Experts warn against more bureaucracy in scramble for cheaper food

Responding to mounting discontent over high food prices, government recently announced its short-, medium- and long-term strategies to address rising food prices.
Issue date : 22 August 2008

- Advertisement -

Responding to mounting discontent over high food prices, government recently announced its short-, medium- and long-term strategies to address rising food prices. Short-term measures include the extension of the national school food programme; increasing food parcels to the poor from 70 000 to 140 000, and possible extensions on social grants, said government spokesperson Themba Maseko. Medium- and long-term plans will strive to make SA less dependant on imports by increasing our capacity to produce food, Maseko said.

He added that small farmers and co-ops need strengthening, and rail infrastructure should be improved. The Llima/Letsema campaign must be implemented to ensure sustainable land use, and food garden projects need to be encouraged. SA’s trade and tariff policies will be revisited to encourage production for the local and export market. Government also said its new “food control agency” needs a different name, as the current one creates the wrong impression about its proposed function. The agency will not control food prices, but look at measures that will strengthen the agroprocessing industry, focusing on issues such as food safety, sanitation and phytosanitary regulation.

It will also encourage agricultural production for the export market. Maseko said that the legal framework for the agency will be in place by March 2009. But many agricultural experts and economists feel this is a waste of resources and duplicates existing structures. “My overall impression of this agency is negative,” said Dr Mohammad Karaan, an agricultural economist at Stellenbosch University. “It would be better to use existing structures, such as the National Agricultural Marketing Council (NAMC) and the Competition Commission. Rather than scaring business with monopoly busting, the commission could work with NAMC to address these issues.

- Advertisement -

This agency is the response to a crisis, but when the crisis is over, there’ll still be the fundamental problem of lack of government support for commercial agriculture. There are good strategic plans for commercial agriculture, but the capacity to implement them is lacking.” He added that the distrust between government and commercial agriculture is partially to blame. Dr Ferdi Meyer, senior lecturer at Pretoria University’s Bureau for Food and Agricultural Policy, called government talks about the new agency “empty promises”. “Do the people who decide on these things understand the basics of import and export parity?” Meyer asked.

Maize meal, at export parity, is as cheap as it can get, but we pay import parity for wheat as we need to import 1 million tons of it. “International demand, infrastructure and quality all determine eventual food prices,” Dr Meyer concluded.” The structures to negotiate this process exist, but government lacks the capacity to use them to get the basics right.” – Wouter Kriel