Subject matter research has made many contributions to small grain production in the Western Cape province of South Africa, but much of this focuses on single commodities and is undertaken within conventional disciplinary boundaries (e.g. soil science, genetics, economics). The result is that...

Purchases of agricultural land for diverse reasons, such as recreation or aesthetic appeal (collectively referred to as lifestyle purposes), has implications for agricultural land valuations, commercial agriculture and the acquisition of land for redistribution purposes. This paper reports on...

Fresh water resources provide a platform for complex and often emotional issues to develop, particularly in resource scarcity situations. Bulk water infrastructure contains elements of a public good and proved vulnerable to failures in market and government driven allocation strategies. Common...

The use of the comparable sales method to value farm properties requires that professional valuers must think like a typical buyer of farm properties in a particular area. The Stellenbosch district, located on the periphery of the Cape Metropole, is a famous wine-producing area. The typical...

A classification system developed to evaluate the environmental care orientation of companies and, more specifically, their strategies to deal with the environmental care requirements prescribed by the market was applied to the deciduous fruit sector in the Western Cape. A survey was done to...

Primary Eurostat data of EU imports of agricultural products from selected southern hemisphere countries - namely, South Africa, Argentina, Chile, Australia and New Zealand - was used to compare the exports from those countries to the EU for the period 1988 to 2000. The study starts with a...

This paper describes the development of a decision support model for regional agricultural resource utilisation. The analysis was generated in a spatial context and the optimisation technique was interactive with a geographical information system (GIS). Economic and operational research...

This paper reports the results of an international comparison of the cost of producing wheat in 8 Western Cape, 3 Free State and 7 foreign producing areas. Results show that South African yields are low compared to foreign countries whose production costs are as high as or higher than those in...

Various institutions wanting to invest in agricultural production or the agribusiness sector in the SADC region need information on the quality and location of agricultural resources. Generating agricultural resource information on a regional level provides the challenge of integrating vast...

During 1997 research was conducted on trends in factors that affect the supply and demand for airfreight space for fynbos exports from South Africa. The aim was to sensitise decision-makers to probable trends in those factors that will shape cargo space availability. The main finding was that...