New agriculture committee for South Africa after GDP slump outcry

South Africa will start providing high frequency data on the agriculture sector’s performance after a shock third quarter contraction in the industry put the government’s growth projection in jeopardy and led the country’s biggest farm-industry lobbies to commission a probe.

The Department of Agriculture and groups representing farmers will form an Agricultural Conditions Committee this month, Wandile Sihlobo, chief economist at the Agricultural Business Chamber, said Friday. 

The main aim of the committee, which will be housed at the Department of Agriculture and include agricultural organizations and some academics, will be “to ensure there is high frequency data about agricultural conditions, and general insights about the operating conditions of farmers,” he said.

“This will help improve the general public and policymakers’ understanding of the sector’s condition.”

Agri SA, a federation of agricultural organizations, and Agbiz in December asked the Bureau for Food and Agricultural Policy to review Statistics South Africa’s data after the agency said the farming sector contracted 15.5% in the first nine months of the year and 28.8% in the third quarter — the most since 1970. That triggered an unexpected contraction of 0.3% in the nation’s overall quarterly economic performance relative to the prior three months.  

South Africa’s agricultural economic data is solid. The way the media covered the issue of the agriculture data in the recent GDP figures seems to suggest that there is big trouble. But there isn’t. Sure, there “may” be a data revision in agriculture Q3 numbers when Stats SA…— Wandile Sihlobo (@WandileSihlobo) January 10, 2025

BFAP’s analysis showed the farming industry shrunk about 5% to 6% in the first nine months of 2024 and said that Stats SA should consider an “upward revision” of about 10.8 billion rand ($564 million) for agricultural gross domestic product after accounting for inflation. 

“It is particularly important if experts in their respective fields are able to raise their concerns and contribute to the improvement of the estimates of, in this case, the behavior of the agriculture value added,” Joe de Beer, deputy director-general of economic statistics at Stats SA said in a response to a query.

The agency met with the Department of Agriculture in December and the two bodies “committed to work together to ensure that the estimates of the role of the agriculture industry in the economy is estimated as best as possible,” he said. 

The agency hasn’t decided yet whether to revise its earlier report as it’s yet to receive new data from the department, he said.

• By Monique Vanek (Bloomberg)

Read: Good news expected for one of South Africa’s most important sectors