Celebrating agriculture’s achievements
At the end of December 2021, senior Farmer’s Weekly journalist Annelie Coleman sent me a video of a flooded maize land in the Free State. This was a sad anticlimax to an otherwise stellar performance by our farmers throughout 2020 and 2021. According to a recent Farmer’s Weekly online article, the maize crop could be as much as 20% smaller than previously anticipated, due to severe rainfall in the Free State and North West. However, in my first editorial to you on the departure of our editor, Denene Erasmus, I’d like to focus on the sector’s achievements in 2021. South African agriculture has gained much ground over the past two years, due in part to favourable weather conditions, but also to farmers’ business acumen and ability to adapt. The Citrus…