Drought will lead to small maize harvest

Research report says knock-on effect will be higher food prices

WHILE South Africa has one of the highest rates of obesity in sub-Saharan Africa, one in four people are regularly hungry. And with a looming drought affecting the country, food prices are set to escalate.

This week experts in the South African food industry released a report exploring future scenarios for the country’s food industry titled:

Tatjana von Bormann, programme manager: market transformation at WWF South Africa, said in recent weeks it had emerged that South Africa was set to harvest its smallest maize crop in eight years owing to severe drought conditions in large productions areas.

“The knock-on effects of this include higher food prices in the short term, as grain is a basic input for the production of red meat, poultry, eggs and milk.”

Von Bormann said this served to illustrate how uncertain the future of food was.

The process of developing the scenarios was convened by the Southern Africa Food Lab at Stellenbosch University in partnership with WWF South Africa and Reos Partners.

They dealt with plausible threats to natural resources, food production, the impacts of the political economy and nutrition issues.

Scott Drimie, director of the Southern Africa Food Lab said there were a number of concerns regarding food production in South Africa in the coming years and many of the challenges made it difficult to achieve the constitutional right of all South Africans to adequate food.

“Hunger and malnutrition remain serious problems in South Africa, but the underlying causes are complex and interrelated,” he said.

They spanned environmental, health, economic, socio-political and agro-food issues which included increasing unemployment, food price volatility, HIV and Aids, drought conditions, a decrease in government support for agriculture and persistently high levels of urban and rural poverty.

Drimie said the only way to tackle these issues constructively was by prompting a more coherent conversation about an effective food system for South Africa.

He said he hoped the report would provide a starting point.