Farming smarter using conservation methods makes sound economic sense

Wheat farmer Abri Richter joined an underground revolution 20 years ago. By practising soil conservation — one of the cornerstones of “conservation agriculture” — he has made barren land produce golden harvests on a farm near Piketberg, inland from the Western Cape's west coast.

“This place used to be like the moon. The soil was clods or powder, and when you walked through it you couldn’t see until the dust settled,” says Richter. Crouching in a field, he sifts fertile soil through his fingers, pointing out tiny clover seeds that enrich it.

The rise of conservation agriculture in South Africa has revolutionised commercial farming. About a quarter of the country’s arable land is being farmed this way, says Hendrik Smith, who has researched regenerative conservation agriculture for 30 years.

“South Africa is about 10th in the world and the highest in Africa,” says Smith.

Farmers who have adopted these techniques — learning about them on YouTube, social media and sharing tips in study groups — get better yields over time. Conventional tillage [delivers] a couple of years of profit, but, after the soil is degraded, the overheads are higher and profits crash.”

Conservation agriculture benefits not only farmers but also South Africa’s food security, human and animal health, and the environment.

Wandile Sihlobo, chief economist of the Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa, says a lot of conservation agriculture is being done with grains. “We are producing food in a much more climate-friendly way by applying fertiliser and agrochemicals more smartly and efficiently, more fallow land planting and no-till farming.”

And the reason is not because farmers are tree-huggers. “It’s an economic question,” says Sihlobo, who is also a senior lecturer extraordinary at Stellenbosch University’s department of agricultural economics.

Smith, a conservation agriculture (CA) trial facilitator at research & development platform ASSET Research, says their results have shown the benefits to crop production.

CA scientist Johann Strauss — who is based at the Western Cape department of agriculture — gives an example of the effect, citing a 28-year trial in the province.

“The first drought after the trial started was in 2003, and the average yield for wheat was about 500kg a hectare. We had even less rain in 2015, 2017 and 2019, but we harvested on average 2,1 to 2,4 tonnes a hectare more,” he says.

By protecting and restoring the soil structure and ecosystems, this type of farming retains more water below the surface and sequesters more carbon, benefiting crops and the planet. Traditional farming, which overlaps with agroecology, has long included elements germane to it, such as water conservation, rotational grazing and animal manures and compost to feed crops.

“The efforts of our farmers have enabled us to be food secure at a national level, but at a household level there are more than 6-million South Africans who are food insecure ... [though] our food is among the most affordable in the world,” says Sihlobo.

This production year, South Africa’s summer rainfall area “is in recovery after good summer rains”, up about 16% from last year, he says, sharing the optimism he experienced at the recent Nampo Harvest Day. This is Southern Africa’s biggest agricultural show, held in the Free State, where President Cyril Ramaphosa dropped in.

Last winter, wheat farmers got more rain than they wanted and it was tough, Sihlobo says. “The wheat harvest declined by about 7% and too much rain compromised the yield in the Swartland [in the Western Cape].”

South Africa imports about half the wheat it consumes and exports about 15% of its maize. The maize yield fell in 2024 by 21% because of a regional drought that also ravaged crops in neighbouring countries, triggering food shortages. In Zimbabwe, for example, it fell by 60%. “These countries are way more exposed to climate shocks,” says Sihlobo.

This year, maize farmers faced an unexpected challenge by April — they needed the sun to shine and the rain to stop because prolonged, excessive rains in parts of the Free State were making it more difficult to harvest.

“The intensity of the rain as well as how erratic the rains are, is changing over time [from about 2014] ... the maize and sunflower seasons have shifted almost a month later,” says Sihlobo.

Shifts in rainfall patterns, more intense rain, more hot days, higher temperatures and drought — all potentially influenced by climate change — are putting pressure on farmers across the world.

We are producing food in a much more climate-friendly way by applying fertiliser and agrochemicals more smartly and efficiently, more fallow land planting and no-till farming

—  Wandile Sihlobo, Agricultural Business Chamber of SA chief economist

Says University of Cape Town applied climatologist Peter Johnston: “For farmers the timing of crops is very important and it is being disrupted by unexpected weather.”

The price of luxury crops such as cocoa and coffee soared to record highs last year because of adverse weather and growing conditions in countries from Ivory Coast and Ghana to Brazil and Vietnam. While South Africa’s wine grapes harvest was good this year, its wine, grape, citrus and nut exports are likely to be hit by the US tariff fallout.

Nelson Mandela University retired professor Raymond Auerbach says KwaZulu-Natal and areas in the northeast and the Garden Route have had some of the wettest seasons on record recently, while the drier areas of the Eastern Cape have become drier. In a study in the Sarah Baartman and Amathole districts, he found that rainfall has declined more than 10% over 20 years, making rain-fed crops largely unviable.

Most of South Africa’s grain crops depend on rain, not irrigation. Johann Strauss, a sustainable crop scientist in conservation agriculture at the Western Cape agriculture department, says: “The Western Cape has had six of the driest starts to the [winter rainfall] season in the past 10 years, especially in the Swartland, and then two years in a row it has had huge rain events.”

Chris Richter (not a relative of Adri), a sixth-generation wheat farmer near Piketberg, says that his father has rainfall records dating back to the 1950s. “The rainfall is not going down. If anything, it is going up, and I hope climate change will not happen.”

