One of those reports pertained to Canada and its wheat production. Written by the USDA attaché in Ottawa, the report stated drought could be a major concern for 2024/25 across the Prairies, citing low snowfall this winter and a lack of soil moisture following the 2023/24 harvest. The attaché added that grasshoppers are set to be an issue for Alberta and Saskatchewan this coming growing season.

Meanwhile, the Ottawa desk pegged the 2023/24 Canadian wheat harvest at 31.95 million tonnes, down from 34.34 million the year before. Exports for this year were forecast at 23.30 million tonnes, short of the 25.60 million in 2022/23. The attaché pegged ending stocks for 2023/24 are expected to dip to 3.54 million tonnes compared to the 3.66 million last year.

In comparison with data compiled by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, 2023/24 production was slotted at 31.95 million tonnes, exports of 23.20 million, and a carryover of 3.95 million.

The USDA attaché in Beijing projected China’s 2023/24 corn crop to grow by 4.2 per cent at 288.84 million tonnes due to heavy rains during the summer. Corn imports were forecast to increase to 20 million tonnes in 2023/24 from last year’s 18.71 million. The Beijing desk noted that Brazil, with 10 million tonnes, surpassed the United States in 2023/24 as China’s top source of imported corn.

China’s corn for feed and residual was nudged up from 220 million tonnes in 2022/23 to 223 million. The carryover is to increase to 206.85 million tonnes from 203.03 million.

For Mexico, it’s 2023/24 corn crop faced unfavourable weather, reduced planted area, and smaller than expected yields. The attaché in Mexico City placed the harvest at 25.5 million tonnes compared to the 28.08 million in 2022/23. Corn imports were to bump up from 19.36 million tonnes to 19.60 million. Ending stocks were projected to fall from 4.5 million tonnes in 2022/23 to 2.80 million this year.

The 2023/24 corn crop in South Africa won’t be as large as the previous year’s harvest of 17.06 million tonnes, according to the USDA attaché in Pretoria. The attaché estimated this year’s crop at 15.80 million tonnes, citing rain-delayed planting in some regions of South Africa, with dryness in the North West province. That’s to see exports contract from 3.80 million tonnes in 2022/23 to three million in 2023/24. However, total consumption was projected to rise from 12.75 million tonnes to 13.10 million. In the end, the Pretoria desk set the carryout to decline from 19.01 million tonnes to 18.26 million.

In Kuala Lumpur, the USDA attaché in Malaysia said that country’s palm oil production is to increase from 18.40 million tonnes in 2022/23 to 19 million this year. The attaché pointed to Malaysia being less affected by the El Nino than anticipated, reduced labour challenges, and less replanting of palm trees. Exports were set to climb from 15.36 million tonnes last year to 16.60 million this year. That’s to lead to ending stocks falling from 2.33 million tonnes in 2023/24 to 1.65 million this year.

— Glen Hallick reports for MarketsFarm from Winnipeg. 

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David Roberts, a clinical veterinarian at the South African Foundation For The Conservation Of Coastal Birds, said at least 28 out of around 3,000 penguins in the colony had died from the disease since the middle of August.

“We have confirmed avian influenza in 14 African penguins since the middle of August,” Roberts said, adding that at least another 14 penguins were also affected but not tested for the virus.

“This is a continuation of the outbreak that happened last year and it affects several different species of sea birds and at the moment we are quite concerned because the numbers of penguins that are being affected and dying from the disease is going up,” Roberts added.

South African environmental authorities said on Sept. 16 that the strain of highly pathogenic avian influenza was similar to that detected last year among a range of wild seabirds, including Cape cormorants and common terns.

Roberts said scientists were monitoring the situation because it was not clear how the outbreak would evolve.

“Because the virus is contagious between birds, we’re doing everything that we can to reduce the viral load and transmission rate between the penguins,” Alison Kock, marine biologist at South African National Parks, told Reuters.

