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The South African winter wheat crop is in poor condition
Global map of crop conditions as of the end of August 2026. In South Africa, this is a downtime, except for the winter crop side.
In the Western Cape, the wheat crop has been under strain because of dryness. This map correctly identifies the crop as being in poor condition.
This has been a challenging time for the wheat farmers. Not only are they seeing a poor crop, but they also started the season with higher input costs due to the U.S.-Iran war and lower commodity prices at the time of planting because of the plentiful global wheat supplies.
For a typical wheat farmer, fertiliser accounts for around 35% of the input costs, with fuel accounting for around 13%. With these key inputs increasing sharply, farmers were under financial strain as the season began.
Consequently, the farmers reduced the area they planted for wheat. In the preliminary planting data from the Crop Estimates Committee (CEC), the early signal was that plantings would fall to their lowest level in nearly a hundred years, with an estimated 473 900 hectares.
But when the CEC released its updated planting estimate at the end of August, the planting figure was slightly raised to 479 500 hectares, the lowest area in 13 years.
That said, the decline in plantings indicates challenges in the domestic wheat industry. Annually, plantings are down 7% from the previous season.
The decline in plantings is mainly in the Western Cape, a province that accounts for two-thirds of South Africa’s wheat area plantings.
Notably, the wheat plantings in the Western Cape, the major producing province, are rainfed. Thus, the drier weather conditions have weighed notably on the crop.
For this reason, it was unsurprising when the CEC placed its first South Africa 2026-27 winter wheat production estimate at 1.8 million tonnes. This is down 8% from the previous season and is the lowest expected harvest in eight years. This is a challenging year for South African winter wheat farmers.
-Wandile Sihlobo is the Chief Economist of the Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa (Agbiz)
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