The January Agenda – 2026

January marks a period of focused inquiry at the Laubscher Institute for Research. This month’s work centres on agriculture, policy, and power structures as interconnected components of modern governance and production systems, rather than as isolated domains.

A key area of attention is agriculture as strategic infrastructure. Food systems are increasingly expected to deliver affordability, regulatory compliance, and stability under conditions of rising volatility. Yet the mechanisms through which these expectations are enforced — and the point at which their costs are absorbed — remain insufficiently examined. TLIR’s work this month treats agriculture not as a cultural or environmental abstraction, but as a system shaped by incentives, constraints, and external authority.

Pieter Myburgh — The Laubscher Institute for Research

Agricultural Domain Expert, The Laubscher Institute for Research

As part of this inquiry, TLIR will work closely with agricultural domain expert Pieter Myburgh, whose role within the Institute involves contributing practitioner insight to ongoing research on field-level realities, compliance pressures, and the operational effects of policy design.

Alongside this, January’s agenda examines policy as a process rather than an outcome. Regulatory frameworks often operate at an institutional distance from production environments, relying on standardisation and compliance to achieve public objectives. This raises questions about how policy translates into operational reality, how costs are generated and distributed, and where unintended constraints may emerge.

Underlying both areas is a broader interest in power structures — specifically how authority is exercised, how decisions are insulated from exposure to risk, and how responsibility for system stability is allocated. Power, in this sense, is treated not as intent or personality, but as structure: embedded in institutions, procedures, and incentives. We will also be taking a look at how Micro-Authority Collapse is affecting South Africans.

The work undertaken this month will include structured conversations with practitioners and the development of analytical material intended to clarify these relationships. The objective is not advocacy or prescription, but structural understanding. Outputs from January will inform ongoing research into regulatory governance, political economy, and long-term system resilience.

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- Laubscher Institute for Research 2026