February 2017

acrobat WEEKLY MONITOR – Food & Water Security in South Africa – 4 February to 10 February 2017
Author: Augustus Consulting
Key Emerging Trends, Themes and Issues
• South Africa’s food prices continue to rise above inflation, maize now costs 40% more than it did a year ago.
• Vodacom launches ICT and mobile technologies to empower emerging farmers in South Africa.
• South Africa’s Khoisan community demand their land back as South Africa’s land reform crisis deepens.
• South Africa continues to be one of the biggest recipients of foreign direct investment.
• Fall army worms threatens food security in South Africa.

acrobat WEEKLY MONITOR – Food & Water Security in South Africa – 11 February to 17 February 2017
Author: Augustus Consulting
Key Emerging Trends, Themes and Issues
• South African farmers battle with army-worm invasion amid persistent drought.
• North West farmers fight Rabies outbreak amid a stubborn drought in South Africa.
• South Africa’s total maize production declines by more than one-fifth in 2016 as an El Nino-induced drought damaged crops for a second year.
• Agri SA announces that it has no record of farmers who were assisted with drought relief through the R2.5 billion mentioned by President Jacob Zuma in his State of the Nation Address (SONA).
• Three arrested for brutal Berg farm attack as security remains a major issue in South Africa’s agricultural sector.

acrobat WEEKLY MONITOR – Food & Water Security in South Africa – 18 February to 24 February 2017
Author: Augustus Consulting
Key Emerging Trends, Themes and Issues
• South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma has sent the Expropriation Bill back to the National Assembly for review, some 10 months after Members of Parliament approved it.
• An outbreak of fall armyworms that has attacked maize plants in South Africa may spread to sugarcane in the KwaZulu-Natal province, where a warm climate would help the pest survive through the year.
• Cosatu in the North West says farm workers continue to be subjected to unfair treatment in the workplace.
• EFF says it might be willing to assist Rural Development and Land Reform Minister Gugile Nkwinti if he is genuine about amending the constitution to effect land restitution without compensation.
• The nationwide drought has had a devastating effect on the agriculture sector and its value chain.

acrobat WEEKLY MONITOR – Food & Water Security in South Africa – 25 February to 3 March 2017
Author: Augustus Consulting
Key Emerging Trends, Themes and Issues
• President Jacob Zuma says 2017 is the year of “taking land back to the people” and for this reason government will seek to change legislation to allow for land expropriation without compensation.
• An El Niño weather pattern, which brought a scorching drought to Southern Africa last year, could return in the spring which usually occurs from August to October.
• South Africa’s increasingly business-orientated land reform programme has opened the door for “elite capture” with businesses – often white owned and multinational – becoming the real winners, while black “beneficiaries” languish without any formal rights to the land.
• South Africa’s petrol price could hit R14/litre in April.
• “Dutch gangsters came to South Africa and took the land,” says Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader Julius Malema, as the land debate in South Africa escalates.

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