The Value of Local Rapeseed Production for South Africa's Food Future

Given that hotter and drier conditions threaten South Africa's agricultural season in 2026/27, scientist Dr. Mathelele Lehlogonolo explains how local landrace seeds can be key to climate change resilience.

As South Africa prepares for the expected El Niño season of 2026/27, concerns are rising again regarding the country's agricultural prospects. For grain producers, livestock farmers, politicians, and consumers, the prospect of reduced rainfall and increased temperatures raises complex questions about food production, food prices, and agriculture.

Although modern improved crop varieties have significantly increased agricultural productivity in recent decades, there is growing recognition that landrace seeds—traditional varieties selected and maintained by farming communities for generations—can play an increasingly important role in helping South African agriculture cope with climate shocks.

As climate change intensifies and droughts become more frequent, these locally adapted genetic resources may cease to be seen merely as relics of traditional agriculture, but instead become valuable tools for building sustainable food systems.

El Niño is a natural climatic phenomenon associated with warming sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean. Although it occurs thousands of kilometers from Africa, it has a profound impact on global weather patterns.

In South Africa, El Niño is typically associated with the following phenomena:

• Reduced summer rainfall
• Above-average temperatures
• More frequent heatwaves
• Increased evapotranspiration
• Poor soil moisture
• Higher risk of crop failure
• Decreased pasture availability for livestock

While not every El Niño event affects all regions equally, South Africa has historically experienced some of the most severe agricultural droughts during strong El Niño years, including periods in 1982/83, 1991/92, 2015/16, and to varying degrees, 2023/24.

For the upcoming 2026/27 production season, climate forecasts suggest that producers should be prepared for potentially drier than usual conditions in many regions of the country's summer rainfall season. Therefore, early preparedness may prove critical.

South Africa's agricultural sector heavily relies on a relatively small number of commercial crop types, specifically maize, wheat, soy, sunflower, and potatoes.

Within these crops, farmers often cultivate only a limited number of commercial varieties developed primarily for high-intensity production systems. These improved varieties demonstrate exceptional results under favorable growing conditions, but many require sufficient rainfall, fertilizers, pesticides, good soil fertility, and intensive management.

Under severe water stress, yields can drop sharply. This is where genetic diversity becomes critically important.

Landrace seeds are local crop varieties that have evolved over many generations through continuous selection by farmers in specific ecological conditions. Unlike commercial hybrids, landraces possess vast genetic diversity within each population.

Traditionally, farmers selected seeds from plants that survived drought, poor soils, pests, diseases, heat, and unpredictable rainfall. As a result, landraces often contain valuable traits that allow them to better withstand environmental stresses.

Examples found across South Africa include sorghum, pearl barley, beans, Bambara groundnuts, peanuts, dry beans, pumpkins, indigenous leafy vegetables, and traditional maize varieties.

Many rural communities continue to preserve these seeds through home seed saving and community seed banks.

One of the greatest strengths of landraces is their resilience, rather than maximum yield. While commercial hybrids often produce higher yields in ideal conditions, landraces often outperform them when rainfall becomes scarce.

Their advantages are shown in Figure 1 below.

Several African countries have already demonstrated how conserving landraces contributes to food security during extreme climatic events.

Ethiopia possesses one of the richest collections of traditional African crop varieties. Farmers continue to cultivate diverse landraces of teff, barley, wheat, and sorghum. The country's close collaboration between farmers and national gene banks has helped preserve crop diversity while providing breeders with valuable genetic material for developing climate-resilient varieties.

In Zimbabwe, traditional sorghum and pearl barley have repeatedly shown greater drought resistance than maize in dry years. The government and development partners are increasingly promoting these traditional cereals in semi-arid regions where maize production remains highly risky.

In Malawi, community seed banks have allowed farmers to preserve local varieties while improving access to drought-resistant seeds after climate-related disasters. The combination of home seed saving and community seed exchange has strengthened local resilience.

In Kenya, farmer-involved participatory breeding programs have successfully combined traditional landraces with modern breeding methods, creating improved varieties that retain valuable stress-resistance characteristics.

South Africa has significant diversity in indigenous crops, yet much of this remains untapped. Traditional crops such as pearl barley, sorghum, beans, Bambara groundnuts, peanuts, amadumbe, and indigenous vegetables historically sustained communities living in drought-prone areas.

However, over time, many farmers have shifted to maize monocultures and commercially bred varieties. As climate risks increase, interest in these traditional crops is growing. Institutions such as the Agricultural Research Council (ARC), universities, community seed banks, and the National Plant Genetic Resources Centre continue to maintain valuable landrace collections that can contribute significantly to future crop improvement.

