The survey, which covered animal and crop farming, forestry, and fisheries, aimed to measure the extent to which commercial agribusinesses in South Africa introduced new or improved products and business processes. Picture: Henk Kruger Independent Newspapers.
The Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) has found that more than two-thirds of South African agribusinesses implemented innovative activities during 2019 to 2021 despite the disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and other challenges.
The HSRC’s Agricultural Business Innovation Survey (2019–2021), released yesterday, showed that 63.6% of agribusinesses had process innovations, while 38.5% had product innovations.
The survey, which covered animal and crop farming, forestry, and fisheries, aimed to measure the extent to which commercial agribusinesses in South Africa introduced new or improved products and business processes.
According to the HSRC’s Dr Yasser Buchana, who led the survey, these results demonstrated that South African agricultural businesses have shown remarkable resilience in the face of adversity, adapting and innovating their way out of the crisis.
“While there is still room for improvement compared to other countries in the Global North, with the right innovation ecosystem, supported by progressive sectoral innovation policies, our agricultural sector has the potential to withstand shocks and remain competitive, which is crucial for our country’s food security,” Buchana said.
Moreover, the survey results also showed that agribusinesses with innovations employed more people. They also expanded their market reach and developed their intellectual property more so than those without innovations.
The key findings of the survey included that medium and large agribusinesses had the highest innovation activity rates.
The highest percentage of businesses engaging in innovative activities (72.9%) was observed among medium-sized agribusinesses, closely followed by large agribusinesses (70.8%). Small agribusinesses reported an innovation activity rate of 66.4%, while 57.2% of very small agribusinesses were classified as innovation-active.
Innovation-active agribusinesses were adopting advanced information and communication technologies (ICTs). The most prevalent advanced ICTs adopted by agribusinesses were precision agriculture, air and soil sensors, and smart plant and animal breeding, with approximately 40% of all innovation-active agribusinesses utilising or implementing these technologies.
Moreover, over 50% of innovation-active businesses engaged in cereal and fruit production adopted precision agricultural technologies, while a significant number of innovation-active businesses in livestock production adopted precision.
In the animal and crop farming sub-sector, approximately 22.7% of agribusinesses rated the importance of increased revenue resulting from innovations as “high”.
However, businesses in the forestry sub-sector faced significant challenges related to labour shortages, with 87.6% of forestry businesses rating the lack of access to labour as a highly important factor impeding innovation.
Access to ICT was rated a highly important barrier for approximately 15% of businesses in animal and crop farming, and for 17.9% of forestry businesses.
Meanwhile, agricultural organisation AgriSA said that pricing was only part of improving water use efficiency in South Africa.
Recently, the minister of water and sanitation published a Revised Pricing Strategy for Raw Water Use Charges. The revised pricing strategy will replace the existing 2007 strategy in 2026 when water management institutions will have to begin implementing it.
The broad overall objective of the pricing strategy was to promote effective and efficient management of water to support equitable and sustainable economic growth and social development in line with the overarching goals of the 2023 National Water Resource Strategy (NWRS).