The Fall (& Potential Rise) of the Platteland

Our rural communities are being gutted. 54% of maize farmers and 56% of beef farmers have gone out of business in the last 14 years. Our current view of the role of agriculture is creating an unsustainable future. That future can be altered by taking a broader view of agriculture that includes soil health and its associated benefits.

The pillars of our Agricultural Policy - the factors guiding decision making - do not currently include Soil Health. Alongside the other pillars like GDP Contribution, Food Security and Job Creation should be Soil Health. This is not some 'save the planet' wish but a crucial requirement for our agriculture to be economically and environmentally sustainable. These are basic requirements for GDP Contribution, Food Security, Job Creation, etc to be achievable.

Current Farm Economics

In the heartland of the South Africa, over in the last 14 years, 54% of the farmers who deliver maize to silos have gone out of business (see Graph 1 below). They have been forced off their farms by a combination of depleted soils and a cost-price squeeze that are as much part of industrial agriculture as fertilizer and high levels of debt.

Graph 1: Maize Farmers decline by 54% from 2010 - 2014.

Looking at it from another perspective, 50% of the businesses in the average Free State, Mpumalanga, North West municipality have closed down, wreaking havoc with the economy of the towns at the centre of those communities. This collapse of family farms is not only catastrophic for these farmers, their families and the farm labourers, but also for the economics of our rural communities. With 50% of the businesses that once supported those rural communities effectively gone, the shops have closed, the schools have all but collapsed and churches have closed their doors. In the worst cases, even the co-op has closed down and farmers are forced to travel to the next town that still has a co-op.

Changing the focus from maize to conventional beef production in South Africa reveals more of the same. A classical cost-price squeeze with inputs going up by more than 90% in the last 8 years and retail meat prices rising at an average of about 40% but the price that farmers get for selling their weaner calves has only risen by 1.3% (see Graph 2 below). This is obviously unsustainable. According to the Competition Commission there has been a 56% decline in the number of beef farmers in the last 10 years.

Graph 2: Beef inflation graph. Multiple sources.

Behind the above data is an unsustainable debt situation. Debt, and thus financial risk, in the agricultural sector is spiralling out of control (Graph 3 below). The production cost of running a farm as a percentage of total farm debt has increased by 134% between 1985 and 2020 (from 37% to 86%). Agricultural costs are being funded with long term debt. Its not sustainable, its like using your house mortgage to pay for your groceries because your salary can't cover them.

Graph 3. Farm Debt in South Africa1985 vs 2020. Source: Abstract of Ag. Stats 2021

More of the Same

Despite these realities and their serious threat to our agricultural and political future there is no indication of any change in direction of our Agricultural Policy, we are going to continue on our current path. The focus remains on increasing GDP contribution, job creation, new entrants and new "silver bullet" technology opportunities, with a mention of sustainability in the background. More of the same seldom results in a different outcome. In fact new research indicates that the trend of farm bankruptcy will continue - https://sajs.co.za/article/view/17091 

New Entrants into Industrial Agriculture

In light of the picture the data above draws it is disturbing that the plan is to continue placing new entrants into this high risk squeeze. Imagine being a new entrant into an industry where more than 54% of the businesses have failed in the last 14 years and predictions are that it will deteriorate further. What chance do new entrants have in such an environment? The average farm size for staying in business has gone from below 400 hectares per farmer in 2010 to 800 hectares in 2024. In another 5 years it will be at 1200 hectares. How many of these new entrants are getting access to 800 hectares of arable land? How many are being given capital for further land acquisition to stay in the game?

Dystopian Rural Future

Using economies of scale to avoid the impacts of soil degradation and the cost-price squeeze rather than solving the underlying problems is merely kicking the can down the road. Ultimately we will end up in a situation where we have mega-cities and corporate mega-farms, run by distant mega-shareholders. Our rural areas will be reduced to bankrupt, dormitory towns. Farms without land stewards and towns where increasing numbers of people from bankrupted farms live with little or no access to education, jobs or opportunities. Towns where people merely survive on monies remitted by relatives in cities and government grants. This is already happening all across the Platteland. The very antithesis of a thriving rural economy, food security and job creation.

Some might say that this reality is 'tough for those people but it's the cost of progress'. And you know you can't stand in the way of progress. That might be true if once again you take the narrow view. Taking a wider view we know for instance that the "progress" going on in the the Amazon, Congo and Indonesian jungles is, aside from for a few short term beneficiaries, everything but progress. It is a major threat to our future supplies of food, oxygen and water. Although our "mining" rather than farming of the soil in the Platteland is more subtle than deforestation it is still a significant contributor to this threat.

The Benefits of Farming with Nature

We do not have to continue on this downward spiral. Other viable farming solutions that focus on partnering with nature already exist, we do not need to wait for them to be invented. Solutions that improve farm ecosystem performance and economics, while simultaneously improving environmental metrics. Metrics that are crucial to South Africa having food security, the future water stocks it needs and meeting our recently signed climate commitments to mention but three.

At the core of these solutions lies healthy soil. Industrial agriculture's view of soil is that it is merely a medium for holding plants, but a brief study of the soil-plant ecosystem will reveal the incredible contributions the soil-plant ecosystem makes for humankind. Primarily making planet earth habitable: food, functional water, carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen cycles, biodiversity protection, stopping desertification, planetary cooling, climate stability, fibre, building materials, pollution clean up, etc, etc. Humans needs all of these things to live not just food.

If soil health does not become one of the pillars that inform agricultural decision making we will make the wrong decisions. The impact of soil health not being a pillar for the past 70 years has already had a catastrophic effect on farmers, rural communities and the ecosystem that supports us.

The arguments against taking this "look at the whole picture" view are well trodden and focus on "We have to farm this way to feed the world". The logic behind this argument is simply absent - "We must be unsustainable to be sustainable." It boggles the mind that proponents of this logic have managed to get away with it for so long. The natural ecosystems of the planet are not some manmade construct, where debts can be written off and past indiscretions voted away at the ballot box. In natural ecosystems everything is connected to everything, and bad debts and bad decisions are compounded, resulting in downward spirals. There is no food security or any other security in having to be unsustainable.

The good news is that the soil-plant ecosystem is very forgiving and if we decide to partner with it rather than war with it, it recovers its functionality in remarkably short time. With that returning function comes that life enabling list of ecosystem services mentioned above. With those ecosystem services come environmental resilience and with that economic resilience. The question we have to ask ourselves is: Once we know the full picture do we continue to make our decisions based on just a portion of that picture? Or do we give Soil Health a seat at the table? If we chose to partner with nature the Platteland can rise on the rising tide, and not just the Platteland, but all of us.