Umm Muhammed Umar

The abundant rainfall that we have been experiencing lately has seen the price of potatoes and tomatoes significantly increase. Duncan Masiwa, Head of News for Food for Mzansi spoke to Radio Islam about the price hikes.

Masiwa said that the cold conditions experienced country wide, over the past few months, had had an adverse effect on the volumes of produce delivered to the market. He said that the rainfall, in addition to heatwaves, has had a severe impact on tomato prices. Masiwa explained that when a farm is faced with extremely heavy rainfall, floods occur, and the crop that farmers were expecting to send to the market is lost, the volume of produce reaching the market is significantly reduced.  coming into the market. This has an impact on how retailers or markets, price their produce.

Earlier this year, tomato and potato producing regions saw severe weather patterns coming into play, and this had had an effect on farmers. Masiwa said frost has a severe impact on farmers. He said, “if [the farmer] cannot get an offtake agreement or stable market, buyers may choose not to buy your tomatoes or your or your product. So then, as a farmer, you’re then stuck with this produce that you that you planted.” Of course, when there’s no produce going into the market, this is reflected on the shelves, where there is little volume, and prices become affected.

Farmers in Limpopo province are major tomato producers. They too have been recently facing with heavy weather factors and rainy conditions. According to Masiwa, many could not get their produce to the market, either because it was damaged, or the quality was low. Tomato farmers in the Western Cape had a similar struggle. While some are rejoicing over the awesome rainfall, the impact on the agricultural sector, has not been positive. Subsistence farmers, who grow produce for household consumption, have also been negatively impacted. He posed the question, “What happens to that, you know, backyard grower, that tomato farmer, that is actually producing food for the community?”

Masiwa could not comment on when prices were expected to drop again. Along with heavy rainfall, farmers have been struggling to get pesticides for their plants, which contributed to lower volumes of tomatoes in the market. Masiwas added, “And, you know, of course, we are at the end of at the beginning of the new month, December. So, high demand coupled with lower volumes, has in fact resulted into market prices going up in the past week.” He added that for the next month, economists are predicting a high demand, coupled with lowered volumes of, potatoes and tomatoes.