Abstracts

30 greater diversity with shorter growing periods (Masipa, 2017). South Africa and Food South Africa ranks third in the world in terms of amount of agricultural land as a percentage of total land area, at 79.8% (World Bank, 2019). Agricultural land is land that currently is used for farming, to include grazing, and arable land is any land that is capable of growing crops. South Africa is known for its corn, wheat, sugarcane, fruits, and vegetable crops. The nation’s high percentage of agricultural land allows the country the capacity to also raise large amounts of livestock, producing beef, poultry, wool, and dairy products (US Central Intelligence Agency, 2018). However, due to its climate, only 12% of South Africa’s land is suitable for the production of rain-fed crops, with only 3% of that land considered truly fertile (Goldblatt, n.d.). Agriculture makes up about 5% of South Africa’s total labor force, down from nearly 19% in 1995, which is indicative of the nation’s shift from an agrarian-based economy to a service-based economy (Roser, 2020). However, the role of agriculture varies by province, with 37% of households in Limpopo engaged in agricultural activity compared to 2.5% in the Western Cape ( Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development, n.d.). South Africa ranks below average worldwide in terms of agricultural total factor productivity (TFP) growth as of 2015 (US Department of Agriculture, 2019). 1 South Africa recently has tended to support large corporate agribusiness, including a drive to adopt genetically modified (GM) organisms, which has led to a decline in food quality standards and in the economic viability of small-scale farmers. One of the country’s “spectacular failures” in this effort involved an attempt by Monsanto to persuade small- scale farmers in KwaZulu-Natal to plant the 1 Agricultural TFP indicates “how efficiently agricultural land, labor, capital and materials (agricultural inputs) are used to produce a country’s crops and livestock (agricultural outputs)” ( Agriculture Total Factor Productivity, 2019). Therefore, when more output is produced from the same quantity of resources, those resources are used more efficiently, and TFP increases. company’s GM cotton seed (Fig, 2018). Within a few years, “the farmers found themselves deeply in debt and the GM cotton project was abandoned.” In another instance involving Monsanto, the corporation’s Massive Food Production Programme provided Eastern Cape small-scale farmers with Monsanto GM hybrid corn seed. Traditional farming practices were replaced by mechanical tilling and increased production of maize. Five years later, the program had “swallowed R570 million in state funds” while “productivity hardly improved” (Fig, 2018). Clearly such industrial-scale efforts have failed to resolve South Africa’s TFP needs. Climate Change in South Africa In 2012, the South Africa DEA published a report that analyzed the nation’s past climate data between 1960 and 2012, and projected other important data for the future. The report noted that mean annual temperatures in South Africa have increased by approximately double the observed global average of 0.7°C for the same period, as reported by the fourth UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. Increases in hot extremes and decreases in cold extremes along with an increase in rainfall intensity were observed. Although annual rainfall has not changed dramatically, an overall reduction in rainy days has correlated with an increase in the intensity of rainfall events and a longer duration of dry spells. Looking forward, the report postulated four possible scenarios: warmer and wetter, warmer and drier, hotter and wetter, and hotter and drier. The projections were modified by the possibility of international mitigation strategies, with the effect of strong mitigation implementation increasing the likelihood of the warm scenarios as compared to the hot scenarios. In fact, the report found that “the risk of extreme rainfall changes, both increases and decreases, could be largely eliminated by an aggressive global emissions reduction pathway by 2050” (DEA, 2012). By the same token, “under high emissions scenarios there is a strong indication of considerable risk of significant drying and strong warming scenarios for South Africa by the end of this century,” with possible warming increasing by as much as 5°C to 8°C (DEA, 2012).