Thread by @RussLamberti

Earlier this year AgriSA announced that farm murders had declined to their "lowest in nearly 20 years." But they made no mention of the declining number of farms, farmers, & seeming trend of farmers moving to towns. Has @AgriSAOfficial adjusted the data for these trends?

@AgriSAOfficial Based on my research of StatsSA data, the number of farming units has fallen from 60k in late 80s to around 30k today. What's less clear is how many farmers live on these commercial farms given increasing corporatisation & mechanisation of farms, & farmers moving to towns.

@AgriSAOfficial Farmers increasingly taking up residence in nearby towns is anecdotal & not verified with robust data, but it's an important trend for research b/c it's relevant to farmer murder stats & tells us if indeed farmers feel safer in towns - itself very telling information about risk.

@AgriSAOfficial For eg, since farm murders peaked around the turn of C21st (official SAPS data), the number of farming units has fallen by roughly a third. Degree to which this translates to declining commercial farmer resident populations on farms is not clear but seemingly ignored by AgriSA.

@AgriSAOfficial Another problem with making sweeping claims about declining farm murders is that it takes no account of farmers' responses ito beefed up security, self-funded armed response services, relocating to towns, diminishing cash usage etc. Again, no word on this in the AgriSA claims.

@AgriSAOfficial AgriSA was also silent on the trend in both official SAPS & AfriForum/TAU data which shows a stable-to-rising trend in farm murders since ~2011. Taking all these factors into account, how can AgriSA so confidently report & imply that farmer safety is materially improving?

@AgriSAOfficial In short: AgriSA simply cannot claim with any worthwhile degree of confidence that living on a farm is materially safer now than in 2000, if all it is drawing on is a timeseries of raw SAPS farm murder numbers. Yet this is now peddled as fact by a hopelessly uncritical media.

@AgriSAOfficial And further, even if one suspended rigour and conceded that farming has become materially safer since 2000, this still doesn't at all imply that farming is safe and that farmer murder risk is not abnormally high. But again, this benign conclusion was reached by uncritical media.

@AgriSAOfficial This is the anatomy, not of fake news, which is an increasingly nebulous term, but of (to use a Ben Hunt term) 'fiat news' - that is, information reported as a set of authoritative conclusions (almost fiat decree) rather than speculation, argumentation or cautious propositions.

@AgriSAOfficial Fakes news is lies, fabrications etc. Really quite innocuous. Fiat news is more insidious. It's news by decree. Leaping from raw information to socio-political Meaning to suit a dominant narrative. It's spurious data-fitting, it's always been around, & it's become a media staple.

@AgriSAOfficial AgriSA report & its media blitz is pure Fiat News. Taking raw data with disputed accuracy & turning it into authoritative decree:"farmers are the safest they've been in 20yrs, don't listen to the hysterical far right." Fiat news-mongers don't report news but construct decrees.

@AgriSAOfficial In summary: farmers might be the safest they've been in 20yrs, but the AgriSA report DOES NOT prove it or imply that farming entails normal risk, yet this became the raw material for the construction of Fiat News by many SA media outlets & other centres of propaganda.

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