Where is the 63rd AEASA Conference being held?

The conference is scheduled to take place in Mokopane, ZAF.

What is the primary focus of the AEASA Conference?

The conference serves as a platform for agricultural economists to discuss critical issues, share research, and foster collaboration within the agricultural sector, with a particular emphasis on the African region.

What kind of activities can attendees expect at the conference?

Attendees can expect a diverse program including presentations, workshops, and networking opportunities, all designed to advance agricultural economics and its practical applications.

63rd AEASA Conference 2026

Name: 63rd AEASA Conference 2026
Start: 2026-09-29T00:00:00Z
End: 2026-10-01T00:00:00Z
Location: Mokopane

Sep 29 – Oct 1, 2026Mokopane, South AfricaIn-person

Registration open

The 63rd AEASA Conference, hosted in Mokopane, ZAF, serves as a pivotal gathering for agricultural economists and related professionals. This annual event provides a platform for discussing critical issues, sharing research, and fostering collaboration within the agricultural sector. Participants engage in a diverse program that includes presentations, workshops, and networking opportunities, all aimed at advancing agricultural economics and its practical applications. The conference's location in ZAF underscores the importance of agricultural development in the African region. It brings together experts to address challenges and opportunities specific to the continent, while also drawing insights from global perspectives. The event is designed to facilitate robust dialogue and the exchange of innovative ideas, contributing to sustainable agricultural practices and policy formulation.

Committees & topics

Topics
Geopolitics in Agriculture: Balancing Policy, Markets, Food Security and Shared Prosperity · Governance, Policy and Political Economy of Food Systems · Agricultural Policy, Sovereignty and Regional Food Diplomacy · Trade, Food Security and the Protection of Vulnerable Groups · Food Systems Governance and Multi-Level Coordination · Geopolitics of Input Markets: Fertiliser, Seeds and Strategic Commodities · Political Economy of Agricultural Subsidies and Public Expenditure · Markets, Value Chains, Labour and Inclusive Rural Transformation

Why it matters

This conference is significant because it directly addresses the complex economic dynamics shaping global agriculture. As populations grow and environmental pressures intensify, the role of agricultural economics in ensuring food security, promoting sustainable resource management, and driving rural development becomes increasingly vital. The discussions and research presented at this event contribute to a deeper understanding of these challenges and help identify viable solutions.

Furthermore, the conference's focus on the African context is particularly relevant. Many African nations, including ZAF, face unique agricultural hurdles, from climate change impacts to market access issues. By convening experts in Mokopane, the conference facilitates targeted discussions that can lead to locally relevant and effective strategies. It also provides a crucial forum for African scholars and practitioners to connect with international counterparts, fostering knowledge transfer and collaborative research initiatives.

The insights generated from this gathering can influence policy decisions at national and regional levels, impacting everything from trade agreements to agricultural subsidies. The exchange of ideas among diverse stakeholders, including academics, policymakers, and industry representatives, is essential for translating research into actionable strategies that benefit farming communities and consumers alike. This makes the conference a key event for anyone invested in the future of agriculture.

How to prepare

To effectively engage with the themes of the 63rd AEASA Conference, delegates should consider conducting a thorough "what-is-stakeholder-mapping" exercise prior to attendance. Identifying key actors in the agricultural value chain, from smallholder farmers to international agribusinesses, will provide a foundational understanding of the diverse interests at play. This preparation will enable more nuanced participation in discussions regarding policy and market interventions.

Furthermore, understanding "gender-dynamics-across-cultures" within agricultural contexts is crucial. Many agricultural policies and economic models have differential impacts on men and women. Delegates should research how gender roles and responsibilities influence agricultural productivity, access to resources, and market participation in various regions, particularly within ZAF. This will allow for more informed contributions to discussions on equitable development.

Finally, delegates should prepare to engage in "dynamic-analysis" of agricultural markets and policies. The global agricultural landscape is constantly evolving due to technological advancements, climate shifts, and geopolitical factors. Coming prepared to critically assess current trends and future projections, rather than simply absorbing information, will maximize the value of participation. This proactive approach will facilitate more meaningful contributions to the conference's objectives of advancing agricultural economics.

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 3 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

South Africa

As the host nation, ZAF plays a central role in showcasing regional agricultural challenges and innovations, particularly concerning sustainable development and food security.

Role in topic

ZAF provides the immediate context for many of the discussions, offering case studies and examples relevant to agricultural economics in a developing economy. Its agricultural sector faces unique pressures and opportunities that will be a focal point for analysis.