While landrace seeds offer significant potential, they cannot be considered a complete replacement for improved commercial varieties. Rather, they are part of a broader strategy for climate change adaptation. Their greatest value lies in:

• Maintaining genetic diversity
• Providing useful traits for breeding programs
• Supporting smallholder farming systems
• Reducing production risks
• Preserving cultural heritage
• Strengthening local seed systems

Future breeding efforts will increasingly depend on the unique genes found in landrace populations to develop varieties capable of thriving in hotter and drier climates.

Preparing for future El Niño events requires coordinated action across South Africa's entire agricultural sector. Priority measures include:

• Expanding the collection and conservation of landrace seeds.
• Supporting community seed banks and household seed conservation initiatives.
• Encouraging participatory breeding involving farmers and researchers.
• Promoting drought-resistant traditional crops in vulnerable areas.
• Raising farmers' awareness about the value of agricultural biodiversity.
• Integrating landrace conservation into national climate change adaptation strategies.
• Investing in research on climate-resilient indigenous crops.
• Facilitating seed exchange networks while maintaining seed quality standards.

A Future Based on Diversity

The expected El Niño of 2026/27 serves as another reminder that climate uncertainty is becoming the new normal. Building resilient agriculture is now not just about increasing yields, but about reducing risks. Landrace seeds represent millennia of farmer innovation and natural adaptation. Their rich genetic diversity may hold many answers needed to secure future food production in an increasingly unpredictable climate.

For commercial producers, integrating climate-resilient varieties into production systems can reduce vulnerability. For smallholder farmers, preserving traditional seed systems can provide an accessible and locally adapted safety net. For breeders, landraces remain an indispensable gene reservoir for future improved varieties.

As South Africa faces another potentially challenging growing season, the nation's greatest agricultural insurance may already exist; not only in laboratories, but also in seed stores, community seed banks, and on the fields of family farms that have preserved these genetic treasures for generations. In an era of climate uncertainty, conserving landrace diversity is no longer just a conservation measure. It is an investment in the future food security of South Africa.

To truly transform the value chain in South Africa's poultry industry, the sector must move beyond simple micro-projects. Ishmael Sunga, CEO of Sacau, strongly advocates for empowering young entrepreneurs to lead medium-sized enterprises.

The South African poultry sector is at a strategic crossroads. It can continue to grow on the fringes, attracting more small and marginal producers into an already crowded space of survival, while the most profitable parts of the chain remain in the hands of a few large integrated companies. Or it can make a more decisive choice: intentionally create this missing middle tier.

This missing middle tier represents a new generation of professionalized, medium-sized businesses led by young men and women. These enterprises are capable of turning local demand into ownership, production into decent jobs, and poultry farming into a serious engine of inclusive industrialization.

The poultry value chain does not just need more producers; it needs a stronger class of businesses between small-scale operations and large integrated corporations. This is what the 'missing middle tier' is: the underdeveloped space where commercially disciplined, medium-sized enterprises should operate, grow, supply formal markets, and create decent jobs.

If this space remains empty, the sector will maintain a structural division between informal subsistence activities and large firms that dominate feed production, processing, distribution, and market access. Many promising operators in the poultry value chain are too advanced to support micro-enterprises but are not yet strong enough to win major commercial contracts, gain access to affordable financing, consistently meet formal standards, or negotiate effectively with large buyers. Without targeted support, they remain trapped below scale, and the industry continues to reproduce exception.

Poultry farming is one of the most practical areas for creating this missing middle tier because demand is high, production cycles are relatively short, and opportunities exist across the entire value chain. Medium-sized enterprises led by young women and men can operate in broiler and egg production, feed distribution, incubators, chick supply, veterinary services, housing construction, slaughtering, cold storage, transportation, packaging, aggregation, branding, and market distribution. Thus, the opportunity is not limited to farming; it extends to every link that supports the poultry economy.

Creating this level is not charity; it is an economic necessity. Medium-sized poultry enterprises can create more jobs than fragmented micro-projects, remain more tied to local conditions than large corporations, and respond more flexibly to regional, suburban, rural, and institutional markets. They can transform youth from program participants into employers, asset owners, service providers, aggregators, and suppliers to formal markets.

Equally important, they can act as an attraction factor for small and marginal operators by creating structured demand, aggregation channels, service networks, and market discipline.

Young women and men must be at the center of this strategy, as they represent the next generation of entrepreneurial leaders. They are more likely to adopt digital tools and artificial intelligence, keep accounts, use mobile payments, sell products online, organize through platforms or clusters, and experiment with new business models. Women entrepreneurs, already active in food trade and community supply networks, are particularly well-prepared to build strong customer relationships, manage distribution, and strengthen household and community food security.

