Johann F. Kirsten

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Director at Stellenbosch University

The ecosystems in Southern Africa are impacted by economic activity and population growth and pressure. There are several macro-economic drivers shaping these economic and population pressures and it is for this reason that this chapter unpacks the macro-economic drivers in the region. With the economy of South Africa dominating the regional econom...

This paper is the first to provide estimates of how minimum wages affect worker flows and employment growth rates in an employment scarce developing country context. We investigate the effects of a large, exogenous increase in agricultural minimum wages in South Africa. We find that changes occurred primarily among non‐seasonal workers. Non‐seasona...

South African sheep farmers receive different prices for animals of different age, carcass form and fat level. Older animals trade at a substantive discount to the younger animals due to the perceived tenderness and juiciness of the younger animal. There is however a question whether the size of the discount is warranted given that certain cuts fro...

The agriculture value chain is a complex web of interactions which includes activities within the agricultural sector and various support industries less directly linked to the sector. Despite being declared an essential service when the COVID-19 regulations were promulgated and lockdown restrictions imposed, the value chain still faced multiple bo...

While South Africa shares some characteristics with other middle-income countries, it has a unique economic history with distinctive characteristics. South Africa is an economic powerhouse with a significant role not only at the southern African regional and continental levels, but also as a member of BRICS. However, the country faces profound deve...

In South Africa, Karoo Lamb is a prestigious product associated with free range production. This study examined the influence of subjective and objective Karoo Lamb knowledge, the importance of label information, and demographics on consumers' willingness to pay a premium for Karoo Lamb products. A panel of 355 consumers who had previously purchase...

In this paper, we consider the feasibility of constructing online sentiment indices, using large amounts of media data, as an alternative to the conventional survey method used to create the consumer confidence index in South Africa. A clustering framework is adopted to provide an indication of possible candidate sentiment indices constructed from...

Purpose This paper aims to make an empirical contribution by investigating the enforcement mechanisms and governance structures required to protect and govern a regional food product when public certification fails. As one of the recent additions to South Africa’s repertoire of products with a designated origin, Karoo Lamb made for an interesting c...

The strengthening of the intellectual property rights (IPRs) for plant varieties provide incentives for breeding companies to invest more resources in plant breeding. The main objective of this paper was to analyze the effects of strengthening the wheat variety intellectual protection on wheat productivity and the release of new varieties. The stre...

The ability to determine the fragility of agribusiness value chains is valuable to agribusines management practitioners and scholars in a context where risk and uncertainty are increasingly pervasive, consequential and unpredictable. The paper argues for determining the fragility of a chain to adverse events rather than trying to predict the probab...

Land reform is necessary in South Africa, but that is about the only issue regarding land reform on which there is consensus. When we start unpacking why land reform is necessary, some people say it is because the majority of South Africans were disenfranchised and disempowered through years of colonial conquest, segregation and apartheid, while ot...

It is well accepted that biological innovations, particularly varietal improvements, have greatly contributed to agricultural yield and output growth in the past. At the same time, public funding for breeding programmes such as at the Agricultural Research Council in South Africa has dwindled. In an effort to confirm the importance of continued fun...

Agricultural research programmes in Africa have experienced waning state financial allocations. Efforts to change these funding trends have been fettered by the limited evidence of research investment benefits and the long lags associated with these returns. In a bid to provide such information, this article seeks to calculate the benefits of inves...

Food policy that ignores food-away-from-home (FAFH) in a developing country like South Africa will be misleading given changes in demand for food over time. This study contributes to our understanding of the factors that influence the demand for FAFH in South Africa. Using panel data from the Income and Expenditure Survey, this study analyses the e...

The Karoo Meat of Origin certification scheme is the first certification scheme established to differentiate and protect a region of origin meat product in South Africa. Although this scheme has come a long way in protecting the value embedded in the name 'Karoo', many challenges and loopholes for non-compliance still exist. These challenges includ...

Misconduct in global meat supply chains are omnipresent and even more so in differentiated chains where credence attributes such as origin and taste are used to differentiate the product. By definition, these attributes signal asymmetric information which implies that in the presence of bounded rational individuals with conflicting interests, misco...

Two of the experimental methods used to estimate willingness‐to‐pay (WTP) for a non‐market good, the Becker‐DeGroot‐Marschak (BDM) mechanism and the non‐hypothetical choice experiment (nHCE) often lead to significantly different WTP estimates, complicating the choice between the methods. In Zambia the same group of researchers used both techniques...

