South Africa's agricultural exports soar to record $15.1bn in 2025

South Africa’s agricultural exports remained strong throughout 2025 despite significant trade policy shifts and uncertainty, reaching a record $15.1bn, up 10% from 2024.

Exports were strong every quarter last year. The latest data for the fourth quarter shows that South Africa’s agricultural exports totalled $3.4bn, up 7% from the same period a year ago. This was due to a combination of higher volumes of various product exports and better commodity prices.

The products that dominated the export list in the last quarter of 2025 were mainly table grapes, maize, berries, wine, citrus, apples and pears, sugar, nuts, fruit juices, wool, apricots, cherries and peaches.

While the various ports’ efficiency has improved notably in recent months due to policy reforms in South Africa’s network industries, challenges at the Port of Cape Town in November and December added to financial difficulties for the fruit industry. Still, the country’s overall agricultural export performance remained solid, as other ports were functioning reasonably well and continued to support export activity.

From a regional perspective, the African continent accounted for the lion’s share of South Africa’s agricultural exports in the last quarter of 2025, at 53% of the total value.

As a collective, Asia and the Middle East were the second-largest agricultural markets, accounting for 17% of total agricultural exports in the fourth quarter.

The EU was South Africa’s third-largest agricultural market, accounting for 16% of total exports in the fourth quarter, while the Americas region accounted for 4%.

Given the concern about the higher “liberation day” tariffs South Africa faces in the US, it is worth highlighting that after some exporters took advantage of the 90-day pause of the higher tariffs and exported higher volumes than usual during the second quarter of the year, we saw some cooling of exports in the third and fourth quarters.

Notably, South Africa’s agricultural exports to the US decreased by 11% in the third quarter compared to the same period in 2024, at $144m. In the last quarter, South Africa’s agricultural exports to the US fell sharply, by 39% to $81m. The composition of the products hasn’t changed much; it is mainly citrus, wine, fruit juices and nuts, among other typical agricultural exports to the US.

From an annual perspective, South Africa’s agricultural exports to the US in 2025 totalled $504m, down 3% from the previous year. This slight annual decline doesn’t suggest that the 30% liberation day tariffs aren’t affecting the industry, since we benefited from artificially high exports in the second quarter. We believe that in 2026, we will be able to get a clearer picture of the impact of all these tariffs.

It is also worth noting that the US has decided to modify its reciprocal tariffs and exempt certain food products, thereby easing agricultural trade friction, which is costly to both exporting countries and US consumers. From a South African perspective, producers of oranges, macadamia nuts and fruit juices will benefit from the exemption.

The rest of the world, including the UK, accounted for 10% of South African agricultural exports in the last quarter of 2025.

South Africa also imports various agricultural products, which totalled $7.8bn in 2025, up by 4% from 2024. South Africa lacks favourable climatic conditions for growing rice and palm oil and thus relies on imports of these products.

Consequently, when exports and imports are accounted for, South Africa’s agricultural sector recorded a trade surplus of $7.3bn in 2025, up 18% from the previous year.

• Sihlobo is the chief economist of the Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa. He is also a senior research fellow at the Department of Agricultural Economics at Stellenbosch University.