AGRICULTURE: A FORCE FOR GOOD AGRICULTURE
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The world is a strange, ever-changing place these days, but one thing that remains constant is the need for food. Not just access to food, but access to safe food that nourishes our families. Agriculture has always been the backbone of civilisation, feeding nations and fuelling economies, and while South Africa remains food secure as a country, the numerous policy discussions on a global level need to nd practical solutions to address food security challenges at the household level. In this issue of Agriculture, we catch a glimpse of some of the people who are advocating for these policies on global forums – not only in terms of food security, but also in ensuring farmers have access to the latest agricultural technologies that can support this. In an era marked by erratic climate events, population growth and economic uncertainty, this is no easy task.
Technology and research must continue to drive ef ciency, while ethical practices should ensure that agriculture remains a force for good. Later in this issue, we learn from various experts about how these agricultural technologies can work in harmony with nature to minimise agriculture’s impact on the environment, and we explore the measures in place to ensure the food that ultimately reaches our plates is safe to eat.
Agriculture doesn’t work in silos; it is an intricate and complex network of various role players working together for our sustenance – from smallholder farmers looking after their families and communities to large commercial entities providing job opportunities and livelihoods to many thousands – each producer with their own contribution and story to tell. We learn about one such story: a woman who made her way from a small subsistence farming operation to matching the production output of a commercial pig farm through passion and perseverance.
Food production is multidimensional, intricate and exceptionally rewarding, and the path toward a future where no one goes hungry lies in our collective commitment to sustainability. We should embrace this responsibility with the necessary passion and perseverance because the future of agriculture is the future of humanity itself.
Elriza Theron
COPYRIGHT: Picasso Headline.
No portion of this magazine may be reproduced in any form without written consent of the publisher. The publisher is not responsible for unsolicited material. AGRICULTURE is published by Picasso Headline. The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of Picasso Headline. All advertisements/advertorials have been paid for and therefore do not carry any endorsement by the publisher.
Contents
2 SUSTAINABLE FOOD SYSTEMS
We unpack key insights from the B20 sustainable food systems and agriculture task force around promoting sustainable agricultural practices, improving food security, and driving economic growth in Africa.
8
SAFEGUARDING YOUR PLATE
We navigate South Africa's complex food safety landscape.
10
AGRITECH
We unpack how new developments in agricultural technology today are paradoxically enabling farmers to better harness nature and the environment to improve yields and sustainability.
12
FARMER PROFILE
Betty Nyambi dreamed of becoming a nurse, but instead ended up with a successful piggery.
INDUSTRY-LED FOOD SAFETY STANDARDS AND TESTING INNOVATIONS
Crosby points out that in addition to government regulations, businesses also navigate private food safety standards, particularly when engaging in international trade. “Standards such as FSSC 22000 and BRC Global Standards set stringent requirements often exceeding governmental mandates. Meeting these standards not only ensures compliance with customer requirements, but also enhances the reputation and competitiveness of South African food products in the global market.”
The FSSC 22000 is a certi cation scheme for food safety management systems, aligned with the ISO management system approach and the ISO harmonised structure. The scheme provides a certi cation model that can be used in the food manufacturing industry and the related supply chain to ensure food safety standards and processes. The BRC Global Standards, on the other hand, is a leading global brand and consumer protection organisation that sets standards for food safety, packaging, storage, traceability and distribution.
Dr Gerhard Verdoorn, stewardship manager at CropLife South Africa, says product stewardship and food safetyis a priority for the crop protection industry. “All substances and nished products undergo extensive evaluation and testing in the interest of product and food safety. CropLife SA has also created several resources to help educate and inform various stakeholders about some key issues affecting the industry as well as food safety.”
Dr Verdoorn stresses that all crop protection remedies are rigorously tested and reviewed by third-party scientists and all possible health, environmental and food safety risks along the entire value chain are considered. “This means that products put in the market by our members satisfy the highest quality standards and are safe for people, animals and the environment when used according to label directions.”
Dr Tertia Erasmus, managing director of SciCorp Laboratories, says ensuring food safety is not only a regulatory requirement, but also a fundamental aspect of consumer trust, economic sustainability and international trade competitiveness. She explains that the practical implementation of the above-mentioned regulations requires advanced, reliable testing methodologies to verify compliance at all stages of the food value chain.
