South African agricultural exports rose 10% in the second quarter from the same period a year ago, buoyed by higher volumes and better prices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The total shipments of R65.4 billion were a record for the second quarter, according to Wandile Sihlobo, chief economist at the Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
While lower than the same period last year, shipments to the US climbed 56% from the first quarter as the effective tariff rate declined to 12.5% from 30%<\/strong>, the chamber said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSouth Africa has had a solid start to 2026,\u201d Sihlobo said in a note on Monday. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cStill, in the current environment of heightened geo-economic tensions, South Africa\u2019s export-oriented agricultural sector must focus on maintaining its existing export markets and expanding into new ones.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Agriculture has been a rare bright spot for South Africa\u2019s economy, with exports rising steadily over the last two decades as a growing citrus industry and a diversification into other types of fruits and nuts added to the country\u2019s corn shipments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Exports were also helped by improved performance at the Cape Town port, the chamber said. Exports to other African countries accounted for 40% of shipments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While South Africa has a record corn crop this year, harvests of the grain and other produce may fall in the coming season due to the anticipated El Ni\u00f1o weather phenomenon, which usually brings dry weather to Southern Africa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Agricultural exports from South Africa rose by 10% year-on-year in the second quarter, supported by higher volumes and better prices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":868041,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"posted","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"2096871857114784246","_sma_facebook_post_id":"191437357620492_2198344720985927","_sma_instagram_post_id":"18184351255410830","_sma_x_attempts":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[19033,26117,4261,21374],"class_list":["post-874117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-agricultural-business-chamber-of-south-africa","tag-cape-town-port","tag-exports","tag-wandile-sihlobo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=874117"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":874130,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874117\/revisions\/874130"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/868041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=874117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=874117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=874117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}