I am sure many will agree that this has been an eventful year for the South African sugar industry, particularly from a trade perspective. A few months ago, hardly a week would go by without seeing stories of sugar imports threatening the local industry.
Between the end of the Canadian cherry season and the start of the Chilean season, at the beginning of October, there is a period of about two to three weeks when the UK market has no other cherry supplier than South Africa.
Cotton is mostly grown in monoculture and is a very pesticide-intensive crop. Although it is only grown on 2.5% of the world’s agricultural land, it consumes 16% of all the insecticides and 6,8% of all herbicides used worldwide.
In the 2018 year South African growers packed an all-time record of 16.4 million cartons of 17kgs each of grapefruit for export, end-of-season numbers from the Citrus Growers Association (CGA)show.
After the good weather conditions in the spring in Europe, the WAPA estimated the pear harvest at 2.3 million tons. After the long hot summer, those figures have been adjusted slightly downwards. In the US, a good harvest is expected and Australia also wants to showcase its qualities to the world market.
According to the report World – Oranges – Market Analysis, Forecast, Size, Trends and Insights, recently published by IndexBox, global orange consumption reached 75 million tons in 2017, going up by 2% against the previous year (2016).