“SciCorp Laboratories is a South African National Accreditation System (SANAS) ISO 17025-accredited laboratory. We provide scienti cally validated testing services for GMOs, microbiological contaminants, chemical residues and food authenticity.” ISO refers to the global standards for trusted goods and services, and ISO 17025 speci cally is a standard that provides the general requirements for the competence of testing and calibration in laboratories.
The standard is audited by accreditation bodies such as the South African National Accreditation System. “These tests help businesses meet both local regulations and stringent global standards such as FSSC 22000 and BRC Global Standards,” she adds.
Dr Erasmus points out that a key challenge in food safety is the rapid identi cation of contaminants before products reach consumers. “SciCorp addresses this through innovative molecular-based rapid testing solutions, enabling faster and more accurate detection of foodborne pathogens, allergens and mycotoxins. Our ‘farm-to-fork’ approach ensures food producers, processors and retailers can access real-time, actionable data to prevent food safety breaches.
“While government oversight is essential, industry collaboration and proactive risk management play an equally signi cant role. Our aim is to support food businesses in navigating both mandatory regulations and voluntary certi cation programmes to enhance food safety culture and consumer con dence,” concludes Dr Erasmus.
Above and right: Before deploying any integrated pest management system, farmers must understand the population dynamics of the insects affecting the crop. Pheromone insect traps are strategically placed throughout the orchard. By trapping insects, farmers can estimate population numbers and use that to employ effective corrective measures in an integrated pest management programme. Apart from causing losses, insects can contribute towards disease contamination of produce, making them unsuitable for sales.
Modern crop sprayers can apply crop protection products at variable rates, depending on the requirement. All spatial data on particular requirements are stored in the cloud and machinery can orient itself according to an on-farm GPS mast.
a different function. Sorghum, for instance, can draw the potassium located deep down in the soil closer to the surface where your cash crops can utilise it. If you want to x large quantities of nitrogen in the soil, you plant a legume, which also enables you to save on nitrogen fertiliser. Every cover crop is a spanner in your toolbox.”
Bester also relies on an on-farm weather station to warn him when climate conditions increase the risk of pests, enabling him to apply pesticides preventatively, and only on vulnerable elds.
“Whereas before we may have had to apply pesticides on one hundred per cent of a farm or a eld, we can now get away with thirty to forty per cent application, which reduces our input costs and the resulting pesticide residues.”
HOW AGRITECH IS BRINGING FARMING CLOSER TO NATURE
The driving force behind most new developments in agricultural technology today is paradoxically to enable farmers to better harness nature and the environment to improve yields and sustainability, writes
JEANNE VAN DER MERWE
Agriculture service providers compete ercely to build the best digital tools to gather a host of production data and interpret it in a way that helps farmers farm more ef ciently.
In this data-intensive approach, on-farm weather stations can provide customised, accurate, hyperlocal weather forecasts and irrigation can be scheduled remotely via a cellphone app, based on data from networked soil moisture probes. Modern-day farming machinery can interface with purpose-built data hubs that steer tractors, crop sprayers and combine harvesters on predetermined GPS-plotted routes across farms, recording and uploading production data as they go to distinguish between fertile and less fertile elds. Even on nonirrigated farms spanning thousands of hectares, soil health, soil moisture and plant health can be established with machinery-mounted cameras, specialised drones and satellite imaging.
“One of the biggest bene ts of this type of technology is that we can apply fertilisers at variable rates,” says grain and cattle farmer Danie Bester from Balfour, Mpumalanga, who
has been using these precision farming tools for over 22 years. “The aim is never to apply too much nitrogen or phosphate fertilisers, which can cause needless acidi cation of soil or harm groundwater quality.”
Bester is also one of the best-known local practitioners of conservation agriculture, which aims to mimic natural processes to improve yields while reducing the need for chemical inputs. “For me, the two almost went hand in hand, but I adopted precision farming technology rst and then saw that the technology made it much easier for me to apply conservation agriculture, so the two are very much related.”
