Image: Astral Foods is injecting R200m into power generation and water storage as infrastructural issues affect operations.
South Africa’s agricultural sector has said that the daily power cuts being experienced nationwide are the biggest threat to food production and food security this year.
Now steps are underway to try to quantify the damage being done to food production because of the inability of Eskom, the national power utility, to supply power consistently. It is imposing daily rotational blackouts, known as load shedding, to protect the national grid.
Agriculture minister Thoko Didiza and agricultural sector leaders resolved last month to set up a task team to assess the impact of load shedding on the sector, the The Citizen reported.
The task team will also explore short, medium and long term interventions to ease the burden of load shedding within the farming, food, fibre and beverages value chains, according to a departmental spokesman.
The financial impact on farmers, agribusinesses and food security was not yet clear and would be difficult to quantify, said agricultural organisation Agbiz.
“At Agbiz, we have sent out a survey to collect critical data that will help us understand the scale of the financial impact of this crisis on the sector.”
“There are also food security concerns as the effect of load shedding will probably show in the volumes of products to be harvested/produced later in the coming months due to the time lag in agricultural production stages.”
Agbiz also noted concerns about job losses as farm production was affected.
