South African agriculture has progressed markedly over the past 25 years and exports have reached record levels. But how far transformation has gone remains unclear. Organised agriculture and government need to craft a common vision for the sector with clear rules of the game, and monitoring systems.

We can have different views about the agricultural policies that government has adopted since the dawn of democracy, but the one thing we can all agree on, I hope, is that the sector has grown tremendously - as illustrated in Figure 1. Importantly, this expansion was not driven by a few sectors but has been widespread - livestock, horticulture and field crops.

Of course, the production of some crops has declined over time, most notably wheat, and sorghum. This, however, had a lot to do with changes in agro-ecological conditions and market falling demand in the case of sorghum, not policies.

This uptick in production has been underpinned, largely, by the adoption of new production technologies, better farming skills, and growing demand (locally and globally), and progressive trade policy.

I use the words - progressive trade policy - solely to highlight South Africa's standing in global agriculture. South Africa was the world's 32nd...