Kenya

KEN's perspective will likely focus on the challenges and successes of smallholder farming, climate resilience, and agricultural technology adoption in East Africa.

Role in topic

As a significant agricultural producer in East Africa, KEN's experiences with agricultural policy, market access, and adapting to environmental changes offer valuable comparative insights for the conference.

Nigeria

NGA will likely contribute insights on large-scale agricultural transformation, food security for a rapidly growing population, and the role of agricultural economics in national development.

Role in topic

NGA's vast agricultural potential and challenges in areas like infrastructure and resource management provide a crucial perspective on the economic complexities of agriculture in a major African economy.

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

Geopolitics in Agriculture: Balancing Policy, Markets, Food Security and Shared Prosperity

Agriculture has re-emerged as a central arena of geopolitical contestation following the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, and successive climate shocks that disrupted global grain, fertiliser and edible-oil flows. The Black Sea Grain Initiative (2022-2023) and its collapse exposed how concentrated production of staples in a handful of exporters can be weaponised, while export bans by India on rice and wheat, and by Indonesia on palm oil, illustrated the rapid resort to food nationalism. At the same time, the WTO's Agreement on Agriculture remains contested, with developing countries pressing for a permanent solution on public stockholding while major exporters defend market-access disciplines. The core dispute is how to reconcile open trade and efficient global markets with legitimate concerns over food sovereignty, smallholder livelihoods, and resilience to shocks. African states, organised through the AU's CAADP and Malabo commitments, argue that current rules entrench dependence on imported staples and inputs. Wealthier producers counter that subsidies and protection in OECD economies, alongside Chinese strategic stockpiling, distort prices and crowd out African and Latin American producers. Today the debate is shaped by the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit follow-up, the FAO's State of Food Security and Nutrition reports showing persistent hunger above pre-pandemic levels, and a stalled Doha agricultural negotiation. Delegates must weigh trade liberalisation against targeted policy space for food security and shared prosperity.

Key players

Governance, Policy and Political Economy of Food Systems

Food systems governance has moved from a narrow agricultural-ministry concern to a cross-cutting policy domain spanning health, environment, trade and social protection. The 2021 UN Food Systems Summit and its 2023 stocktake formalised a 'food systems approach', yet implementation is fragmented across the FAO, WFP, IFAD, WHO and CBD, and across national line ministries with overlapping mandates. Political economy analysis increasingly shows that policy outcomes are shaped less by technical evidence than by coalitions of agribusiness, farmer unions, retailers and consumer groups. The core dispute concerns who governs food systems and on whose terms. Critics argue that corporate concentration in seeds, agrochemicals, grain trading and retail has captured policymaking, while defenders of market-led systems point to productivity gains and scale efficiencies. Civil society coalitions, channelled through the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), press for human-rights-based frameworks, agroecology and the recognition of peasant and indigenous knowledge under UNDROP. Current debates focus on national food systems pathways submitted after the 2021 Summit, the role of true-cost accounting, and how to align food policy with the Paris Agreement and Kunming-Montreal Biodiversity Framework. Coordination failures, particularly between trade and nutrition policy, remain a defining challenge.

Key players

Agricultural Policy, Sovereignty and Regional Food Diplomacy

Food sovereignty, a concept advanced by La Via Campesina in the 1990s, has gained renewed traction as states reassess their dependence on global supply chains exposed by pandemic-era disruptions and the Russia-Ukraine war. African governments, in particular, have revived debates about reducing reliance on imported wheat, rice and fertiliser, while pursuing regional integration through the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP). The 2023 Dakar 2 Feed Africa Summit produced country food and agriculture delivery compacts to anchor this shift. The central tension is between national policy autonomy — including the use of tariffs, export controls, input subsidies and state trading — and the commitments states have made under WTO rules, regional trade agreements and IMF programmes. Episodes such as Zambia's and Malawi's input subsidy programmes, Nigeria's import substitution drive, and the East African Community's recurrent maize export bans illustrate how sovereignty claims can both protect and disrupt regional food security. Regional food diplomacy is increasingly visible: SADC's regional food balance sheet, ECOWAS's regional food security reserve, and the AU's African Risk Capacity show institutional attempts to share risk. Yet bilateral deals — Gulf states acquiring farmland, China financing silos, Russia donating grain — complicate continental coherence.