TECHNOLOGY AND NATURE, A SYMBIOTIC RELATIONSHIP
While farmers like Bester rely strongly on technology, part of their success lies in recognising that nature does some things best. “When you walk into a forest, you will never see only one type of plant or one type of tree, but rather a variety of species all growing together. You can mimic that effect on your elds with multispecies cover crops, each with
Modern on-farm weather stations can be linked to weather forecasting platforms that use data from multiple stations, satellites and arti cial intelligence models to generate hyperlocal weather forecasts, corrected by a continuous feed from a speci c station’s actual data and therefore adjusted for the speci c location of the weather station.
“All farming activities occurring at farm level are in uenced by the weather. Having a model that can accurately forecast the climatic conditions for the coming week allows for better planning,” says Emile Jordaan, general manager of Metos SA, a provider of weather stations and other climate smart technologies. These systems are particularly important for deciding when to apply fungicides, insecticides and herbicides – applying them in conditions that are too wet, hot, humid or windy can drastically reduce their ef cacy.
“The Metos app, using the hyperlocalised weather forecast, generates an hourly segmented, seven-day spray window, which shows you the safe spray window for the next week.” What makes the hyperlocalised weather forecast more accurate than other more generic online service providers is that it is updated constantly by a localised weather station. These forecasts are particularly useful on farms where topography or the aspect of a slope may lead to speci c micro-climate weather conditions.
Metos has entered into a successful partnership with Raisins SA to establish a network of 14 weather stations along the Orange River and Olifants River Valley, where some 88 per cent of the country’s raisins are produced. The weather station data forms the basis of early warning systems that alert farmers to the risk of frost or disease in their immediate vicinity.
Raisins SA senior agronomist Stefan Jordaan says the system enables producers to spray preventatively against fungal diseases or strategically place fans in their vineyards to prevent frost damage on the vines. By analysing historical climate and weather data, they can also predict when their harvesting season starts and plan logistics accordingly.
For Arno Abeln, managing director of Agrimark Operations, a leading agriculture input and technology supplier, crop production under netting has been one of the biggest game-changers in irrigation farming over the past decade or two as it reduces evaporation from orchards and also the overall water requirement. These precision farming installations typically incorporate networked soil moisture probes that help ensure crops remain optimally watered. These are often integrated with on-farm weather stations, which can be monitored remotely in real-time, and remotely operated irrigation systems.
Especially in water-scarce areas like South Africa, Abeln says, farmers have to count every drop. “They usually have a precise plan for how to use their water allocation for every single part of their farm. One production block may be irrigated from 10 to 11pm, but another block that gets more sun during the day will be irrigated from 4 to 5pm to compensate for greater water losses during the day. Water use is determined strictly according to what is necessary and is timed and managed accordingly.”
On high-value permanent crops, such as vines and fruit trees, there has been a movement away from purely chemical pest and disease control to integrated pest management (IPM), which combines a variety of natural, chemical and physical strategies to optimise productivity and pro tability. “With IPM, data is king. The more data you have, the better informed the decision you can make,” says Lourens Steytler, portfolio lead at Villa Crop Protection.
“Instead of spraying indiscriminately, IPM requires you to determine the threshold
at which you must take action to avoid unacceptable crop losses. IPM practitioners use pheromone traps and sticky pads to trap insects in orchards to determine the population density and age and the associated risk of damage. “Then you count the number of pests on a leaf or on your traps and determine how much risk these numbers pose. Two juvenile insects on a leaf may not be a problem, but ten might.”
Other strategies that form part of IPM include using biostimulants to improve a plant’s ability to resist stress or disease and biocontrol, such as using “green” chemicals, macros or a combination of these, to control pests and diseases.
Ultimately, says Tallie Giessing, parts manager for machinery supplier ARGO, ef ciency in agriculture goes hand in hand with environmental stewardship. “Precision technology contributes to agriculture without waste. Ef cient farming is the rst step towards conservation.”
Follow: Danie Bester @ Danetidf @ besterdanie @ Danie Bester Metos SA www.linkedin.com/company/metos-sa Stefan Jordaan www.linkedin.com/in/stefan-jordaan-81028b99 Villa Crop Protection www.linkedin.com/company/villa-crop/posts Lourens Steytler www.linkedin.com/in/lourens-steytler-3a2a30143
A screenshot from Agleader SMS, the production software farmer Danie Bester uses. The system incorporates production data from multiple growing seasons and shows yield differences across a single management area on the farm.
