Biosecurity, trade disruptions and climate variability defined SA agriculture in 2025

During the Nedbank Agriculture Webinar on 28 January, Dr Tracy Davids delivered a comprehensive analysis of South African agriculture’s performance in 2025, revealing a sector that successfully navigated from crisis to recovery while confronting new challenges. As executive director of Commodity Markets and Foresight at the Bureau for Food and Agricultural Policy, her insights provided a crucial perspective on the industry’s resilience and emerging concerns.

By Maile Matsimela, Digital Editor at African Farming

Dr Davids began her analysis by emphasising the importance of historical context. “When we talk about 2025, we need to take one step back, looking at 2023 and 2024 as well, because during that period, agriculture was … I’m not going to say in trouble, but we experienced significant challenges,” she said.

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The numbers tell a sobering story. “We’ve seen a decrease in terms of growth. The contraction during that period [was] 4.8%, I believe, and 8% in 2024,” Dr Davids noted, highlighting the severity of the sector’s recent struggles. These contractions were particularly pronounced in export industries, where “we’ve seen declining production during that period and expansion and growth was very, very limited”.

The Three Defining Themes of 2025

Despite carrying forward some challenges from previous years, Dr Davids identified three big issues or events or themes for 2025 that defined the sector’s performance and trajectory:

Biosecurity: The Most Significant Emerging Challenge

“Perhaps most significant, what we see now is biosecurity,” Dr Davids said, highlighting this as the primary concern for the industry. The urgency of this issue cannot be overstated, as “that is becoming a real issue currently and will definitely have an impact on the Q4 growth results that we’re still waiting for [for] 2025”.

She was frank about the expected consequences: “That will have a negative impact on total growth for the year.” However, Dr Davids stressed that “the urgency … is really, really important going forward, in terms of animal production and then biosecurity, because it’s by far the biggest industry in South Africa”.

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The scope of this challenge extends across multiple protein sectors, “from poultry [and] pork to red meat production, so that is critically important for agricultural growth going forward”.

Global Trade Disruptions and Market Realignment

The second major challenge that shaped 2025 was the complex web of international trade dynamics that forced the agricultural sector into rapid strategic realignment. “And then we had the global trade challenges early last year with President Trump and import tariffs that [were] on a global scale,” Dr Davids explained, describing how these developments caught the industry largely off-guard.

The speed of policy changes created particular difficulties for agricultural exporters. “It was really, really quite a quick reaction, I think, from the US in terms of imposing tariffs, and we had very little time to react,” she noted. She said the impact was especially severe under specific trade agreements, where “we went from a zero import tariff to a 30% tariff” under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) provisions.

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Although South Africa’s direct exposure to US markets might seem limited, as we only export roughly 4% of our total produce to the US, the impact on the global stage was really significant. This forced the industry to “quickly try to move into new markets as well, into Europe and so forth, [and] that also had its challenges”.

The trade disruptions were compounded by persistent infrastructure constraints, particularly at the Port of Cape Town, which Dr Davids noted handles the majority of exports. These logistical bottlenecks created additional pressure on an already strained system trying to navigate new market relationships and changing trade dynamics.

Climate Variability and Extreme Weather Events

The third defining theme was the persistent challenge of climate variability across multiple regions and seasons. “And then the third one is climate. We’ve seen flooding, we’ve seen droughts,” said Dr Davids, highlighting the sector’s ongoing vulnerability to weather extremes.

The geographic spread of these climate impacts was particularly concerning. “It’s not just in one province. We’ve seen it in North West and we now see it in Limpopo,” she explained. The sector also faced a “drought in the winter grain production areas last year”, which added seasonal complexity to the already diverse weather-related challenges across different regions.