Various studies interrogate the issue of food inflation from a commodity level vantage point but fail to relate how commodity prices manifest in retail prices, and ultimately, how it impacts food inflation. This study uses vertical price transmission analysis, with time series econometric techniques, to determine how underlying commodity prices man...

We undertook a historical review of wheat varietal improvements in South Africa from 1891 to 2013, thus extending the period of previous analyses. We identified popular wheat varieties, particularly those that form the basis for varietal improvements, and attempted to understand how policy changes in the wheat sector have affected wheat varietal im...

The introduction of Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) type certification schemes in countries outside Europe is a recent phenomenon as the philosophy of origin based foods obtains global traction. It is therefore interesting to understand whether consumers in these countries have a similar appreciation for these certification schemes and whethe...

The establishment of the World Trade Organization in 1995 and the subsequent proliferation of regional and bilateral trade agreements resulted in the decline of global tariffs. However, other trade and regulatory measures have increased and thus restricted potential trade to some extent. These measures, non-tariff measures (NTMs), have also affecte...

Anecdotal evidence as well as selected studies on the performance and progress of South Africa’s land reform programme generally present mixed to rather negative results. Few longitudinal studies exist on the progress of redistributed farms, resulting in an incomplete picture of the performance and progress of land reform projects. In this article,...

Addressing the multiple challenges facing global agriculture requires integrated innovation in areas such as seeds, biotechnology, crop protection, grain storage and transport. Innovations related to plant improvement and the development of new or improved plant varieties will only happen at an optimal level if plant breeders' rights (PBR) are prop...

Addressing the multiple challenges facing global agriculture requires integrated innovation in areas such as seeds, biotechnology, crop protection, grain storage and transport. Innovations related to plant improvement and the development of new or improved plant varieties will only happen at an optimal level if plant breeders’ rights (PBR) are prop...

Purpose – African agri-food systems are undergoing major structural change in response to growing urbanization, rising incomes and shifting patterns of food consumption. The purpose of this paper is to explore four major dimensions of this surprisingly rapid structural shift in African food systems. Design/methodology/approach – This chapter synth...

A number of past studies of South African agricultural production and productivity performance used a hybrid Törnqvist-Theil approach to forming output aggregates based on a series of Laspeyres-type aggregations of sub-sectoral outputs rather than using the underlying commodity-specific price and quantity data directly. As a result, the studies suf...

Egypt like many developing countries is shifting towards a free market oriented economy. Egypt's economic strategy strives to expand and develop exports, especially agricultural exports, and at the same time provide food to Egyptian consumers However, the improvement, on the macro-economic level, was not reflected, as expected, on the agricultural...

In a consumer-driven world, consumers want to experience a connection between the product that they are consuming and the product's origin. To guarantee the validity of this connection and therefore the origin attribute of the product, traceability systems are required. The main purpose of this paper is to assess current traceability systems implem...

Food price volatility is one of the major challenges facing the global agricultural system today. This was most vividly illustrated during the global food crisis of 2007–9 when price spikes occurred for key staple food commodities—such as wheat, rice, maize, and soybeans. Given the variety of reactions by governments of countries experiencing simil...

This paper uses the water-reallocation scheme created within the National Water Act (1998) to analyze the impacts of water policy on farm livelihoods in South Africa. Based on one of the most water stressed catchments in the country, the Olifants river basin, we provide an integrated modeling approach combining water and agricultural modules to inv...

Identifying the factors that influence competitiveness is imperative in order, to appreciate the position of the firm in relation to its environment and to propose appropriate measures and strategies for increasing competitiveness of agribusiness firms. The study sought to determine the competitiveness of the agribusiness sector in Swaziland and to...

The assimilation of refugees into their host community economic structures is often problematic. The paper investigates the ability of refugees in rural South Africa to accumulate assets over time relative to their host community. Bayesian spatial-temporal modelling was employed to analyse a longitudinal database that indicated that the asset accum...

Changes in the features of food demand and consumption have moved from the mass consumption model towards an increasing qualitative differentiation of products and demand. This movement towards addressing consumers’ demand for food products with more advanced quality attributes has led to increasingly complex food qualification processes and a prol...

This paper attempts to analyze the impacts of the ‘fast track’ land reform policy on maize production in Zimbabwe through the construction of a partial equilibrium model that depicts what could have happened if no further policy shifts had taken place after 2000. The resimulated baseline model was used to make projections based on the various trend...

This chapter aims to analyse how the quality and reputation dimension is built and sustained through collective action dynamics. It explores the key features of collective action that underlie origin based product development and their protection through GIs. The chapter which departs from a literature review which identified the key dimensions of...

