South Africa's foreign minister Lindiwe Sisulu has expressed disappointment about the US' "failure" to use diplomatic channels to raise its concerns about Pretoria's land policy, the foreign affairs department has said.

Ms Sisulu made her views known to a senior US diplomat summoned to the foreign office in an escalating row between the two countries over South Africa's plans to allow for the expropriation of some white-owned farmland without compensation.

The US state department said the policy would send South Africa down the wrong path, and a tweet by President Donald Trump referred to "land seizures" and "large scale killing" of farmers in South Africa.

However, statistics from a federation of South African agricultural organisations, AgriSA, show farm murders are at a 24-year low in South Africa.