At this time of worldwide concern about food shortages, South Africa does have enough supplies to feed the nation, says the director-general of the department of agriculture and land affairs, Dr Emily Mogajane.
But the government is very concerned about rising prices and the affordability of staple foods, she says.
"We have a situation where SA does have sufficient food," she said. "We happen to be lucky compared with other countries in the world.
"Our food price monitoring committee has indicated that we have a three-million ton surplus of maize in the country."
Mogajane gave this assurance when she was speaking on SAfm Radio's discussion programme, The After Eight Debate, on the topic, "Is South Africa doing enough to secure food for its own nation?".
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The debate was held in the light of worldwide concerns about food shortages and the panel was told that 29 countries had already acted to curb exports and protect their own supplies.
"We do have food available," said Mogajane. "Our concern is whether vulnerable groups will be able to afford the present prices."
She said discussions had been held at cabinet level to discuss interventions that could help these vulnerable groups.
Mogajane said SA had imported only some yellow maize this year and this would be used as animal feed.
On why South Africa had not imported any genetically-modified maize, she said: "The government has instituted measures to ensure we don't get variants that may be detrimental to the people at large."
Mogajane said there had been a move away from the rural areas of South Africa to the towns and cities. "We must look at intervention measures to make agriculture more attractive."
But concern about the need to import food was expressed by another panel member, Prof Jan Williams, of the department of agricultural economics at the University of Free State.
He said South Africa had in the past 12 months imported maize, wheat, chicken, beef and dairy products.
"In the year until April 2008, we imported 1.2 million tons of maize and 1.4 million tons of wheat and also meat products."
Williams said world markets had gone through a phase when food prices dropped, but demand was now exceeding supply.
Prices were now rising, but South Africa should not do too much to intervene, as higher prices encouraged investment in agriculture.
And importing food was not necessarily a bad thing, said a third member of the panel, executive director of the Free Market Foundation, Leon Louw.
"We have been importing food," he said. "This shows we have food security, if we can buy it."
Louw said this was the only true food security, the ability to buy the country's needs. "We sell when we have enough and buy when we need to. That is exactly what we should do."
He said it was "crazy" to stop exports for fear of shortages.
"If you drive the price of rice down, for instance, by stopping exports, you encourage people to produce something else, so they can make a profit.
Louw stressed the need not to interfere with free-market forces. "If you want more production, you have to allow the price to be the incentive."
- This article was originally published on page 10 of Daily News on July 03, 2008
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