South Africa's agriculture sector, known for its diverse and abundant produce, faces a severe threat as load-shedding wreaks havoc on its cold chain infrastructure. The frequent power outages are pushing up prices, compromising the quality and safety of perishable goods, and ultimately risking the nation's competitiveness as a supplier of agricultural products.According to AgriSA, load-shedding is an overwhelming burden to farmers already under pressure. The organisation estimates that the agricultural sector lost more than R23 billion between January and September 2022 as load-shedding doubled compared to the same period in 2021.In the first five months of 2023, load-shedding hit new highs, with the country experiencing 11 970 GWh of load-shedding until May 10. This means the country has seen more load-shedding in 2023 to date than the total load-shedding in 2022.With statistics only available until May, the country has seen load-shedding every day of 2023, but for five days. It has been in the dark for more than 2 440 hours, and is clearly set to overtake the 3 776 hours of load-shedding recorded in 2022.According to Professor Malcolm Dodd, principal of Coldcubed, maintaining the cold chain with the challenges Eskom presents is a challenge."An option many consider is appropriate kilowatt capacity emergency generators for cold rooms. These are, however, very expensive to purchase and run."AgriSA says the rolling blackouts exacerbate the global hike in food prices. The organisation has been vocal about the impact of load-shedding, saying a catastrophe looms for the country unless measures are implemented to address the electricity outages. "Farming operations will be disrupted as the equipment is damaged due to power failures; the cost of food production will increase as farmers are forced to irrigate at peak prices; and labour costs will soar due to irregular work hours based on load-shedding schedules. At the same time, meat producers cannot pump water for their cattle or slaughter and process their livestock and poultry. Agro-processing and retail will also suffer as packing and cooling operations fail. The result of all this for food affordability and availability will be devastating," reads a statement.Prof Dodd said to exacerbate the matter, the perishables sector was having to deal with delays on all fronts. "There are serious delays in shipping, with port operations hindered as cranes cannot work or containers are in stacks longer, all due to the power outages. Not much can be done about this. The perishable industry has to live with delayed loading. It thus delays shipping schedules hoping that the insulation of the containers is good enough to keep the cold in for the duration of the power outage."
