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3
GRAANGIDS
2016
GRAIN GUIDE
Sophisticated food value
chain essential for
food security
This privilege that all South Africans enjoy is
feasible only through a sophisticated food
value chain within which producers collabo-
rate with commercial banks, the Land Bank,
agricultural businesses, input providers and
processors of agricultural commodities.
Land reform is imperative. The defence of our
constitution and food security should enjoy the
same status. Only by pursuing the letter and
spirit of our constitution will we retain sufficient
investor confidence – which is directly respon-
sible for the asset of food security. The free
market system that is currently used in South
Africa has served the public excellently.
The cheapest way of feeding the population
of South Africa is to allow producers in South
Africa to produce an exportable surplus of
the dominant commodity, namely maize. The
fact that there is a marked difference between
the import and export parity of maize, which
is used as a source of food by producers (red
meat, dairy, poultry, pork production), empha-
sises this statement. On the basis of this price
formulation fact, we can rightly argue that
maize producers have by way of their produc-
tion ability been subsidising the consumer
indirectly for a number of years with the cost
of the feed they consume.
The appetite of primary producers as borrow-
ers as well as financiers of capital is under-
mined by political rhetoric and the evil of our
time, namely corruption. I ask the pertinent
question (which must be answered): How can
South Africa spend R88 billion on land reform
if less than 6% of all land in South Africa (with
a total value of R190 billion) has in fact been
reformed? Grain SA also reminds society of
the fact that we will in any case have to ad-
dress the climate realities that can lead to a
drastic shrinkage in production.
Hopefully politicians and policy makers will
take these facts into consideration in their
endeavours to formulate agricultural and
land policies that will not further destabilise
commodity production in South Africa, for we
are dealing with the future sustenance of our
nation. Of course land reform, an impera-
tive shared by all South Africans, can only be
addressed by cooperation between the public
and private sectors and all those involved
along the entire value chain of commodity
production. For only until as such time as we
can instil this essential cooperation will we, as
a nation, rise to the challenges of the imple-
mentation of values of the letter and the spirit
of our constitution and, in doing so, redress
our tragic history.
This
Grain Guide
is proof of the ability of the
agricultural industry – from primary produc-
tion to the processing of agricultural products
– to ensure food security. If we can sustain this
essential cooperation there is no reason why
sustainable land reform cannot be applied
and carried out successfully without under-
mining our constitutional rights to ownership
and food security. The choices of everybody
in the value chain are obvious. Regardless of
everything, our joint future is in the hands of
our Heavenly Father and Mother Nature.
All the best with the coming production
season.
Louw Steytler,
chairperson: Grain SA
The single biggest asset that South Africa and all its citizens
own is the relatively cheap, high-quality food that is produced
for society by 39 000 commercial farmers and a growing
new generation of farmers.