A sector-wide review of the COVID-19 impact on the South African agricultural sector during 2020–21

ABSTRACT

The agriculture value chain is a complex web of interactions which includes activities within the agricultural sector and various support industries less directly linked to the sector. Despite being declared an essential service when the COVID-19 regulations were promulgated and lockdown restrictions imposed, the value chain still faced multiple bottlenecks and disruptions that needed to be overcome to ensure food security through this period. This paper considers such bottlenecks and their impacts on major industries within agriculture, as well as the actions taken to address them. It highlights distributional challenges, which influenced accessibility to vulnerable groups, which was accentuated by the initial exclusion of informal traders from essential services – an omission that was later corrected. Furthermore, it notes severe impacts on non-food industries such as wine, where trade was restricted, but other sectors performed well and overall, agriculture still grew by 13% year on year and mostly keeping food inflation in check. Key to this performance was that real time communication and reporting mechanisms were put in place, allowing stakeholders to report bottlenecks quickly, from where they could be escalated and addressed through strong collaboration between government and industry.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• value chains
• food security

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the editorial support provided by Janine Thorne.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 A longer version of this paper was prepared for DPME and National Treasury as a chapter (see Kirsten et al. 2021) in the South African country report on the Covid-19 pandemic.

2 Official Statistics South Africa consumer price index data for “all urban areas”.

3 A stipend is a fixed payment intended to help offset costs. Stipends are considered taxable income.