Cape Town - After the declaration of a national state of disaster to address the energy crisis, Agri SA has called for the agriculture sector to be declared an essential service to mitigate the devastating impact of load shedding on the sector and resulting threats to the country’s food security.
Agri SA CEO Christo van der Rheede said: “Given the centrality of food security to the well-being of South Africans and the country’s stability, this intervention must be used to partially exempt the parts of the agricultural sector dependent on electricity for irrigation, packing, processing, and cold storage from load shedding above Stage 4.”
Agri SA highlighted the impact of load shedding on the agricultural value chain and that food security would be affected if no immediate interventions were taken.
On its request to have the sector declared as an essential services provider, the national disaster management centre (NDMC) suggested Agri SA negotiate bilaterally with Eskom on terms and that the NDMC could not classify the agriculture sector as an essential service, because it should be negotiated with the National Energy Crisis Committee (Necom).
Agbiz chief economist Wandile Sihlobo said exemption of the sector from load shedding would be near-impossible as many food processing companies and farms were technically linked to other localities and could not be easily insulated from load shedding.
Annelize Crosby, head of legal intelligence at Agbiz, said: “There is no lockdown this time and nothing to be exempted from, except load shedding, which is not a result of the state of disaster.”
“While we support all possible measures to assist the agricultural value chain, which is very much affected by load shedding, there are technical and practical difficulties with exempting agricultural businesses from load shedding as agricultural users are embedded in the grid,” Crosby said.