This paper presents a model of the Malawi maize commodity market that is developed for use as a policy analysis tool. The model captures national and local maize market dynamics and the linkages existing within the maize market in the country. This research has been undertaken in order to provide policy makers with a robust tool which can be used t...

What we identify as market-based innovations in agrifood systems, based in particular on contributions presented during the ISDA conference, are mainly organizational or institutional innovations involving different actors, which are linked through their direct or indirect interventions in value chains (i.e. producers, agribusiness processors, reta...

This book contributes to the literature on Geographical Indications (GIs) by providing key theoretical reflections from a five-year review process on the potential of GIs for agri-food products in Southern Africa. The contributors reflect on diverse GI processes and dynamics which operate at the local, national and international levels, thus enrich...

This study, conducted in central Malawi, assessed the way a research intervention using an agricultural innovation system affected rural livelihoods. Propensity score matching was used to establish one village as a control, against which the impact of the intervention on two study villages [0]could be measured. Using the Enabling Rural Innovation i...

This study develops a multi-equation partial equilibrium model of the Malawi maize market which is linked sequentially to a local maize economy to show that the skepticism surrounding the use of innovation systems in agricultural research in Africa is not unfounded. The results demonstrate that participating households have the potential to be nega...

The difference between hypothetical and real values when evaluating consumers’ preferences (termed ‘hypothetical bias’) has received significant attention in scientific literature, as the outcome of this bias is often an overestimation of willingness to pay (WTP) values. This is the main focus of this paper as we unpack South African consumers’ per...

The need for increased agricultural production to meet the growing demand for food, coupled with concerns for environmental sustainability, economic growth and poverty reduction has increased demand on the already scarce water in South Africa. At the same time, because of agriculture's minimal contribution, compared to the industrial and mining sec...

Interest in agriculture for growth and poverty reduction reawakened in the early 2000s made all the keener by the sudden rise in cereals prices on world markets in 2007–08. But is it still possible to drive agricultural growth through small farms, as happened in the green revolution? Whether small farms have a future was debated at a workshop held...

Despite the reported large margins between producer prices for maize and retail prices for maize meal and the fact that maize meal is a staple food for most of the South African population, there have been only limited investments in small- and medium-scale maize milling in South Africa since the deregulation of the maize markets. The apparent fail...

Supermarkets have expanded rapidly in SADC during the last decade, leading to fears that small-scale farmers and food processors could be excluded from access to urban markets. To assess the impact of supermarket chains on various participants in the supply chain, a survey was carried out in Botswana, Namibia and Zambia in 2004, 2005 and 2007. To d...

Agricultural Distortions Working Paper 38, December 2007 This is a product of a research project on Distortions to Agricultural Incentives, under the leadership of Kym Anderson of the World Bank"s Development Research Group (www.worldbank.org/agdistortions). The authors are grateful for helpful comments from workshop participants and for funding fr...

Rural poverty in South Africa remains a contentious issue and national statistics often conceal the complex nature of this dilemma at village and household level. The objective of the paper is to better understand the variables, dynamics and trends that influenced the socio economic position (SEP) of a rural community. The study examines asset and...

With South Africa’s urban population approaching 60%, supermarkets and fast food chains have become important players in the South African food system. These large players in the food sector have systematically modified their procurement practices especially with regard to fresh fruit and vegetables and are now circumventing spot markets in favou...

Most of the climate change models for South Africa predict a reduction in freshwater availability by 2050. Population growth is projected at 3% per annum, implying increased domestic water use. In addition to these factors, the concern for ecological sustainability and increased water pollution due to increased industrial, mining and agricultural a...

This article presents a deterministic farm-level model developed to link to an existing partial equilibrium sector-level model of the grain and livestock sectors of South Africa. The objective is to create a linked system of models consisting of a sector- and farm-level model with the capability to analyse the likely effects of changes in policies...

The bulk of the South African cotton crop is produced by large scale commercial farmers. Therefore it might be misleading to present South Africa’s impressive Genetically Modified Cotton (GMC) adoption figures as evidence of successful GMC use by smallholder farmers. The total South African cotton area and number of farmers decreased drastically si...

This paper investigates the responses of agribusiness managers to drastic changes in the policy and marketing environment of South African agriculture. The process of deregulation and liberalisation of agricultural markets exposed agribusiness managers to international trends, which required new institutions and relationships. Based on a survey con...

L'essentiel de la production de coton en Afrique du Sud provient des fermiers à production commerciale, il est donc erroné de considérer l'adoption impressionnante de Coton Génétiquement Modifié (CGM) comme un exemple d'utilisation réussie par les petits producteurs. Le secteur coton sud-africain évolue dans un environnement instable de production...

