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Agri Hour

South Africa faces a possible dry season with another foot-and-mouth outbreak

───   CHRISTAL-LIZE MULLER 05:31 Tue, 12 Nov 2019

South Africa faces a possible dry season with another foot-and-mouth outbreak   | News Article

As per usual on a Tuesday, Wandile Sihlobo, Chief Economist at the Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa, Agbiz, provides a weekly contribution on South African agricultural markets.


He says South Africa’s agricultural sector is having a déjà vu moment with a bad start to the 2018/19 production year characterised by drought conditions for summer crops and foot-and-mouth disease in the case of livestock, which have now returned.

Regarding drought conditions, Sihlobo says the South African Weather Service currently forecasts below-normal rainfall between November 2019 and January 2020 in the eastern regions of South Africa, specifically parts of Limpopo, Mpumalanga, and KwaZulu-Natal, with a projected likelihood of dryness across South Africa which is higher compared to the last September forecast.

Making matters worse is that temperatures are set to be higher than normal levels over this period. While it is too early to ascertain a possible impact of this on production, and thereafter food price inflation and growth of the sector, it is believed that the 2019/20 summer crop production season might not be as good as initially anticipated.

Sihlobo says regarding the foot-and-mouth disease the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform, and Rural Development recently reported clinical signs suspicious for foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) in a herd of cattle on a farm in the Molemole district of Limpopo.

According to him, Zimbabwe is currently the only country that has announced a ban on South Africa’s livestock and meat, following the outbreak in Limpopo earlier this year. While a ban is a concern, Zimbabwe is not a major market and could, therefore, have minimal implications in the near term. But if the ban extends to other countries, as it was the case earlier this year, trade of livestock products, which is still at its recovery stage from the outbreak earlier this year, could be affected.


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