High prices for some fruits and vegetable products might persist for a while, warns Thabile Nkunjana.
Food inflation in South Africa rose from 12.4% reported in December 2022 to 13.8% reported in January 2023, the fastest rate of growth in nearly 14 years – driven by oils and fats, bread and cereals and processed foods.
Vegetable and fruit prices were a big driver.
In January 2023, prices for fruits climbed by 5.6% on a monthly basis, with apples and bananas leading the way, while prices for vegetables increased by 4.2%, with onions leading the way to a greater extent, followed by potatoes and cabbage.
This can be attributed to rolling blackouts that have become more severe in recent months, hail and persistent heavy rains in key fruit and vegetable producing regions.
Due to the periodical limited supply, apple prices are often higher during January and February, each year, nevertheless start to decline in March as the supply increases. But this might not be the case this year.
The country has been fortunate to receive good rainfall, which may have assisted crops in some areas in maintaining the appropriate moisture. Electricity interruptions, however, have decreased crop yields in places that are normally warmer and have been facing drought as irrigation remained inadequate.
Hail had a negative impact on the output of apples and pears in Ceres Town and Langkloof, two important apple and pear producing regions. As a result, it is predicted that exports of apples and pears will decrease by 5% and 6%, respectively, during the 2023 marketing season. But these are only preliminary estimates that can change as the year progress.
A kilogram of bananas was selling for R17.49 in January 2023, a price that was nearly identical to the price reported in May 2022 after being reasonable priced throughout the majority of 2022. However, there are currently no supply concerns noted, and Mozambique, South Africa’s important source of bananas, was said to have a plentiful crop to export, so this may have been a brief glitch.
Lemon harvesting has been significantly delayed in Letsitele, Hoedspruit, and Onderberg due to heavy rainfall in Mpumalanga. Landslides were also reported in several locations, with Schoemanskloof and parts of Nelspruit reporting significant flooding.
Infrastructure has been destroyed, the soils are wet, and more rain is expected in the coming days. As a result, there are still harvesting delays in some locations, which results in a limited supply.
Prices for vegetables have been rising since June 2022, but a pattern toward an increase started to emerge between September and October 2022.
The South African onion production area was reportedly 20% smaller in 2022, hence the decreased supply. This combined with season transition across provinces became prevalent towards the end of 2022. As a result, in January 2023, onion prices were 51.9% higher year on year and 2.2% month on month.
Because farmers could not reach their fields to harvest, the extreme rains also had an impact on potato prices, but data from Potato-SA indicates that supply is now returning. Nonetheless, load shedding is still likely to have an impact on potato processing, which could put pressure on potato processed products.
All things considered, regrettably, it is possible that high prices for some fruits and vegetable products might persist for a while due to some of the factors negatively affecting production.
Thabile Nkunjana is an agricultural economist in the Agro-Food Chains Markets and Economic Research Division of the National Agricultural Marketing Council. News24 encourages freedom of speech and the expression of diverse views. The views of columnists published on News24 are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent the views of News24.
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