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She highlights non-related news to the coronavirus. It includes good news from the South African blueberry industry and its export revenue which has risen from R113 million in 2013 to over a billion Rand in the previous season. The industry has shown remarkable growth and provides a valuable contribution towards creating job opportunities. There has been a rise in job opportunities in this industry, from a thousand jobs created in 2014 to 5 700 created in 2018, including a further increase in additional jobs of roughly 3000 created in the past two years.

Erasmus also highlights coronavirus-related stories which appear on the magazine's dedicated page for news, especially on how the pandemic is affecting food and supply chains across the world. 

This includes the South African Department of Agriculture's disaster fund of R1,2 billion announced last week by minister Thoko Didiza. This fund is aimed at helping small scale farmers affected in any way by the lockdown or pandemic. There has been an early indication by farmers, who have tried to apply for assistance in the form of a voucher system, that they're experiencing hick-ups with the system. They do not know how to submit the required application forms and also encountered problems at road blocks where they allegedly have been stopped by police and defence force members to travel to submit the forms in person. Some of these police members are of the opinion that travelling to submit forms is not an essential service.

Another challenge faced by these small scale farmers includes uncertainty about the criteria in the application forms for this grant. The uncertainty is  especially around land ownership. It is required in the applications that farmers who want to apply need to produce proof of ownership of land, in the form of tenure security or five-year lease agreements with the state. The challenge is most of these farmers  who benefited from land reform and other forms of transformation projects haven’t been getting lease agreements for five years.

There is also a story about how different commodity chambers have been affected by disruptions in supply chain.

That was Denine Erasmus, editor of Farmer's Weekly, only on The Agri Hour.

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