Shock food price increases
|Published
File picture: Eric Vidal File picture: Eric Vidal
Cape Town - Food prices are rocketing in South Africa thanks to the drought and the falling rand, with poor South Africans finding it difficult to afford a balanced and nutritious diet.
That’s according to independent research group the Bureau for Food and Agricultural Policy (BFAP), which said the cost of a basic basket of food had spiked by about 40 percent in the past two years.
The data emerged from the bureau’s Baseline Agricultural Outlook for the years 2016-2025, released yesterday in Paarl.
The organisation tracks the prices of baskets of food designed to feed a low-income family of four for one month. These baskets help measure the affordability of “ideal” balanced diets.
Its “thrifty” basket is cheaper and includes more staple food items such as maize, beans and lentils.
The “diverse” basket is more expensive, and includes more dairy, fruit and meat.
The group calculated between January 2014 and April this year the price of the “thrifty” basket increased by 40 percent, from R2 500 to R3 500, putting pressure on the poor.
The price of the “diverse” basket also rose by 40 percent, from R3 250 to R4 600.
Bureau researcher Marion Delport from the University of Pretoria, pointed to two major cost drivers.
The first was the rise in the cost of key staples such as maize and wheat, principally due to last year’s severe drought.
“In December 2015 and January this year the drought really started to affect the producers of white maize,” said Delport. “And maize makes up quite a big proportion of the food baskets.”
There was a three-month lag from when the drought hit maize farmers to when higher prices filtered through to the shop shelf.
“It is only in March that we really saw the impact of the drought on these baskets,” she said.
Delport said the second reason price hikes was the weak rand, which pushed up the cost of imported fertiliser, equipment and fuel.
Weekend Argus