We are heading into another long weekend in South Africa, and the first quarter of 2026 is already behind us.
On paper, grain farmers have reason for cautious optimism — a solid harvest is expected this season, supported by the strong prices achieved last year.Yet the outlook is clouded by deep uncertainty and relentless pressure. Farmers are bombarded daily with negative, sensational headlines from mainstream media, while the real threats on the ground continue to mount. Input costs are extremely high and forecasts show they will climb even further in the coming season.Input costs are crushing margins.
Fertiliser typically accounts for 30–50% of grain production costs in South Africa, with over 80% imported. Diesel makes up another 13–15% and is critical for planting, harvesting and transport. The ongoing Middle East conflict has already pushed both fertiliser and diesel prices higher, creating one of the biggest cost shocks producers have faced in years.
Many farmers now need to harvest an extra 1 tonne per hectare just to cover overheads. At a time when farmers are fighting for survival, input suppliers and government entities continue to protect or even increase their margins. This is unacceptable. Companies in the input supply chain must urgently cut both their operating costs and profit margins. Continued greed will only push more farmers out of business.
Any genuine farmer who has been in the industry since the 1980s will tell you how dramatically things have changed. Back then, farming was about practical knowledge, soil, weather and hard work. Today it is dominated by AI, endless compliance, mountains of red tape, and ever-rising costs. The spirit of farming is being strangled by bureaucracy and financial pressure
Eskom remains a glaring symbol of inequality. While management teams and staff continue to receive good salaries and benefits, the ordinary South African on the street is battling to pay electricity bills. The unfair reality is that only a small number of honest payers are effectively subsidising the many who use electricity without contributing. Municipal debt to Eskom has ballooned beyond R110 billion, yet the utility’s leadership appears shielded from the consequences ordinary citizens face daily.
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This cannot continue. Eskom’s financial crisis, rooted in poor governance, non-payment culture and inefficiency, is dragging down the entire economy — especially agriculture, which is highly energy-intensive.
South Africa, by comparison, burdens its producers with higher regulatory and energy costs while offering far less policy certainty.It is high time we seriously rethink the way we produce food in this country. We cannot keep squeezing farmers between rising input costs, unreliable and expensive electricity, and a mountain of compliance while expecting them to feed the nation and drive rural economies.Farmers are not asking for handouts — they are asking for fairness, predictability and an environment where hard work and smart decisions are still rewarded.
If government, input suppliers and Eskom do not start playing their part, we risk losing an entire generation of commercial farmers.The greed and short-sightedness must stop. South African agriculture deserves better.
About 80% of the price of a loaf of bread is made up of the costs of the retailer, the miller, and the baker. The farmer’s share for the wheat used to produce that loaf is less than 20%. Currently, it stands at around 18%.The remaining 80% of the bread price is largely driven by energy costs, especially electricity used by bakers to power their ovens, as well as the cost of plastic packaging. Any increase in fuel and electricity prices therefore has a major impact on the final price of bread.Recent sharp rises in diesel and petrol prices, combined with an 8.76% increase in electricity tariffs from 1 April 2026 (and a further 9.01% for municipal customers from July), will push bread prices higher in the coming months.Farmers, however, remain price takers. Despite rising input costs such as fertiliser and diesel, they have very little ability to pass these increases on to the market.
The government and their followers seem to think that the ordinary man in the street is too stupid to realise what they are doing. They are destroying us with these excessively high fuel prices, and they expect us not to notice. Fuel prices in South Africa are excessively high and completely unsustainable. The government is raking in billions in fuel taxes while slowly strangling the economy.
Fuel is the single biggest driver of inflation. Every time the price at the pump rises, the cost of food, transport and almost every product in the country increases. Yet when international oil prices fall, South African consumers hardly ever benefit from lower pump prices. The government and fuel companies simply protect their profits.This greedy approach is destroying businesses, making farming unprofitable, and pushing ordinary citizens deeper into financial hardship. It is time for government to stop treating fuel as an unlimited source of revenue and start putting the people and the economy first.
It is time we start noticing the lavish lifestyles and exorbitant salaries of company executives who are making millions out of ordinary consumers and farmers. Meanwhile, millions of South Africans are working simply to put food on the table. We see far too many incompetent people in workplaces earning huge salaries purely because of political connections and other non-merit factors. It is long overdue that we stop treating these individuals with kid gloves. This culture of political deployment and mediocrity must end.
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