected decent global wheat harvest.”Another major bulk commodity being imported is palm oil – and Sihlobo said around 450 000 tons would be brought in from Indonesia and Malaysia this year.“That is not much different to what we imported last year and not much change is expected in this bulk market.”Other major grains that are worth monitoring and are not affected by the recent global downward revisions on the back of weather concerns, are rice and soybeans.“We expect to see an increase in rice imports of around 10% year on year. This equates to roughly 1.1 million tons of rice that we are going to import,” he said.According to Sihlobo it is increasingly becoming very challenging to forecast agricultural production seasons – mostly because of the unpredictable weather conditions.Having been hit hard by the drought, South African farmers have also had to deal with significant change in the frequency, patterns and intensity of rainfall.
