Sabrina Dean, Farmer’s Weekly
Prior to the national lockdown to contain the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), stakeholders in South Africa’s agriculture industry had already started engaging with government about measures that would enable food security and prevent scenarios such as food riots.
This was according to Dr John Purchase, CEO of Agbiz, who told Farmer’s Weekly that the organisation, along with other role players, had weighed in on the subject when the lockdown regulations were still being drafted.
This was in an attempt to prevent measures being implemented that would have had even more dire consequences for the country.
“We could see that the way [government] had structured the measures was going to cause a huge problem. [Government] was going to close the Joburg Fresh Produce Market, and it was basically our intervention, along with role players such as the Institute for Marketing Agents of South Africa, that [prevented] that,” he said.
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The South African Pork Producers’ Organisation (SAPPO) coordinates industry interventions and collaboratively manages risks in the value chain to enable the sustainability and profitability of pork producers in South Africa.