To identify and remove sick birds from the colony, South African scientists perform tests or diagnose penguins on their symptoms, Roberts said. Sick and dead birds are then euthanized and cremated in attempt to reduce the spread of the disease.

“There is almost no risk to people from the virus but we do ask people to make sure that when they visit the colony that they disinfect their shoes because it is transmissible between different seabird colonies and also poultry farms,” Kock said.

— Reporting for Reuters by Esa Alexander; writing by Anait Miridzhanian.

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However, it will be far less than the USDA’s current estimate of 17.3 million tonnes.

Nevertheless, if the attaché’s forecast were to hold, it would be an increase of nearly 1.7 per cent compared to the previous year and mark the fourth consecutive year of South Africa producing more than 15 million tonnes of corn.

USDA ranks South Africa among the world’s top corn producers, roughly on par with Russia.

The attaché projected planted area in South Africa to remain relatively steady at 6.4 million acres as high crop input costs, such as fertilizer, have deterred farmers from expanding their corn.

An increase in soybean acres, at about 2.3 million, has also impeded corn planting. Soybeans are projected to account for 20 per cent of the country’s summer rainfall field crops, up five-fold in the last 20 years.

While soybeans have cut into corn acres in South Africa over that time, the attaché pointed out corn yields have doubled over the same 20-year period. The report chalked that up to the use of genetically engineered seed, more precise farming techniques and more reduced/zero-tillage methods.

Corn exports are expected to increase as well, from 2.2 million tonnes in 2021-22 to 2.5 million in 2022-23. That said, exports will still be notably lower than the 3.7 million tonnes shipped overseas in 2020-21. Among South Africa’s top customers are Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, South Korea and Botswana.

The attaché projected 2022-23 ending stocks at 1.57 million tonnes, down sharply from USDA’s call of 2.68 million. That’s due to smaller beginning stocks and reduced production.

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Lawmakers debated whether to change Section 25 of the constitution to enable authorities to seize land to address racial land inequalities left over from colonialism and white minority rule.

Redressing them has been a flagship promise of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) but little progress has been made on it nearly three decades since the end of apartheid.

“Today we stand to complete the fight against the original sin of land dispossession,” the amendment’s main champion, Justice Minister Roland Lamola, said in a speech in parliament.

He said the state was targeting land only under special conditions such as it having longtime informal occupants, being unused and held purely for speculation, or being abandoned.

But it was rejected by the ANC’s opponents on both sides of the spectrum. The main opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) and right-wing Freedom Front Plus view the plan as an assault on property rights, while the radical Marxist EFF — which also voted against — wants the state to take control of the land.

In all, 204 lawmakers backed the amendment and 145 voted against, with no abstentions.

In the early 20th century, South Africa’s British imperial rulers gave the lion’s share of farmland to whites, mostly to the Afrikaners, descendants of generations of Dutch settlers who make up most white farmers today.

They left just seven per cent for “natives,” meaning Blacks, aboriginal Khoisan and “coloureds” — Afrikaans-speaking South Africans of mixed multiracial heritage.

Then in 1950, the Afrikaner National Party passed a law limiting movements of non-whites, kicking 3.5 million Blacks off their ancestral homelands and putting them in townships.

Twenty seven years of Black majority rule has barely shifted this apartheid geography, despite Nelson Mandela’s pledge after taking power in 1994 to return 30 per cent of land in five years.

“This bill…does nothing to help landless South Africans who have been let down by the ANC’s failing land reform,” the DA’s land committee chairperson Annelie Lotriet said.

Nearly 26 million hectares — three quarters — of privately-owned land is still in the hands of whites, who make up less than a 10th of the population of 58 million, while only four per cent is owned by Blacks who are nearly 80 per cent, government data shows.

The government has tried to persuade whites to sell their land under a ‘willing buyer, willing seller’ policy, but found hardly any willing sellers. A 2016 parliamentary study found the programme had transferred just 5.46 per cent of farmland to Black individuals, trusts and state institutions in two decades.

