The link between nutrition and poverty
By Craig Macaskill Posted 2017-05-23 In Blog If it is not the major challenge facing planet Earth today, it is certainly one of the top three: inequality. Various reasons are advanced for it, which we won’t go into here (it will be a chapter on its own on this website soon). We came across another, complementary perspective […]
“Junk” status for South Africa – what happens to agriculture?
By Craig Macaskill Posted 2017-04-12 In Blog To our overseas readers who may not know, the South African president fired several ministers including the respected finance minister and his deputy, and as a consequence, the country’s credit status has been lowered by both Standard & Poor’s and Fitch to the level derogatively called “Junk”. Today, […]
#BlackMonday for the Karoo
By Craig Macaskill Posted 2017-04-07 In Blog There is quite a hullabaloo in the country following a sizable cull of government ministers and deputy ministers. Today is #BlackMonday, and demonstrations are planned for Friday and beyond. Even Angus Buchan, a farmer-evangelist known and respected in agricultural circles, is uncharacteristically responding to the socio-political toxicity of […]
Smart business decisions can have tax advantages for successful farming ventures
By Craig Macaskill Posted 2017-02-20 In Blog See these five tips to maximise your tax returns in 2017: 1) Set your goal to be most profitable, not just to pay the least amount of tax. Frequently, businesses can focus so much on minimizing tax obligations that they often lose sight of the business’ real focus – maximizing […]
Davos and a reference point for 2017
By Craig Macaskill Posted 2017-01-25 In Blog With inequality lurching wider every day, the middle class thinning out, one percent of humanity as wealthy as all the rest put together etc, one cannot but give a slight frown when viewing a gathering such as the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) one held at a ski resort in […]
A Conversation with a Viking
By Craig Macaskill Posted 2017-01-08 In Blog Have you ever wondered what lies behind the fences, gates and closed doors you pass on the way to town or to work? We cannot see into the world of the person standing next to us, even into that of the person to whom we are married, to […]
Abe Lincoln and Trump: love and agriculture
By Craig Macaskill Posted 2016-12-21 In Blog In the aftermath of the elections in the US we found ourselves wondering, not for the first time, whether Abe Lincoln made a mistake in going to war to keep the United States of America together. For those who do not know, nearly as many American soldiers died […]
Future farmers: a coming of age
By Craig Macaskill Posted 2015-04-07 In Blog Last Monday, Judy Stuart dropped by to collect some Agri Handbooks for her Future Farmers Foundation. It is interesting that one of the most successful initiatives in agriculture comes from a person who was denied the opportunity to study agriculture as a career (women weren’t accepted at agricultural colleges […]
On pigs and ignorance
By Craig Macaskill Posted 2014-07-10 In Blog The love of money is not the root of all evil. Ignorance is. If we could know and feel the consequences of our actions we would change what we say and do. The weekend brought news of a new-on-the-land project which has ended in great suffering for animals. […]
What to do about this?
By Craig Macaskill Posted 2013-11-30 In Blog The last SA The Good News newsletter reminded us that the black middle class in the country grew from 1.7 million in 2004 to 4.2 million a few months ago. These findings by the University of Cape Town’s Unilever Institute of Strategic Marketing are good news for the country’s demographics (strange we […]