The Eastern Cape is one of the provinces that clearly typify SA’s triple challenge: high unemployment, low economic growth and poverty.
One of the sectors of the economy that can help us navigate this issue in the province and nationally is agriculture. And this is not a new insight.
During its publication in 2012, the National Development Plan made headlines for, among other things, stating the possibility of creating a million jobs in agriculture and its value chain.
Much time has passed since then, and agriculture has created some employment, though not to the level the plan envisaged.
The challenge is not that the estimate was far off from reality.
It was that as a country, we did not follow through on the various prerequisites outlined in Chapter Six of the plan for unlocking jobs in agriculture.
These included releasing government-owned land to beneficiaries, improving land governance in the former homelands, investing in refurbishing irrigation systems and broad investment in improving the network infrastructure in the farming towns.
Since then, the private sector has led the effort to sustain the farming towns, while municipal service delivery has dwindled.
The land governance and release of government land with title deeds to new beneficiaries have also not progressed at all.
The continuous private sector effort is essentially what sustains the 920,000 jobs in primary agriculture recorded in the third quarter of this year, up 2% from the previous quarter.
In the third quarter, quarterly improvements were registered in jobs in field crops, horticulture, forestry and the production of organic fertiliser.
In addition to the long-term investment, the increase in employment reflects the optimism generated by the abundant harvest in these subsectors, which we have highlighted on numerous occasions.
In the near term, the one subsector that remains under pressure is the livestock industry, mainly due to the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease.
Notably, the 920,000 jobs are far above the long-term average level of 799,000 jobs, signalling that while the sector faces challenges such as animal diseases, wage pressures in some industries and inept municipal service delivery the employment conditions remain at encouraging levels.
It is also fair to highlight that if one takes a step back and reflects on 2012, we then had just 718,000 jobs in primary agriculture.
Had we moved ahead as a country and implemented all key prerequisites for unlocking agricultural expansion, we probably would have had far more jobs than the 920,000 in the third quarter of this year.
From a regional perspective, the quarterly jobs data of 2025 shows that the Western Cape, Free State and Mpumalanga are the only provinces that registered job losses. Other provinces recorded mild quarterly job gains.
With that said, the Western Cape remains a major agricultural employer, accounting for 21% of South African agricultural jobs, followed by Limpopo (18%), KwaZulu-Natal (13%), Mpumalanga (12%), Eastern Cape (11%), Free State (8%), North West (8%), Northern Cape (5%), and Gauteng (4%).
Overall, my key takeaway from the jobs data of the third quarter of 2025 is that the favourable production conditions in horticulture and field crops continue to sustain healthy employment levels.
As we expect favourable agricultural conditions to continue in the 2025-26 season, such employment levels are likely to be sustained into 2026.
Still, the effects of the foot-and-mouth disease remain visible in the jobs data, and this could continue to be a challenge through to 2026.
From a long-term perspective, private sector investment has been the key driver sustaining these jobs.
There remains greater room for more jobs in the sector if the government moves ahead and releases the state-owned land of 2.5-million hectares to beneficiaries with title deeds, paired with blended finance, and in partnership with organised agriculture for skills development.
SA’s agriculture is not yet at its full capacity and could still create more jobs and grow.
There remains a potential for an increase in employment, also in the value chain of the sector.
The partnerships between the government and the private sector will be key in unlocking these possibilities, as initially envisaged in Chapter Six of the National Development Plan back in 2012.
∗ Wandile Sihlobo is the chief economist of the Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa (Agbiz)
