This is a busy period in South African farming. The summer crop farmers are tilling the land for the new season, and table grape and winter crop farmers are harvesting.
South Africa’s 2025/2026 winter wheat season began at the start of October. But we are seeing that farmers have started delivering the new season crop, which was planted from May.
In the first five weeks of this new marketing year, which started in October, farmers have delivered about 425,190t of wheat to commercial silos.
These are still early days, and the harvest is expected to gain momentum in the coming months. South Africa’s 2025/2026 winter wheat harvest is forecast at 2.03Mt, a 5% increase from the previous year.
The improvement is thanks to the expected better harvest in the Northern Cape, Free State, Eastern Cape and Limpopo.
The Western Cape, which accounts for more than half of South Africa’s winter wheat production, is expected to experience a mild decline in the harvest this year from the 2024/2025 season due to unfavourable weather conditions in some parts of the province.
A potential wheat harvest of 2.03Mt implies that South Africa may need to import about 1.74Mt in the 2025/2026 season to meet our annual needs. These imports are expected to be down 5% from the 2024/2025 season. The import activity is unlikely to pose a significant challenge, given the ample global wheat supplies available.
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