Agri SA welcomes disaster regulations on energy

This comes after Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma on Tuesday gazetted the disaster management regulations on electricity constraints.

The regulations were made public some two weeks after President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that the country’s energy crisis would be declared a state of disaster to allow government the means to resolve the problem.

“Load shedding has had a dire impact on the farming sector”, says Siweya.

The regulations will see government exempt food production and food storage facilities from load shedding where possible.

“Load shedding in 2022 had cost the sector about R23 billion just in terms of the losses and the impact thereof. However, it is not just an impact on the food production itself but it had a ripple effect on the other facts, in which we consider employment for example where the farmers themselves will probably need to keep the employees on the farm over an extended period of time in order for them to cover up for the time lost during load shedding,” Siweya adds.

“Which has a cost implication because it is overtime that needs to be paid to the employees but also when farmers are also feeling this particular pressure it undermines the viability and the sustainability of the sector which could drop and ultimately put food security at risk in South Africa because food will become expensive and become inaccessible and difficult to produce in this kind of environment.”

Siweya warns that job losses may become a reality in the farming sector.

“We haven't had any reports (of workers being laid off)  and we do not want to create a panic, however this is a really threat that is posed by loadshedding on this sector and the absence of any intervention that directly speaks to the safe guarding the sector from this, unfortunately this may become a reality and we may see these kind of news trickling into our sector.”

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