Climate change

Effective soil management is essential for boosting farming productivity, supporting crop health, enhancing water retention, and maintaining ecosystem balance. Within the SIZA Environmental Standard, soil management is key in ensuring farm sustainability and audit compliance. While soil enhancement practices can be adapted based on specific conditions, common techniques such as soil health assessments, erosion control, nutrient management, and minimising compaction are widely used to promote soil health and prevent degradation.

Alien plant species are introduced, intentionally or unintentionally, to an area where they do not naturally occur. Once these species begin to spread and establish themselves beyond their initial point of introduction, they are classified as invasive alien plant (IAP) species.

Over the last year, parts of South Africa experienced persistent heat, and some areas had more lengthy periods of warmer temperatures. Climate change is making more extreme heatwaves more frequent and severe, resulting in the impact of El Niño being more intense.

With the agricultural industry being a significant contributor to climate change, the SIZA Environmental Standard goes beyond the management of associated risks through the implementation of SIZA’s online Digital Recordkeeping Programme, which will allow members from all sectors and commodities (at the local and global scale) to capture their production inputs and calculate their carbon footprint to monitor progress made towards sustainability targets.

Climate-smart agriculture can be defined as an approach to transforming and reorienting agricultural development under the new realities of climate change.

Over the last three years, 1 303 SIZA members decided to closely monitor and manage their water practices. Two hundred and thirty-three of these members agreed to participate in the SIZA CARES continuous improvement programme, and 103 asked to go through a third-party audit.

Over the past few decades, knowledge surrounding the rise in temperatures and the subsequent effects on the climate has become the main driving force behind sustainable business practices.