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CHAPTER 1
wheat and wheat meal. A special import duty was introduced on a sliding scale to
increase the minimum import price of wheat, maize meal and wheat meal.
In the 1935/1936 season considerably more wheat was produced than was re-
quired for domestic consumption. This caused logistical problems for the Wheat
Board and placed enormous pressure on the production prices for wheat. How-
ever, the Wheat Board still succeeded in paying producers a fair price, mainly by
making provision for the cost of storage for the wheat. Part of the surplus for that
season was transferred to the next season, which produced a smaller wheat crop.
As a surplus of wheat was still available, similar measures were applied in the
1936/1937 season, with similar relative success. The harvest in the 1937/1938 sea-
son was even smaller than in the previous year – to such an extent that the wheat
surplus was wiped out, and since that season South Africa has been a net importer
of wheat almost all the time.
During the Second World War the local supply of wheat was inadequate for meet-
ing domestic demand, partially because of a lack of fertiliser, while logistical and
other problems due to the war hampered the import of wheat. This led to significant
shortages in South Africa during the war and serious savings measures had to be
introduced, as are described further on.
In the first year after the end of the Second World War, namely the 1945/1946
season, the position was even worse than during the war because of a worldwide
shortage of grain (including wheat), and the local wheat crop that was the poor-
est in years due to climatic conditions. The result was that further drastic savings
measures had to be introduced.
As can be deduced from the statistics below, the production and use of wheat until
1950 did not increase structurally. However, it then started to increase to the ex-
tent that South Africa was self-sufficient in various years during the period 1964 to
1989. The first domestic wheat crop of a million tons was produced in 1964.
At the beginning of the 1970s the Wheat Board paid particular attention to the needs
of certain smaller industries that used meal and flour, including the pasta industry,
which could not manufacture a satisfactory product from bread wheat. This industry
required flour that was made from durum wheat. Durum wheat was not easily avail-
able in South Africa and had to be imported. However, this was during a period in
which South Africa produced a large surplus of wheat that had to be exported at a
loss, and that made it difficult to justify the import of durum wheat.
Consequently attempts were made in the 1971/1972 season to breed a suitable du-
rum cultivar for South Africa. In the same year the Wheat Board also paid particular
attention to the development of a so-called soft wheat cultivar to meet the needs
of biscuit manufacturers.
Increasing mechanisation, higher yields and larger, more effective farms all con-
tributed to increased production from the 1960s. In addition, the industry was
supported by the Wheat Board’s guaranteed stable prices that were often set at
higher levels than global prices, as well as by assistance from the government,
such as relatively cheap loans granted to producers by the Land Bank.
At the same time economies of scale, concentration of power and monopolies
in the wheat value chain increased. As agents of the Wheat Board, co-opera-
tives, which were owned and controlled by producers, were virtually the only
storage facilities for wheat and owned the major portion of the storage capac-
ity in the country. Wheat was dumped in the co-operatives’ silos, where it was
graded and stored, and from where it was eventually dispatched to buyers from
the Wheat Board.
As in the maize industry, the wheat industry started changing in 1987 and wheat
producers were also forced to increase their productivity by reducing inputs and
converting marginal land to pastures. In the case of wheat the production in the
Western Cape also shifted away from the drier parts and closer to Cape Town.
However, the biggest change in the wheat industry occurred later than in the
maize industry because domestic wheat prices dropped to global price levels
only by 1997.