— Tim Cocks is a Reuters correspondent for southern Africa in Johannesburg.

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The killing of Brendan Horner, a white man whose body was found tied to a pole at his farm in Free State province, sparked riots at the start of this month, and prompted President Cyril Ramaphosa to appeal to South Africans to “resist attempts … to mobilize communities along racial lines.”

The farmers outside the courthouse in the town of Senekal accused the government of failing to protect them from violent crime. Their opponents, from the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), complained about what they see as the continued domination of South Africa’s economy by whites, while many Black South Africans remain as poor as they did under apartheid.

EFF leader Julius Malema sat inside the courtroom in which the two murder suspects filed a request for bail during Friday’s hearing. The judge adjourned the case until Oct. 20.

Afterwards, Malema told a rally of thousands, “don’t be confused by the so-called farm murders,” adding that many more Black South Africans were victims of violent crime.

“Those are the ones who deserve our sympathy, not the old, white racists. We don’t want to kill (the) white man. We want equality.”

EFF supporter Khaya Langile, from Soweto, said, “I’m here because of white people … taking advantage of us.”

Tired of murders

Earlier, police separated the two groups with razor wire in one street, but despite the noisy standoff there was no violence.

“There have been indications of tensions but by and large all of them took a decision that they did not want to see violence,” State Security minister Ayanda Dlodlo said outside the court.

The farmers mostly wore khaki shirts and shorts, a few wore military outfits, and at least one was armed. A group on motorbikes sporting long beards drove through Senekal, some waving flags emblazoned with crosses.

“We are getting tired now of all the farm murders,” said Geoffrey Marais, 30, a white livestock trader from Delmas, where a woman was strangled to death two weeks ago.

“Enough is enough. They (the government) must start to prioritize these crimes.”

Murders of white farmers make up a small fraction of the total in South Africa, which has the world’s fifth highest murder rate. In the 2019-20 financial year there were 21,325 murders across the country, of which 49 were white farmers, according to police statistics.

The farmers also feel threatened by a government plan to expropriate white-owned land without compensation as part of an effort to redress economic inequalities that remain stark a quarter of a century after the end of apartheid.

Roughly 70 per cent of privately-owned farmland in South Africa is owned by whites, who make up less than nine per cent of the country’s population of 58 million.

— Tim Cocks is a Reuters southern Africa correspondent based in Johannesburg.

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“The storm system for the most part moved further to the north — more to South Dakota, and missed a lot of key areas in Nebraska,” said Don Roose, president of Iowa-based U.S. Commodities.

The slow-moving storm is set to bring heavy, wet snow, with the heaviest accumulations in western Minnesota and southeast South Dakota.

Lacklustre cash cattle trade added to bearish sentiment. Cash cattle sold in Texas and Kansas at $124 per hundredweight, about steady with last week, traders said (all figures US$).

“Bigger numbers (of cattle) are going to come at us … and it feels like we have a seasonal top in the cash,” Roose said.

Benchmark CME June live cattle futures fell 0.4 cent to close at 119.95 cents/lb. while front-month April settled down 0.025 cent at 125.875 cents.

April feeder cattle futures settled down 0.975 cent at 145.175 cents/lb. and May feeders fell 0.950 cent at 149.225.

Lean hog futures closed higher, bouncing back from limit declines the previous session as news that African swine fever emerged in South Africa sparked a fresh round of buying.

The incurable hog disease has spread across China since last year, causing major losses to the world’s largest hog herd and raising expectations of a pick-up in U.S. pork exports.

“The big news was the swine fever announced in South Africa,” said Jeff French, analyst with Top Third Ag Marketing. “It jumped a continent,” he said.

However, traders also noted that the U.S. pork industry on Wednesday canceled its annual June convention, the World Pork Expo, over concerns that international attendees could bring in the disease.

