- South Africa’s 2025/26 summer crop came in at a record 21.49 million tonnes, with maize production up 4% on the year before.
- Experts say this stockpile could help cushion food prices if the expected El Niño drought hits as feared, unlike the severe droughts of 2014/16.
South Africa is heading into a possible serious drought with something it didn’t have the last time this happened: a record harvest already in the bank.
The Crop Estimates Committee’s most recent figures put the 2025/26 summer grain and oilseed harvest, which includes maize, sunflower seed, soybeans, groundnuts, sorghum and dry beans, at 21.49 million tonnes, the largest ever recorded in South Africa.
Maize alone came in at around 17.4 million tonnes, up 4% on the year before, with about 9.4 million tonnes being white maize, the type mostly eaten by people, and 7.9 million tonnes yellow maize, mostly used for animal feed.
That matters because the Weather Service has already warned this summer could bring a very strong El Niño, a weather pattern that typically means less rain and more heat for South Africa, potentially lasting until February 2027. In the last severe El Niño droughts, in 2014/15 and 2015/16, South Africa’s maize harvest crashed to around 8.9 million tonnes, well below what the country actually needs to eat, forcing government to import maize and pushing food prices up sharply.
This time, agriculture officials say the country is in a much stronger position to absorb the shock.
Ikalafeng Kgakatsi, director of Disaster Management and Climate Change at the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development, said good rains over the past two summers filled dams and boosted soil moisture, helping produce this record supply.
“At this stage, El Niño must be regarded as a significant production and price risk rather than confirmation of crop losses or food price increases,” he said.
Still, nobody can say yet exactly how severe this El Niño will actually turn out to be, or how much of an impact it will have on the crops still to be planted for the coming season.
Analysts note that a mild drought in 2023/24 still caused South Africa’s maize harvest to fall 22% in a single year, showing even a less extreme event can do real damage.
For now, though, South Africa enters this uncertain season with more grain in storage than it’s ever had before, which experts say should help soften food prices even if the rains do fail.
