Amid warnings of increasing strain on the grid and as South Africans brace themselves for their worst winter yet, it's worth contemplating the implications of this worsening scenario for the country's food producers given their role in providing for our most basic need of all – food, writesSouth Africa is more than two months into the interventions announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa to address the load shedding crisis during his State of the Nation address.
Government has argued that it was able to put measures in place to"enhance interventions by the National Energy Crisis Committee in terms of the Energy Action Plan". While it's difficult to point to these 'enhancements', what is glaring is the missed opportunity to implement the concrete measures necessary to protect food security for the current and upcoming seasons.
At the same time, the declining capacity of South Africa's farmers to produce food will also eventually lead to job losses. After all, it's unrealistic to expect farmers to continue to shoulder the growing cost of labour even as the sustainability – never mind the profitability – of farming operations declines.
But we don't need to go back to the drawing board. There have already been interventions like load curtailment – where load shedding is avoided but energy users work with Eskom to reduce or increase energy usage in line with the demands on the grid – have already been piloted and shown to work effectively. We can also construct load shedding schedules to give food producers longer periods of continuous power .