On 28 December 2025 we drove across the various regions of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), which offered an opportunity to view agricultural conditions from a distance.
Like most regions of South Africa, the vegetation and grazing veld look green and lush. This helps the livestock industry, and KZN is one of South Africa’s central dairy-producing provinces, which also has a substantial number of livestock among subsistence farmers.
The better grazing veld will help a great deal. For dairy and beef producers, this comes at a time when feed prices are more affordable, with yellow maize prices generally 30% lower than a year ago because of South Africa’s ample harvest in the 2024-25 season. We had the second-largest maize harvest on record in South Africa in the 2024-25 season, at about 16.44 million tonnes, up 28% year on year, driven by favourable rains.
The soybean prices, which are also another vital feed, especially for those in poultry production, are down by roughly 26% from a year ago, also because of a large domestic harvest. South Africa had a record soybean harvest in the 2024-25 season, about 2.77 million tonnes.
Of course, this glimpse of positivity doesn’t begin to mask the significant challenge faced by cattle farmers in KZN, and much of South Africa: foot-and-mouth disease. The challenge is particularly acute in the dairy sector, especially in the Midlands region of KwaZulu-Natal.
The central issue on farmers’ minds in the region is the availability of vaccines and the speed at which they can be delivered. This is an area on which the leadership at the Department of Agriculture must continue to focus. The priority should be on making sure we have access to vaccines, not just from Botswana, but also from other sources such as Turkey.
Beyond vaccine imports, the point I made previously about South Africa rejuvenating its foot-and-mouth vaccine production capability remains vital. This should not just be state-owned entities, the Agricultural Research Council and Onderstepoort Biological Products (OBP), but also private entities that have the capacity. We need to vaccinate a herd of roughly 12.1 million cattle in this country several times.
Back to KZN, in terms of crop farming, the province, like the rest of South Africa, received excessive rainfall across various regions. Still, farmers have managed to plant, and the crops look promising across multiple areas, mainly maize, soybeans, and sugarcane. Of course, the horticulture fields look great as well.
Rains broadly beneficial
In the households we saw across various villages, people’s gardens looked great, and it appears the rains have been broadly beneficial.
Of course, we will have a clearer sense of the area in which farmers planted summer grains and oilseeds for the 2025-26 season in February 2026, when the Crop Estimates Committee releases the data. But from what we continue to observe, the agricultural activity looks promising.
The La Niña rains have delayed plantings in other regions of the country. Still, I generally remain hopeful that farmers will continue to use the windows of warm weather to advance plantings in areas that haven’t yet planted. We have until mid-January 2026 to push planting.
Indeed, January is not an ideal time, and it is later than usual. But we have had late plantings before and still managed to grow a good crop. In fact, the very excellent harvest of the 2024-25 season in maize and soybeans was roughly a month and a half behind its typical schedule.
Therefore, I am not concerned for now and remain upbeat that we could still have a better harvest in the 2025-26 season. What I saw in the various regions of KZN gives some comfort. But vaccination for the cattle industry is critically needed. DM
Wandile Sihlobo is the chief economist of the Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa. He is also a senior Research Fellow at the Department of Agricultural Economics at Stellenbosch University.