Key players

Trade, Food Security and the Protection of Vulnerable Groups

The relationship between trade and food security has long been contested at the WTO, where the 2013 Bali decision on public stockholding remains under a 'peace clause' rather than a permanent solution. Since 2020, a surge in food-export restrictions — covering at one point more than 17 percent of globally traded calories — has revived calls to discipline such measures, while developing countries argue that affordable access for poor consumers and price stability for small producers require continued policy flexibility. The WFP has repeatedly warned that price spikes translate directly into acute food insecurity for low-income, net food-importing countries. The core dispute is how to design trade rules that secure reliable access to food for vulnerable populations — including women, smallholders, informal workers and refugees — without entrenching dependence or undermining domestic production. Mechanisms under debate include a permanent public stockholding solution, a special safeguard mechanism (SSM) for developing countries, exemptions for humanitarian purchases by WFP, and disciplines on export restrictions. The issue is now entangled with social protection policy: cash transfers, school feeding, and targeted subsidies have expanded since the pandemic, but fiscal space is shrinking under debt distress. Aligning trade, social protection and nutrition policy for vulnerable groups is the defining frontier.

Key players

Food Systems Governance and Multi-Level Coordination

Food systems are governed across global, regional, national and subnational levels, each with distinct mandates and political economies. Globally, the CFS, FAO, WTO and Rio Conventions set norms; regionally, bodies such as the AU, ASEAN and EU shape standards and trade flows; nationally, agriculture, health, trade and finance ministries often pursue competing priorities; locally, municipalities and provinces manage land, water and markets. The Milan Urban Food Policy Pact and the C40 cities network illustrate the rise of city-level food governance. The central challenge is vertical and horizontal coordination. National food systems pathways developed after the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit revealed widespread misalignment between ministries and between national plans and subnational realities. The 2022-2023 food price crisis exposed weak coordination between central banks managing inflation, trade ministries imposing export bans, and welfare ministries scaling up safety nets. Current debates concern whether existing institutions — particularly the CFS and the UN Food Systems Coordination Hub — provide adequate architecture, or whether new mechanisms are needed to integrate climate, biodiversity, health and trade agendas. Polycentric governance models, evidence-based policy councils, and devolved approaches are increasingly tested in practice.

Key players

Geopolitics of Input Markets: Fertiliser, Seeds and Strategic Commodities

Global agricultural input markets are highly concentrated. Four firms control over 60 percent of the commercial seed market; potash is dominated by Canada, Russia and Belarus; phosphate by Morocco, China and the United States; and nitrogen production depends on natural-gas-rich economies. The 2022 sanctions on Russia and Belarus, combined with European gas-price spikes, caused fertiliser prices to more than double, with severe consequences for African and South Asian farmers. The African Union's 2023 Nairobi Declaration on Fertilizer and Soil Health responded by pledging to triple domestic fertiliser production and use by 2034. The core dispute is how to secure affordable, reliable input access without entrenching strategic dependencies or environmental harms. Seed sovereignty debates, including under the ITPGRFA and the Nagoya Protocol, intersect with intellectual property regimes (UPOV 1991) that critics argue restrict farmer-managed seed systems. Strategic commodities such as urea, DAP and hybrid seed are now treated by several states alongside critical minerals as matters of national security. Today, blending geopolitics with agronomy, states are diversifying suppliers, investing in domestic fertiliser plants (Nigeria's Dangote facility, Morocco's OCP expansion), building seed banks, and negotiating long-term offtake deals — while the WTO and FAO debate transparency and emergency stock mechanisms.

Key players

Political Economy of Agricultural Subsidies and Public Expenditure

Global agricultural support averaged roughly USD 800 billion per year in 2020-2022 according to the OECD, FAO and World Bank's joint reporting, with the bulk concentrated in OECD economies, China and India. The 2021 'A Multi-Billion-Dollar Opportunity' report argued that much of this support is environmentally harmful, distorts trade, and bypasses smallholders, women and agroecological producers. WTO disciplines on Amber, Blue and Green Box support remain contested, with India's MSP and public stockholding regularly challenged by exporters. The core political economy question is why reform is so difficult. Concentrated benefits accrue to organised farm lobbies and input suppliers, while diffuse costs fall on consumers, taxpayers and the environment. In Africa, the Maputo and Malabo commitments to allocate 10 percent of public expenditure to agriculture remain unmet by most states, even as input subsidy programmes (e.g. Malawi's FISP, Zambia's FSP) absorb large shares of agricultural budgets with mixed productivity returns. Current debates focus on repurposing rather than abolishing support — shifting from price-distorting subsidies toward research, extension, climate adaptation, nutrition-sensitive programmes and rural public goods. Fiscal pressure from debt servicing, however, is narrowing the space for such reforms.

