This year, the maize harvest process will be slower than usual in South Africa

• 08 May 2025
• 0 Comments
• Agbiz
• Wandile Sihlobo

We have completed the 2024-25 marketing year for maize in South Africa, which ended in April. We are now at the start of the 2025-26 marketing year. This new marketing year corresponds with the 2024-25 production season.

The new 2025-26 marketing year starts with much-needed sunshine after weeks of heavy rains. Fortunately, the weather forecasts through the end of the month remain encouraging, showing clear skies over the summer cop growing regions of South Africa.

May 23, however, could bring light showers to the country's southern regions. These may cover parts of the Eastern Cape, the southern regions of KwaZulu-Natal, Western Cape, and perhaps even certain areas of the Northern Cape (see the coloured parts of the South African map in the forecasts here).

Another key point worth highlighting about the start of the 2025-26 marketing year for maize is that if you doubted how late the beginning of the season was, you will now see from the volumes of maize the farmers are starting to deliver to the silos. For example, in the first week of May, the South African farmers delivered 66 633 tonnes of the new season maize to the commercial silos. This was the first delivery for the new season. If you compare this with the overall volume delivered in the first week of the previous season, the volumes are down 79%.

And yes, we had a poor crop in the 2023-24 production season (corresponding with the 2024-25 marketing year that ended in April 2025). But farmers planted relatively early in the typical period, and were mainly hit by the drought in February. Thus, the crop could be harvested on time last year.

We planted roughly a month behind schedule this season because of the late rains. And yes, when we finally received the rain, it helped – a lot; until it didn't (when we started to worry about the crop quality in April). The ideal path could have been for the rain to stop by the end of March so the crop could mature well.

At the moment, we continue to worry that some regions will likely have crop quality issues. We will follow farmers' views closely and listen to our friends at Grain South Africa to gauge the quality issues as the farmers continue to harvest.

Still, the main point remains: we are in a recovery season. South Africa's 2024-25 maize harvest is estimated at 14.66 million tonnes, up 14% year-on-year, primarily benefiting from expected annual yield improvements.

Importantly, these forecasts are well above South Africa's annual maize needs of about 11,8 million tonnes, which implies that South Africa will have a surplus and remain a net exporter of maize.

So, when you see lower "producer deliveries" data for maize and soybeans, don't read them as a signal for a worrying season or that we may have overstated the crop. These deliveries will mainly show that the season is late. As the weather remains favourable, we may see a volume pick-up as the field activity increases.

Still, I suspect the increase in activity may be in the last week of May or June. The farmers will be at the NAMPO festival next week, which means another quiet week in the grain and oilseed fields in South Africa.

I will also be at NAMPO sometime next week. And yes, my 'Talking Head" is in one of the Nation in Conversation Panel discussions – someone has to talk while others are working, keeping life interesting after all.

n  Wandile Sihlobo is the chief economist of the Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa

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