One way to gauge the potential food security impact of the looming “Super El Niño” is to look back at the drought of 2023/2024. This was the regional weather event that resulted in Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe declaring states of national disaster — yet South Africans barely talk about it, because the country was cushioned by carry-over maize stocks.
In global terms, Sub-Saharan Africa’s crop yields remain poor. South Africa, whose current three-year average maize yield of 6.28t/ha is 36% higher than a decade ago, is a notable outlier. Its performance reflects a combination of conventional, genetically modified organism (GMO) and hybrid seed cultivars, together with a broad embrace of agritech in soil nutrition, pest management and crop production. Its 2026 commercial maize crop is forecast to be the largest on record, potentially leaving about 3Mt available for export, including to countries in the region.
This invites an easy “GMO or not GMO?” debate. But many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa — with the exception of overtly anti-GMO Zambia and Zimbabwe — already use GM crops in some form.
The more important conceptual frontline lies in the role of commercial incentives in motivating farmers to produce and in sustaining investment in the productive capacity of national agricultural economies.
South Africa’s strong yields reflect those commercial incentives, underpinned by wide-ranging research & development programmes and innovations from companies and producers themselves.
There is also a steady shift in South Africa towards regenerative farming practices aimed at improving the sustainability of land use. This is being driven by new products and production approaches across the value chain, from seeds and fertilisers to crop-protection “biologicals” and other technologies.
The long-term benefits of regenerative farming championed by so-called anti-GMO activists are, in many respects, mirrored by the products and services of the agriscience giants. The distance between the two camps often appears to be rooted less in the desired agricultural outcome than in sharply contrasting views about privatised agricultural production, intellectual property and seed ownership. As testy as the confrontation can be, there should be scope for co-ordinated action around a shared objective: building a more productive and sustainable agricultural system.
The test ahead
The question is whether South Africa will retain its position as the anchor of regional food security over the coming decade. Demand-side factors, including export restrictions and maize price caps, will matter, as will the country’s long-running struggles with critical infrastructure and the unresolved complexities of land reform. Regulatory uncertainty may prove equally consequential.
Agricultural industry bodies argue that the structure and effectiveness of South Africa’s regulatory data protection (RDP) regime effectively provide only a few years of meaningful intellectual property protection for new seed varieties, fertilisers and crop-protection products. They argue that this is increasingly out of step with global trends and risks encouraging investors to direct long-term capital towards countries offering more attractive returns. Industry is thus pushing for changes to the RDP regime, and quickly.
The industry is also focused on the regulatory distinction between conventional GMO technologies, where new genetic material is inserted into a plant’s genome, and new breeding techniques, where targeted edits are made within an existing genome.
The industry is calling for South Africa to align itself with Argentina, Brazil, the US, Australia, Japan and Nigeria, where plants containing inserted DNA are treated as GMOs, while genome edits are regulated case-by-case. This distinction could significantly reduce the time and cost of bringing new products to market.
Opponents argue this would amount to greater privatisation of agriculture. Having rejected a 2021 case-by-case appeal board decision, the government has recently adopted a more accommodating, albeit cautious, tone, and faces the delicate task of balancing food security with the commercial incentives that sustain agricultural investment.
South Africa’s decisions in these areas will have a material impact on the performance of its agricultural economy. Speed and coherence may matter almost as much as the decisions themselves. Slow decision-making risks embedding uncertainty, eroding commercial incentives as greater investment and productivity are required.
The coming climate shocks will test more than South Africa’s ability to produce enough maize. They will test whether it can maintain the investment, innovation and productive capacity on which much of the region’s food security depends. That requires the government, industry and activists to move beyond their sharp-edged differences and focus on the common ground offered by regenerative farming and sustainable productivity.
White is head of the Porter Institute Africa Hub at Gibs. Miller is a strategy and communications consultant in Southern African agriculture
