Hold on input price increases needed to keep citrus industry afloat

Citrus stakeholders in South Africa are appealing for a moratorium on price increases of inputs in an effort to save the industry from collapse. Lindi Botha reports.

-  Lindi Botha

The citrus industry has called on all input suppliers to think carefully before increasing prices, lest the entire sector collapses under escalating costs.

Speakers at Citrus Research International's post-harvest workshop for the Mpumalanga region said that ever-tighter production margins meant that many farmers stood on the brink of shutting down their operations. Mitchell Brooke, logistics development manager at the Citrus Growers' Association of Southern Africa, said that if farmers did not make money, no one down the value chain would make money.

"There are many players along the value chain in the citrus industry and everyone needs to play their part to ensure [that stakeholders] survive," he said.