SA Graan Februarie 2016

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Will Southern Africa cope with the
current drought?
t he beginning of 2016 saw heightened concerns about the er-
ratic rainfall distribution, with all previous maize projections
being revised downwards to ‘severe’ and ‘disaster’ scenarios.
Many fear that Southern Africa may be on the brink of the
worst drought recorded in history, surpassing the levels
reached in 1992. There are several differences between the 1992
situation and the present though.
Firstly, the regional dynamics are quite different in that there are
more surplus producers in the region, namely South Africa, Zambia,
Tanzania and Malawi. Secondly, the region is far more exposed to
the impacts of global food markets, with efforts to integrate regional
food markets, making the region somewhat more able to move grain
from one place to the other than before.
Given these structural changes in national, regional and global
food markets, the region faces what could be an entirely new chal-
lenge to what is fundamentally an old problem.
Chief among these challenges is determining the level of produc-
tion and import requirements – there is a need to start thinking of
possible strategies that would ensure that food is available to the
entire regional population at an affordable price.
This involves answering the following questions:
Will there be enough grain to feed the population within the
region?
If not, where is the grain imports going to come from?
Is the infrastructure going to be able to cope with the level of
imports needed to augment regional production?
WANDILE SIHLOBO, economist: Grain SA and
TINASHE KAPUYA, head: Trade and Investment, Agbiz
GRAIN MARKET
-overview
– 20 January 2016
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