The ‘zombie ideas’ that continue to distort the reality of South Africa’s agriculture

I have an opportunity to address members of the South African Parliament, mainly the portfolio committee responsible for agriculture, later today (2 September 2025). When I received the invitation to reflect on the sector’s operating conditions and the impact of geopolitics, I thought it would be a good opportunity first to highlight the changing structure of South Africa’s agriculture. 

However, as I prepared my notes over the weekend, I realised that there are some vital policy matters to address in my speech, and I can perhaps present the key points about the sector’s structure succinctly in this letter. 

The reason I am considering the structure of the sector is that I have seen, in several cases, pronouncements about South Africa’s agriculture that don’t accurately reflect its reality. 

Such instances remind me of the concept of “zombie ideas”, which was popularised by the Nobel laureate, economist Paul Krugman, which is also the title of his new book, Arguing with Zombies. 

This term refers to “ideas that keep being killed by evidence but shamble relentlessly forward, essentially because they suit a political agenda”.

We have many such “zombie ideas” in South Africa’s agriculture. This may seem petty, but some of the things I have heard, for example, are:

• South Africa has more or less 40,000 commercial farmers;
• Then there are more or less 2.5 million small-scale farmers; and
• A further 2.75 million people who perform some form of agricultural activity for home consumption or sale to the market.

These are all incorrect. 

My joint work with Professor Johann Kirsten of the Bureau for Economic Research has, over the years, endeavoured to reduce inaccuracies about land reform and the size and structure of the agricultural sector. Some of these efforts are evident in our chapter in the Oxford University Handbook of the South African Economy and our latest book, The Uncomfortable Truth about South Africa’s Agriculture, as well as in many newspaper columns. 

First, we need to deal with definitions:

• A commercial farmer is any individual, entity or household involved in agricultural production with the intention of selling to the market and therefore buys inputs to produce the commodity;
• Large farmer: Typically a farming enterprise that has an annual commercial turnover of R22.5-million or more;
• Medium-scale farmer: Commercial turnover of between R13.5-million and R22.5-million;
• Small and micro farms (commercial): Turnover below R13.5-million;
• Subsistence farmer/household: A household that produces mainly for home consumption, usually in addition to social grants and migrant wages. Virtually no commercial sales; and
• Household: There should be roughly four to six people per household.

Here’s the thing: The 2017 Census of Commercial Agriculture used the 40,102 farming enterprises registered for VAT as the sample frame. As we show later, not all commercial farmers are registered for VAT, since the threshold for VAT registration with the South African Revenue Service is currently R1-million in annual turnover.

Fact: The 40,000 figure only refers to VAT-registered farm enterprises. They are distributed according to the definitions as shown in the table below. About 46% of all commercial farms (the majority of which are white) registered for VAT are classified by Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) as micro-enterprises and family farms. 

Farm structure in South Africa, 2017

Source: Stats SA and Kirsten and Sihlobo, 2021

We are fortunate that Stats SA released the latest numbers on agricultural households on 31 July 2025, extracted from the 2022 Population Census. This makes for fascinating reading but also requires careful interpretation to avoid the same mistakes alluded to earlier.

The most crucial observation in the report can be summarised as follows:

• Households producing only for sale (commercial farmers): 106,753;
• Households producing mainly for sale (also commercial): 177,530; and
• Households producing mainly for own consumption and households only for own consumption: 2.2 million (subsistence farmers, backyard gardeners and livestock keepers with few chickens and other animals).

Stats SA also makes it clear that Black Africans account for a large share of households engaged in farming. I am not talking about shares of income or production here, but the number involved in farming. 

In summary, these data indicate that South Africa has 284,283 commercial farming households, as estimated from the agricultural questions in the 2022 population census. This number corresponds to the 254,956 farming households we reported in our chapter in the Oxford University Handbook of the South African Economy, which we estimated from the 2017 Agricultural Census and the 2016 community survey. 

So, we can now kill the “zombie ideas” in South Africa’s agriculture by remembering the following facts:

Fact 1: There are 284,283 commercial farming households in South Africa, of which only 40,000 are registered for VAT.

Fact 2: 98.5% of these households are classified as small and micro farm enterprises

Therefore, as we engage with agricultural matters, we must be cognisant that it is a sizeable sector, with many farmers who are commercialised. Importantly, the sector serves a large number of people. Therefore, policymaking in the sector must be rooted in reality, and we must avoid leaning on “zombie ideas”. DM