“If you are a hog producer, you have to have puts in place, in case the swine fever is found in North America,” French said, adding that if the disease ever reached the U.S., “We would just be limit-down for a while because immediately, all of our trading partners would stop buying our pork.”

Most-active CME June lean hog futures settled up 1.3 cents on Wednesday at 96.45 cents/lb. while front-month April hogs ended up 0.375 cent at 78.9 cents/lb.

— Julie Ingwersen is a Reuters commodities correspondent in Chicago.

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Now Serfontein sits on a 10-person board advising the president where to go next, based on what he says is his own experience of trying to help black farmers who do not own land.

Attempts to redistribute land from whites to blacks since the end of apartheid in 1994 have often failed and the ruling African National Congress (ANC) faces an election challenge next year from a far left party saying all land must be nationalized.

Ramaphosa has sought to reassure investors property rights will be protected and ANC officials have said South Africa will not follow the path of neighbouring Zimbabwe, where often violent farm seizures triggered economic collapse.

Yet the measures Serfontein has taken underline the scale of the challenges of rebalancing a sector in which the white population, about eight per cent, owns most of the country’s private land.

His Sernick Group focuses on large-scale cattle and beef production and has, since 2016, been acting as a financial intermediary for black farmers.

Sernick’s counterpart was not a commercial bank but a state institution set up specifically to support agriculture, the Land Bank. It was struggling to lend money to black would-be farmers because they did not have land to offer as collateral.

“I said, ‘if you can’t lend money to people without security, lend it to me,’” he told Reuters, outlining a model under which he then lent it on.

The program highlights a dependency that reflects disparities rooted in the colonial and apartheid past.

In 2016, the Land Bank lent 25 million rand (US$1.7 million) via Serfontein, in 2017, 50 million rand, and this year it will extend 100 million rand. Total loans by the Land Bank are currently over 40 billion rand, many of them to whites.

The Land Bank’s CEO TP Nchocho told Reuters that Serfontein’s approach was an “anchor farm model … You can leverage off the capabilities of the anchor farmer. And it provides the access to finance”.

Serfontein admits that his model is not a panacea but sees it as a stepping stone. “It’s not a long-term solution because you are not empowering the farmer,” he said.

Title deeds

More than 60 black farmers now borrow from Serfontein to buy calves that are raised on Sernick’s feedlots around the small town of Edenville, about 180 km (110 miles) south of the commercial capital, Johannesburg.

When their cattle are slaughtered, the farmers repay him and use any surplus to buy more cattle.

For the farmers involved, there are advantages and limits.

Solomon Mosoeu, 55, has been leasing 640 hectares from the government since 2011 and has grown his cattle herd from 36 to 160 with loans via Serfontein. He would like to diversify into crops, but cannot access the required finance because he does not own the farm.

“I would be happy if I had title deeds. I don’t have collateral. In farming there is nothing you can do without capital,” he said as his cattle bellowed in the background.

The Department of Rural Development did not respond to requests for comment. ANC officials say they are looking at all options, including ways to unlock value in communal tribal and state-owned land.

While parliament has opened the way to a change of the constitution to allow land to be expropriated without compensation, a final decision will not be made until after the elections next year.

The far-left Economic Freedom Party, the EFF, which draws much of its support from the rural poor, describes ANC reforms as window-dressing to entrench “white monopoly capital”.

Wandile Sihlobo, head of research at the Agricultural Business Chamber in South Africa and a member of the president’s advisory panel, said title deeds were essential.

“There has to be a consideration for title deeds so that people can borrow against their land,” he said. “Capital is the key to progress or increased production. Without capital we will not be able to see a notable success.”

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The divestment of the two global brands, a requirement imposed by South Africa’s Competition Commission on Sunday, will account for the bulk of asset sales worth about $2.5 billion which need to be made to satisfy competition regulators looking at the $66 million Monsanto deal, sources close to the matter have said (all figures US$).

“Bayer has agreed to these conditions and is evaluating how best to execute the imposed divestiture,” the German group said in its statement.

