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The Citizen reports that Prof Jannie Rossouw of the Wits Business School is extremely worried about the impact of the current bout of load shedding on food prices.
He says farmers cannot produce enough food, which will lead to higher food prices, which will in turn push up inflation and see South Africans paying higher interest for longer. Bennie van Zyl of agricultural organisation TLU SA agrees that less production will cause food prices to increase, which will in turn push up inflation. Load shedding poses the biggest problem for farmers who use irrigation and for those who have to keep their products in the cold chain. “Agriculture is a complex and diverse industry. Farmers who use irrigation cannot have load shedding interrupt irrigation cycles as this interferes with the biological growth phase which cannot be caught up later,” Van Zyl pointed out. Farmers who cannot keep up the cold chain also suffer because they have to discard produce, such as fruit, vegetables, milk and meat that are not kept at a cold enough temperature. In addition, farmers have to irrigate fields where they grow feed for winter. Van Zyl says all this means that there will not be enough food and that the market forces of supply and demand will cause food prices to increase, which will lead to an increase in inflation. “Consumer food price inflation is already elevated, estimated to have averaged around 9% in 2022 (from 6.5% in 2021), driven mainly by global agricultural commodity challenges.” Wandile Sihlobo of the Agricultural Business Chamber (Agbiz) says there is probably no issue more urgent than the worsening energy crisis for SA’s agriculture and agribusinesses. There are also concerns about food security as the effect of load shedding will probably show in the volumes of products to be harvested or produced later in the coming months due to the time lag in agricultural production stages.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Ina Opperman at The Citizen (subscriber access only)
- Read too, Chicken crisis: 10 million chicks culled in six weeks due to load shedding, at Fin24 (subscriber access only)
Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page