Key players

Markets, Value Chains, Labour and Inclusive Rural Transformation

Rural transformation — the structural shift from subsistence agriculture toward diversified rural economies — is uneven across regions. East and Southeast Asia have seen rapid productivity growth and off-farm employment, while much of sub-Saharan Africa continues to grapple with low yields, fragmented value chains, and high youth unemployment in rural areas. The FAO, IFAD and World Bank emphasise that inclusive transformation requires linking smallholders to value chains, formalising rural labour, and ensuring that women and youth share in the gains. The core dispute is over the model of transformation. Some advocate consolidation, mechanisation and integration into corporate value chains, citing scale economies and export competitiveness. Others, including agroecology and food sovereignty movements, argue for territorial markets, cooperatives, and decent-work standards that protect smallholders, pastoralists and farmworkers from precarity. Concerns over land grabbing, contract farming asymmetries, and gender inequalities in land tenure complicate the picture. Today, rural transformation policy is shaped by the ILO's decent work agenda, the FAO's Voluntary Guidelines on Tenure (VGGT), the UN Decade of Family Farming, and AfCFTA's emerging agricultural value-chain protocols. Climate change, digital agriculture, and migration are reshaping rural labour markets, demanding integrated responses across agriculture, education, social protection and infrastructure policy.

Key players

Resources

News, lessons, and country profiles to prep for 63rd AEASA Conference 2026.

Recent reporting to ground your prep

West Bengal Voter Deletion Crisis 2026

West Bengal Voter Deletion Crisis

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Lessons

Bite-sized lessons to build the basics

Hidden Stakeholders

Engagement Strategies

Dynamic Analysis

Stakeholder Mapping Workshop

Courses

Guided courses that go deeper on the topic

Multilateral Negotiation

Policy Brief Writing

Advanced Negotiation

Conflict Resolution

South Africa September 2026

By committee

Frequently asked questions

63rd AEASA Conference 2026

Sep 29 – Oct 1, 2026Mokopane, South AfricaIn-person

Registration open

Committees & topics

Topics
Geopolitics in Agriculture: Balancing Policy, Markets, Food Security and Shared Prosperity · Governance, Policy and Political Economy of Food Systems · Agricultural Policy, Sovereignty and Regional Food Diplomacy · Trade, Food Security and the Protection of Vulnerable Groups · Food Systems Governance and Multi-Level Coordination · Geopolitics of Input Markets: Fertiliser, Seeds and Strategic Commodities · Political Economy of Agricultural Subsidies and Public Expenditure · Markets, Value Chains, Labour and Inclusive Rural Transformation

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 3 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

South Africa

As the host nation, ZAF plays a central role in showcasing regional agricultural challenges and innovations, particularly concerning sustainable development and food security.

Role in topic

Kenya

KEN's perspective will likely focus on the challenges and successes of smallholder farming, climate resilience, and agricultural technology adoption in East Africa.

Role in topic

Nigeria

NGA will likely contribute insights on large-scale agricultural transformation, food security for a rapidly growing population, and the role of agricultural economics in national development.

Role in topic

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

Geopolitics in Agriculture: Balancing Policy, Markets, Food Security and Shared Prosperity

Key players

Governance, Policy and Political Economy of Food Systems

Key players

Agricultural Policy, Sovereignty and Regional Food Diplomacy

Key players

Trade, Food Security and the Protection of Vulnerable Groups

Key players

Food Systems Governance and Multi-Level Coordination

Key players

Geopolitics of Input Markets: Fertiliser, Seeds and Strategic Commodities

Key players

Political Economy of Agricultural Subsidies and Public Expenditure

Key players

Markets, Value Chains, Labour and Inclusive Rural Transformation

Key players

Resources

News, lessons, and country profiles to prep for 63rd AEASA Conference 2026.

Recent reporting to ground your prep

West Bengal Voter Deletion Crisis 2026

West Bengal Voter Deletion Crisis

Delimitation Based on 2011 Census

Supreme Court Upholds Election Commission Dis

Lessons

Bite-sized lessons to build the basics

Hidden Stakeholders

Engagement Strategies

Dynamic Analysis

Stakeholder Mapping Workshop

Courses

Guided courses that go deeper on the topic

Multilateral Negotiation

Policy Brief Writing

Advanced Negotiation

Conflict Resolution

South Africa September 2026

By committee

Committees & topics

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Topics & background

Resources

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