He has adopted low-tillage methods and diversified his crops over decades. “We started to adapt our farming techniques to be more productive in the 1980s, before climate change,” he says.

In wheat-growing areas, consecutive days of high temperatures that dry out soil are more of a threat to farmers than too little rain —though the farmers are still hoping for solid winter rains to arrive. 

“We can’t do anything about climate change, but we can better our soils to combat climate change and we can maximise the wildlife of the soil,” says Adri Richter. “We do not remove anything from the soil and use sheep manure [for compost].”

Soil “takes time to recover from degradation like a drug addict”, but — like his Langvlei farm demonstrates — it can, he says.

“This is how the magic happens,” he says of a Piketberg-made no-till, fine-seed planter, which barely disturbs the soil compared to old machines. Like a giant spider, it unfurls pointed coiled legs, which stab the land and drop seeds and fertiliser into shallow furrows.

25% of the arable land in annual crop production is under conservation agriculture

The Western Cape’s SmartAgri Plan is a road map to support farmers in climate adaptation through research, technology transfer, advisory services and early warning systems for extreme weather, says Daniel Johnson, spokesperson for Ivan Meyer, the province's minister of agriculture, economic development & tourism.

“Yields are being stabilised and increased through ... technologies such as conservation agriculture; better cultivar choices to match the local conditions and seasonal weather forecasts; improved disease monitoring and control; and the use of innovative tools for greater efficiencies in irrigation water use,” he says.

According to Strauss, who also lectures at Elsenburg Agricultural Training Institute, conservation agriculture methods work well across scale, “from the biggest, no-till planters to hand-operated equipment”.

While South Africa’s commercial farmers are now working more “with nature than against it”, the use of pesticides and synthetic fertilisers is still widespread in conservation agriculture — unlike agroecology and organic farming, which eschews the use of chemicals and embraces traditional knowledge.

“Agroecology means understanding and mimicking the local ecology, which is diverse,” and sensible animal husbandry supports this system, says Auerbach, chair of the Network of Organic Agricultural Researchers in Africa.

“Using compost allows a diversity of soil microfauna, more nutrients and less pollution in the rivers,” he says. “Spraying agrochemicals on plants has affected human health negatively. Most of us have traces of glyphosate in our urine from the widespread use of the herbicide Roundup. This is a proven disrupter of endocrine systems.

“If you take a sledgehammer to fight nature, it will be an ongoing battle. But if you integrate pest and disease management, you are already halfway to the solution.”

Busisiwe Mgangxela from the Eastern Cape has proved how increasing biodiversity can be profitable on her 48ha farm at Hillview, near East London, where she is developing a food forest. From a long line of farmers, she cultivates indigenous grains (sorghum and millet) and fruit trees, mixed crops, medicinal plants and edible weeds, using companion planting, water harvesting and other methods of agroecology.

A former professional nurse and a supplier to school feeding programmes, she saw the need for nutrient-dense food. “Nursing taught me that primary prevention is the most important strategy in health,” she says.

In 2020, after she was allocated the abandoned Hillview Farm as a land reform beneficiary, she and her husband founded Bafo and Busi Organic Farming. The farm is growing despite struggles with illegal land occupations and other challenges.

Harsh weather conditions

“Changing weather patterns haven't affected my yields, but I have seen other farmers who are not using my method of farming suffer due to harsh weather conditions like heat, drought, constant rain and flooding,” Mgangxela says.

Organic farming produces healthier food with lower external inputs and uses less water, research across African countries and farming trials in the southern Cape shows, as Auerbach reported in his book Organic Food Systems: Meeting the Needs of Southern Africa (CABI 2020).

Western Cape organic farmer Nazeer Sonday is the convener of the Philippi Horticultural Area Food and Farming Campaign on the Cape Flats. Leafy crops flourish on the three-quarter hectare “experimental farming university” where Sonday and two full-time farmers test what works best.

The irrigated farm — which sells more than 20 crops, from carrots and sweet potatoes to leeks and marrows — is flourishing, and the campaign shares its lessons with a network of small-scale farmers in workshops and on WhatsApp groups.

“This winter the temperatures have swung between cold and hot,” Sonday says. “We prefer heirloom seeds [passed down through generations], which can adapt to different climatic conditions.”

Well known for his successful activism to protect the precious Cape Flats Aquifer, Sonday demonstrates a natural, plant-based water filtration system he has set up to purify brown water — which flows into a dam into which he one day hopes to put fish, whose emulsion can help fertilise the fields. Every step of the cycle supports the next.

Smith says industrial agriculture has had “a very negative effect on the environment”, noting that historically it contributed the most to greenhouse gasses and global warming until about 100 years ago, when fossil fuel emissions exceeded those of agriculture.

But this is changing and — as Auerbach explains — regenerative farmers can earn carbon credits for increasing the carbon content of their soils. “An agroecological system is putting carbon into the soil where it is useful and taking it out of the air where it is not useful,” he says.

Regenerative farming goes further towards sustainability than conservation farming by restoring ecosystems on the land — contrasting with the loss of biodiversity that accompanies industrial agriculture.

Looking ahead, Smith has this hope: “Now we have the opportunity to reverse this vicious cycle and turn it into a virtuous cycle, to sequester carbon and to transform agriculture into something more resilient and sustainable.”