It was a good quarter to be growing citrus. South Africa's agricultural exports came to $4.1 billion in the three months to June, a tenth more than the same period last year and a record for a second quarter, on a mix of bigger volumes and better prices.
The buyers are not the ones the headlines have been about. Africa took the largest share of the quarter, two fifths of the total value. Asia and the Middle East together came second on a quarter, the European Union third on 21%, and the Americas as a whole on 5%.
What actually left the country is a long, unglamorous list: citrus, apples and pears, maize, wine, wool, sugar, grapes and nuts.
The market that cut its tariff
The United States is the part everyone has been watching, and it accounts for 3% of what South Africa sold abroad last quarter. Shipments there rose 56%, after Washington's effective tariff on South African goods fell from 30% to 12.5%.
Set against last year it is still a hole. Exports to the US are running a quarter below the same period of 2025, when exporters rushed produce onto ships during the 90-day pause before the Liberation Day tariffs took effect. So the rebound is real, and the number it is being measured against was itself a rush job.
The Middle East is the one to watch next. It takes 8% of South Africa's agricultural exports, and the war between the United States and Iran remains a live risk to the shipping those goods move on. So far it has not shown up in the totals: exports to Middle Eastern countries held at $332 million for the quarter, up 1% on a year ago.
The ports that actually improved
Getting fruit onto a ship is the part of this business that has held it back for years, and it did not improve everywhere. Wandile Sihlobo, the Agbiz chief economist whose note the quarter's figures come from, credits material improvement at Durban and the Eastern Cape ports. Cape Town, the one the fruit exporters complain about most, still poses challenges.
Sihlobo's own conclusion is not a victory lap. He wants the sector holding the markets it already has while it opens new ones, and he names what is slowing that down: South Africa has to negotiate export access as part of the Southern African Customs Union, and the other members do not share its urgency.
South Africa buys food as well as selling it. Agricultural imports rose 12% to $2.0 billion in the quarter, which still leaves the sector with a trade surplus of $2.1 billion. Close to half the wheat the country eats arrives on a ship, and about a fifth of the chicken.
Next season is not guaranteed to look like this one. South Africa harvested a record corn crop this year, and forecasters expect El Nino, which usually brings dry weather to Southern Africa and smaller harvests with it.