Urbanisation and a growing middle class with changing consumption patterns provide an ideal setting for supermarkets to prosper. With South Africa's urban population approaching 60 per cent, supermarket retail chains are now important players in the agro-food sector. Over the last two decades they have begun to purchase produce from in-house sourci...

The industrialization of agriculture and the potential problem of small-scale farmer marginalization calls for a fresh approach to the design of agribusiness supply chain arrangements in developing countries. The objective of the paper is to contribute to a better understanding of institutional arrangements that can promote stable smallholder agrib...

Stringent sanitary and phytosanitary standards (SPS) have proliferated in the aftermath of the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture (URAA). These standards are currently becoming a major stumbling block in agricultural trade for developing countries. Limited by inadequate resources and expertise, among other things, these countries also have poor...

This study examines the nature of the relationship between cane growers and millers and how it affects cane growersÂ’ perceptions of the value added in the sugar supply chain. Drawing from relational exchange theory, the study utilised the perceptions of 124 smallholder cane growers in the Swaziland sugar industry. Factors measured in terms of a li...

The misappropriation of the names of geographical regions such as Parma, Roquefort and Champagne is protected in the European Union by a system of Geographical Indications, and is acknowledged by the World Trade Organization as an important intellectual property right. This article addresses whether there is a case for similar protection in South A...

L'utilisation du coton g�n�tiquement modifi� (CGM) en Afrique du Sud, depuis 1996/97, est le plus souvent pr�sent�e comme un succ�s d'adoption d'OGM par les petits paysans de pays en d�veloppement. C'est une pr�sentation qui occulte le fait que la production cotonni�re en Afrique du Sud est d'abord celle des fermiers blancs. Le succ�s du CGM dans c...

Cross-national regressions reveal abnormally low agricultural workforce shares, given GNP, in developing countries that had historically concentrated land into large capital-intensive farms. We argue that such deagriculturalisation was premature, since its concomitant labour shedding has undesirable outcomes. In a new South African survey, a large...

“Market power is like the wind. You can feel it but you cannot see it” (Kohls and Uhl 2002, p 270) During 2002 and 2003 retail food prices in South Africa increased dramatically. These increases put the spotlight on the concentration and market power of food manufacturing firms and retailers in the food supply chain. The proprietary nature of infor...

While water supply sources are dwindling in South Africa, the demand for the scarce water resource is increasing. This situation requires a switch from supply to demand management of water in the country. The study updates the 1999 social accounting matrix for South Africa, using the Trade and Industrial Policy Strategies (TIPS) time series data, S...

There is growing evidence that freshwater availability is declining, while competition among sectors for the withdrawal of this scarce resource is rapidly increasing,(Rosegrant et a, 2002). Therefore, the need to promote inter-sectoral water use efficiency from the demand-side management has necessitated a study to investigate the responsiveness of...

Dissemination of genetically modified cotton in South Africa : Lessons for Africa’s Zone Franc The use of Genetically Modified Cotton (GMC) in South Africa, since 1996-1997, derives mainly from commercial farming by white farmers. It is therefore incorrect to present the so-called South African success as an example of successful use of GMC by smal...

Until recently, smallholder farmers in the Transkei area had very limited access to a profitable market outlet for their wool. In response, the South African wool industry built shearing sheds, managed by a local association that sells directly to the brokers. This article investigates the effect of joint wool marketing through the shearing shed on...

Industrial firms world wide have shed non-core business and outsourced these activities. An increasing number of sugar producers in Southern Africa have also outsourced their sugarcane production activities for both strategic and equity reasons. The purpose of the study is to use a transaction cost analysis (TCA) approach to assist the firm, as an...

The introduction of genetically modified (GM) food products to food markets around the world, has led to considerable controversy. In many cases consumer attitudes and perceptions of GM food products were revealed as fears, concern for, and avoidance of the new technology. The importance of GM foods in South Africa is increasing, even though the GM...

In the1998/1999 season, Bt cotton was commercially released to Zulu smallholders in Makhatini Flats, KwaZulu Natal and by 2001/2 over 90% of the approximately 3500 farmers in the area had adopted Bt varieties. This in itself suggests that Bt cotton was successful and all the studies that have been conducted confirm that Bt cotton offers advantages....

The Republic of South Africa (RSA) is the first developing country to plant genetically modified staple food - Bt white maize. The following paper describes the development and spread of Bt maize in RSA that started in 1998. After that, based on surveys of 33 large commercial Bt maize farmers and 368 smallholders in 2001/2, it shows that Bt maize g...