It would not comment on revenues, number of affected staff or the value of the assets.

While South Africa is a relatively small market for the two global agricultural supplies giants, the move marks the first time for Bayer to acknowledge it has to sell the two related Liberty brands, which compete with Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer and Roundup Ready seeds.

The planned divestitures are also widely expected to be required by competition regulators in larger jurisdictions, such as the U.S., where approval has been requested, and the European Union, where an application for approval has yet to be made.

“Bayer will continue working with regulators globally with a view to receiving approval of the proposed transaction by the end of 2017,” the company said, reaffirming an earlier goal.

LibertyLink seeds, mainly used by soy, cotton and canola growers, are an important alternative to Roundup Ready seeds for farmers suffering from weeds that have developed resistance to the Roundup herbicide, also known as glyphosate.

The spread of Roundup-resistant weeds in North America has been a major driver behind Liberty sales.

Monsanto, for its part, has responded by combining Roundup with older weed killer dicamba to finish off the Roundup-resistant weeds, while selling farm crops that withstand the plant-killing effects of both compounds.

As part of a global investment drive worth hundreds of millions of euros to double the global output capacity of Liberty since 2013, Bayer has built a production plant in Mobile, Alabama, to complement an existing facility in Frankfurt, Germany.

— Reporting for Reuters by Ludwig Burger in Frankfurt.

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Most of South Africa’s land remains in white hands and many commercial and small-scale farmers are currently facing tough times because of the worst drought in at least a century.

The bill, in the works since 2008, will enable the state to pay for land at a value determined by a government adjudicator and then expropriate it for the “public interest,” ending the willing-buyer, willing-seller approach to land reform.

Experts say it will not signal the kind of often violent land grabs that took place in neighbouring Zimbabwe, where white-owned farms were seized by the government for redistribution to landless blacks.

The ruling African National Congress (ANC) said the bill, criticized by some opposition parties and farming groups, would tackle injustices imposed during white-minority rule.

“The passing of the bill by parliament is historic and heralds a new era of intensified land distribution program to bring long-awaited justice to the dispossessed majority of South Africans,” the ANC said in a statement.

Some economists and farming groups have said the reform could hit investment and production at a time when South Africa is emerging from drought — pointing to the serious economic damage arising from farm seizures in Zimbabwe. They have also complained about a lack of clarity on how it will all work.

The ANC says land will only be expropriated after “just and equitable” compensation has been paid.

Around 20 million acres of land have been transferred to black owners since apartheid, equal to eight to 10 per cent of the land in white hands in 1994. The total is only a third of the 30 per cent targeted by the ANC.

The national assembly initially passed the bill in February before it was sent for amendments and it remains only for President Jacob Zuma to sign it into law.

— Reporting for Reuters by Joe Brock in Johannesburg.

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BRAZIL’S ECONOMY EXPECTED TO CONTRACT ONCE MORE — Brazil’s economy is expected to contract three per cent this year, according to the country’s Central Bank, which surpassed analyst’s expectations of 2.97 per cent.

The newest projections are the most negative the country has seen this year.

Brazil has seen two years of GDP decline, and the situation isn’t expected to improve into 2016, as analysts estimate a 1.22 per cent contraction in 2016.

BRAZIL FACING PENSION CRISIS — At the time of an economic downturn, Brazil is facing a pension crisis.

The average age of retirement in the country is 54, and some citizens have been working the system to collect multiple pensions.

INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND LIKELY TO LOAN MONEY TO IRAQ — The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is considering lending to Iraq in 2016 to help stabilize the country’s finances.

Iraq has been dealing with low oil prices and the Islamic State insurgency, an official from IMF said.

SOUTH AFRICA RELEASES MEDIUM-TERM BUDGET — South Africa released its budget on Wednesday, which disappointed many students within the country who called for more money to be put toward education.

The South African finance minister cut the outlook for the country’s economic growth from two per cent to 1.5 per cent.

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