SA agricultural jobs hold steady amid debate over migrant farm labour

Sensationalist headlines about rotting produce misrepresent South Africa’s farm labour dynamics. Q2 data confirms sector stability, though legal frameworks for seasonal foreign labour require ongoing care.

Wandile Sihlobo is the Presidential Envoy on Agriculture and Land. He is also the chief economist of the Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa and a senior research fellow in the Department of Agricultural Economics at Stellenbosch University.

We typically tout South Africa’s farming sector as crucial for job creation. The primary farming sector employs close to a million people, and more than 300,000 additional people work in the value chains.

Looking to the future, given technological advancements, we remain convinced that as this sector expands, more jobs will be created.

Emerging labour dynamics in agriculture also demand careful attention. The immigration discourse has created the impression that South Africa’s farming sector is reeling as unharvested produce rots due to foreign workers leaving the country. However, this issue needs to be treated delicately, without exaggerations that create undue reputational risks.

Indeed, there are foreign workers in the South African farming sector, especially in the provinces bordering our neighbouring countries and in certain value chains, such as sugar cane and fruit. However, data on their share of overall farming employment are always challenging to assess. A number of these workers typically engage in the sector during the busy harvesting periods that require more labour.

Also, because the farming sector deals with perishable products, timeliness at every stage of production is key. There is a need to ensure that harvesting is not delayed, as this would affect the quality of the produce and the farming sector’s income and long-term sustainability.

I mention this not to validate the view that products are rotting in various fields across the country, but to say that we have to manage immigration issues in farm labour carefully and ensure that legal processes are followed efficiently, as has been the case in the past and remains the case now. The Department of Home Affairs has a major role to play here, along with organised agriculture.

We also need to be careful about creating narratives that the farming sector prioritises only foreign workers, or that the sector collapsed once the immigration debate began – a claim unsupported by current conditions.

There are many South Africans who work on farms and will continue to participate in the sector, in the jobs that will be created as it expands. But in places where foreign workers are needed, we must continue the legal processes used in the past to enable such efforts and efficiencies on farms.

Now, conditions are broadly stable in the South African agricultural labour market. Consider the second quarter of 2026: South Africa’s agricultural jobs were at 944,000, up 4% from a year ago.