In my experience in Mpumalanga, there has been a significant decline in the number of commercial farmers the last several years. Small family farms have been swallowed up by large commercial farmers. https://twitter.com/ewnreporter/status/1319877785159127040

I see it in my practice, I see it when I fly and see abandoned farmhouses everywhere and I see it in the collapse of small farming towns which used to be sustained by farming families. This is the era of corporate farming. They have the capital and scale to farm profitably.

It’s happened over the last several decades, but the reason is not farm murders but economics and in particular the decline in state support for small farmers post 1994.