Ample harvests and robust grain output set to slow food inflation in SA

South Africa had a challenging start to the 2022/23 summer crop season. Excessive rain slowed the planting activity in various regions from October 2022, when the season started, until the end of the year.

-  Wandile Sihlobo

AGRIBUSINESS PERSPECTIVE by Wandile Sihlobo

As a result, the crop was planted more than a month later than the typical planting window in some areas. It was only around late January 2023 that all plantings were completed.

The late plantings also raised fears of possible poor yields, as some feared the crop would be negatively affected by frost later in the season.

Another challenge was intensified load-shedding and its impact on production, mainly for areas under irrigation (about 20% of maize and 15% of soya bean production).

Fortunately, the combination of favourable weather conditions and the various interventions to ease the load-shedding burden on farmers supported the production conditions. These interventions include load curtailment, expansion of the diesel rebate to the food value chain, and, most recently, the launch of the Agro-Energy Fund.

(The effectiveness of these energy support measures nonetheless differs across farming enterprises and food companies; the costs to food producers, mainly those not fully benefitting from the above efforts, remain high because of all the necessary mitigation measures.)