MAILBOX: Loadshedding’s knock-on effect for food costs

Comment from BizNews community member Roxana Earle:

Hi Alec

A couple of days ago I read the joyous news that 2023 would see more load-shedding roll-outs.

I wonder what will happen to our electricity-evolved food production.

As it is my son, along with other dairy farmers in Natal, are enduring spiralling diesel costs using generators as they milk their large herds, cool the milk and keep their dairies up to health-regulation specifications.

Pasture irrigation is also way behind schedule for efficient growth as there are not enough hours in a week to apply the right amount of water over the acreages of grass so necessary for milk production.

How are farmers, who survive on the banks, to service their debts as fertilizer and other costs suffer from the Rand–Dollar exchange rate?

Who knows how other branches of agriculture are faring.

Surely agriculture could receive some sort of diesel price concession for food production.

I wonder what our food will cost in the coming months?  

Especially as I have a view of the Durban Bay and regularly count an unprecedented number of ships waiting to get into port thanks to the Transnet drama. I wonder what the cost of rice will be to those who depend on it as a staple.

Read also:

• Analysing the global food crisis with SA’s very own Dr Theo de Jager
• Farmers need to produce more with less on less – COP27
• South African farming exports vulnerable if problems left unchecked