While Agri SA welcomed President Cyril Ramaphosa’s focus on the electricity crisis in his State of the Nation Address (Sona), the sector remained deeply concerned about the ongoing and devastating impact of load shedding on the agricultural sector, said Agri SA chief executive Christo van der Rheede.
Reacting on Friday morning to the president’s address, Agri SA said it questioned the necessity and value of the declaration of a national state of disaster to address the crisis.
“The announcement of a new ministry of electricity in the Presidency also requires further detail. The powers of this ministry and its distinction from the ministries of mineral resources and energy and public enterprises must be clearly set out to avoid creating a bureaucratic nightmare that hinders rather than accelerates the resolution of the energy crisis,” it said.
The president also announced the planned use of the state of disaster to exempt critical infrastructure from load shedding, to which Agri SA reiterated its call for the agricultural sector to be declared an essential service under such regulations.
Van der Rheede said given the centrality of food security to the well-being of South Africans and the country’s stability, this intervention must be used to partially exempt the parts of the agricultural sector dependent on electricity for irrigation, packing, processing and cold storage from load shedding above stage 4.
But Agri SA welcomed the positive moves to address the capacity of South Africa’s ports, and the efforts to improve infrastructure such as rail, roads and rural bridges.
“It remains to be seen how quickly these projects will come on line, enhancing the productivity of the agricultural sector. Agri SA will work tirelessly on these critical interventions to ensure the protection of sustainable food production in South Africa,” Van der Rheede said.
Meanwhile, Francois Strydom, the chairperson of the Agricultural Business Chamber (Agbiz), said Ramaphosa’s Sona spoke to most of the critical issues facing agribusiness today, which were energy security, logistics, water security and infrastructure.
“We hope that the new positions being created within the Presidency will provide the necessary impetus for solutions to be found, as business needs urgent interventions,” Strydom said.
Agbiz chief executive Theo Boshoff noted that an expectation had been created that must be fulfilled.
“As the president noted, it is a complex problem as solutions are guided by technical limitations in the grid and a lack of clear guidance on the requirements for alternative load-shedding schedules that could better align with the needs of industry.
“Centralising decision-making within the Presidency will hopefully inject much-needed urgency and provide a response to the proposals the task team has made. We look forward to further engagements in this regard.
“The declaration of a state of disaster represents a clear statement to move forward with greater speed in addressing the energy crisis. This needs to be done in a very focused manner without unnecessary disruption to business or society at large,” Boshoff said.
He added that agribusinesses were the lifeblood of rural towns and bore the cost of poor service delivery.
Strydom also supported the president’s announcement that over 1 million title deeds would be awarded to poor households and called for this initiative to be extended to rural areas, where the beneficiaries of land reform continue to languish under insecure tenure rights.
BUSINESS REPORT