Collaboration across farms and industries needed to survive mounting challenges

Stakeholders across the agriculture sector need to get used to sharing data and collaborating if they are to solve two of the biggest challenges facing the sector: biosecurity and pest control.

- Lindi Botha

Farmers and agricultural companies alike are reluctant to share data about their businesses.

Yet, without a collaborative mindset, they will be unable to solve the most pressing challenges facing food production. This was the key message at this year's Potatoes South Africa (Potatoes SA) Innovation Symposium, which took place in July in Pretoria, Gauteng.

Murray Thompson, chairperson of Potatoes SA, noted that innovation is likely to come from two main sources: formal scientific research, and practical experience of farmers and agronomists. For the industry to flourish, all parties needed to share their knowledge to speed up the rate of learning and problem-solving.

EFFECTS OF CONSOLIDATION

He painted a stark picture of the current agricultural landscape, in which consolidation meant that solutions were fewer, and issues on one farm more likely to lead to national food security issues.

"The agriculture sector, and the potato industry in particular, continues to consolidate from thousands of individual farmers to fewer, larger agricultural enterprises. Farming methods have homogenised through the inevitable optimisation that comes from bigger professionally and scientifically focused farming methodologies.

"This has, however, meant that should one producer experience a problem that affects yield, it impacts a much wider planted area and a far larger percentage of national production. If more hectares planted have the exact same chemical programme, planting time or technique, and are affected by a pest or weather event, it will negatively affect the crop on a much larger scale than when there was more diversity of ideas from many more individual farmers making very different decisions.”