How technology is changing the farming scene in SA.

 

The viewpoint for farming in South Africa within the brief term is very bullish due to positive climate conditions which provide force to a great year, agreeing to Nico Groenewald, head of agribusiness at Standard Bank.

"This can give an opportunity for ranchers as there will be more cash within the framework so they can extend utilizing innovation. From a lender perspective, the challenge is increasingly for us to coordinated distinctive technologies which as of now exist within the esteem chains to open and give superior subsidizing arrangements," says Groenewald.

One of the enormous challenges for the agribusiness industry, in his see, relates to foundation - counting at ports - and coordinations to urge create and items from the cultivate to the showcase and keeping up the cold chain due to power frailty.

"If SA cannot support the agriculture production side with what needs to happen outside the farm gate, then the value chain can take a significant knock," he says.

Another challenge is water.

"Yes, we have come out of the drought, but we need to unlock our ability to use irrigation more efficiently and technology, coupled with renewable energy options, can play a role here," says Groenewald.

Security, counting in connection to stock burglary, moreover remains a challenge. Innovation can be utilized to track animals, for illustration. Moreover, issues like biosecurity are confronted within the industry and episodes of fowl flu, swine flu and foot-and-mouth illness have affected exports

Groenewald is positive that technology can be used to improve many, if not all, these challenges.

The use of technology has, for example, enabled a significant increase in maize production in the country on roughly the same number of hectares over the past two decades. Maize production roughly doubled over that period to 16.1 million tons a year.

 

"From a practical sense, the most obvious use of technology we have seen is the move to renewable energy at farm level - probably due to electricity supply challenges in the country. We have seen a fair amount of conversion to solar at farm level - for example at pack sheds in the fruit industry," says Groenewald.

Agriculturists are too utilizing information gotten from web network increasingly . Indeed barters, which utilized to generally take put face-to-face, are presently more regularly done essentially or in half breed format.

As for nourishment security and helping small-scale ranchers to pick up get to to showcase, Standard Bank has presented its OneFarm online stage as way to utilize innovation to assist agribusinesses. The stage interfaces buyers and venders and indeed benefactors of overflow create with associations which can disperse it to poor communities. So distant it has given 5 000 tons of create to individuals in require. Of the 102 ranchers who have given input by means of the stage, 52 were little scale ranchers.