This new generation can also contribute to the professionalization of the poultry value chain. Many young men and women possess higher capabilities necessary to navigate the complexities of modern value chain systems: digital literacy, systems thinking, adaptability, data interpretation, networking, innovation, and problem-solving in production, finance, logistics, and markets. With access to modern tools, technical knowledge, and global experience, they can raise standards, improve productivity, strengthen biosecurity, use evidence to make better business decisions, and build enterprises with regional and global ambitions.

If young entrepreneurs are left at the subsistence level, they will remain dependent on grants, vulnerable to market shocks, and unable to change the structure of the industry. But if they receive targeted support to become medium-scale operators, they can form a bridge between informal production, smallholder participation, and large agribusiness systems. This is where entrepreneurship development becomes transformative: it creates enterprises that can hire, invest, supply, comply, compete, and grow.

Professionalization must be seen as the foundation for developing the missing middle tier. Small and new poultry enterprises cannot compete, scale, or supply goods to formal markets if they remain in informal practices, weak record-keeping, inconsistent production standards, and limited compliance with food safety, animal health, and consumer requirements. Therefore, professionalization is not an optional soft option; it is the discipline that transforms promising operators into creditworthy, investable, and contract-ready enterprises.

This requires strong corporate governance, production planning, financial control, traceability, biosecurity protocols, quality assurance, contract management, customer service, and digital systems for accounting, payments, logistics, and market intelligence. It also requires recognized training programs, internships, mentorship, coaching, and certification pathways that reduce risks for young men and women and give them the authority to access financing, meet procurement standards, negotiate with buyers, and confidently transition into higher-value segments of the poultry value chain.

In practice, professionalization means creating enterprises that can produce to specification, price accurately, fulfill contracts, manage disease risks, maintain reliable records, adhere to delivery schedules, and continuously improve their performance. Without this foundation, financing becomes risky, markets remain inaccessible, and enterprise support breeds dependency rather than competitiveness.

To occupy the niche of the missing middle tier, young entrepreneurs need more than motivation and training. They need an enterprise development platform that combines political support, blended finance, shared infrastructure, technical assistance, professionalization systems, and guaranteed or structured market access. The following priorities should guide sector development programs, government policy, and private investment:

• Creation of medium-sized poultry enterprise clusters led by youth and women, linked to incubators, abattoirs, cold storage, feed depots, and logistics hubs. • Provision of staged financing that grows with the business, moving entrepreneurs from startup and expansion support to working capital, asset financing, and commercial credit.

• Conclusion of offtake agreements with retailers, government agencies, wholesalers, processors, and food service businesses so that enterprises can grow based on real demand.

• Establishment of robust management systems regarding production efficiency, animal health, financial control, compliance, labor management, quality assurance, and contract fulfillment.

• Opening up opportunities across the value chain so that young entrepreneurs can own businesses in services, logistics, processing, raw materials, and marketing, not just primary production.

• Policies and regulators: Recognize the development of medium-sized poultry enterprises as a priority for industrialization and employment; lower barriers to formalization; strengthen biosecurity and food safety systems; and align youth, agricultural, SME, and industrial policies.

• Sector development actors: Shift from short-term project support to integrated enterprise development platforms that combine incubation, coaching, certification, infrastructure access, market linkage, and results-based skills upgrading.

• Development institutions and commercial financiers: Create blended finance windows, credit guarantees, working capital facilities, and asset financing products linked to proven business performance, offtake agreements, and professionalization milestones.

• Industry players, retailers, and processors: Utilize supplier development programs, offtake contracts, technical assistance, and local procurement commitments to integrate medium-sized enterprises led by youth and women into formal value chains.

• Producers and educational institutions: Create pipelines of capable young entrepreneurs through mentorship, peer learning, internships, certification, business coaching, and practical experience in commercially viable poultry models.

The missing middle tier must be viewed as a conscious developmental milestone for the poultry industry. Government, industry, development institutions, retailers, producers, educational institutions, and development partners must work together to create a new generation of medium-sized enterprises led by young women and men. The absence of the missing middle tier should be a critical indicator of successful industry transformation: proof that the sector is no longer stuck between subsistence activities and concentrated large-scale ownership, but is building a broader, more inclusive, and competitive base of enterprises.

The choice is clear: either the missing middle tier remains empty, and the industry continues to reproduce exception, or it is intentionally filled with capable, ambitious, and well-supported medium-sized enterprises. These enterprises can meet commercial standards, create local jobs, expand ownership, strengthen food security, and give young women and men a real stake in the future of a data-driven, science-based, ICT-enabled, globally ambitious poultry economy. Thus, ensuring the sustainability of poultry in South Africa means ensuring the sustainability of enterprise ownership—and that starts with creating the missing middle tier.