Overview of the Agricultural Natural Resources of South Africa (2005)

The purpose of this report is to take stock of available information on the agricultural natural resource base of South Africa. The perspective was a national one, with emphasis on spatial information. The report is to serve as an information base for identifying threats and opportunities related to land use and management.

The reader is requested to bear in mind that the current picture is far from complete. The aim was to collate the available spatial information at national scale that may be considered meaningful and present it in one volume. The aim was thus not to attempt to generate information that might be considered lacking but to display what is available, whatever the shortcomings might be. Issues that were adequately addressed in easily traceable existing publications, e.g. the Agrohydrology Atlas by Schulze (1997) generally were not duplicated. Implied by this approach is the possibility of subjectivity from the side of the compilers and the DoA project leaders. Sincere apologies are tendered for any erring in that respect.

The report is organized in two parts. Part One contains baseline information. Part Two considers some of the pressures on land. This distinction is rather arbitrary. Former homelands, for example, were a pressure once and may now be conisidered part of the baseline. Hoffman (1999), in following UNCCD, used a completely different conceptual framework for the National Review of Land Degradation in South Africa.

In the present approach, climate is regarded as part of the biophysical baseline on which human activities impact. One might ask what the relation is between this report and the much more comprehensive Hoffman report. This report zooms in on and, hopefully, strengthens the land attribute baseline against which changes can be assessed.