South Africa's agricultural sector is comprised of livestock, field crops and fruit in their order of size, in gross value terms. Agriculture in South Africa accounts for a relatively low share in the economy (3% of gross domestic product-GDP), 6% of employment and about 10% of exports (over R144 billion in 2015). Currently (2015/16), South Africa is experiencing the worst drought in over 100 years, which has resulted in significant effects on agriculture, with eight of the nine provinces being declared disaster areas. The motivation of the study was to understand the severity of drought on agriculture as well the impact on the whole economy (to quantify the economy-wide effects/losses emanating from the drought). To quantify these effects a single-country computable general equilibrium (CGE) model was used. Four scenarios were developed: Impact of field crops losses; impact of livestock losses; impact of aggregated agriculture losses; and impact of aggregated agriculture losses plus drought relief. The analysis shows that all scenarios led to a negative impact on GDP, employment and exports while the drought relief was found to have saved some jobs, albeit not significantly.

The paper assesses the factors influencing South Africa's agricultural export growth to its cardinal destinations between 2001 and 2014. A gravity model was used to present investigation of trade flows that has been validated as a suitable tool in determining export growth. The findings indicate that an improvement in South Africa's and importer's GDP causes an increase in agricultural exports. Distance and political stability have been shown to have no influence on the growth of agricultural exports to its trading partners. The importer's population and the export capacity showed a positive relationship on the growth of South Africa's agricultural exports to its trading partners. Trading agreements, which include AGOA and the TDCA with the EU, show a positive impact on increase in export performance. Therefore, the results suggest that South Africa should focus on countries with a growing population and GDP to improve agricultural export growth and market diversification.

Purpose This paper aims to assess the impact of protected geographical indications (GIs) on the trade performance of South Africa’s wine industry within the European Union (EU). This is critical in enhancing informed policy decisions towards securing more GIs for wines and other products. The unearthed evidence may provide a basis for more government interventions in support of the initiative while protecting the good reputation in communities where production occurs. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses the gravity flow model framework. The Rand value of wine exports was used as a trade performance measure whereas GIs data was extracted from the E-Bacchus database, and three proxies are used to capture the GIs variable. Findings GIs foster South Africa’s wine exports into the EU. When GIs were proxied as a dummy variable, results suggest that GIs led to about 170% increase in wine exports. However, when the actual number of GIs was used, the estimate also indicates 0.7% rise in exports, whereas using the difference between South Africa’s and the EU’s number of GIs, results suggest that GIs are associated with 87% increase in wine exports. Research limitations/implications This paper did not take into consideration protected designation of origins (PDOs) on the side of the Europe given that South Africa has no registered PDOs. Further research at industry level should be undertaken to ascertain whether some of South Africa’s wine meets the specifications required to register as a PDO. Originality/value This paper adds empirical evidence to the existing literature on the competitiveness of South Africa’s wine industry. The role of GIs in international markets remains a silent feature in the literature yet the industry exhibits an outstanding footprint in GIs. This paper, in part, responds to Biénabe and Marie-Vivien’s (2017) recognition for the need for interdisciplinary empirical analyses to better understand the GI concept. To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to analyse the impact of GIs on the industry’s trade performance.

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