Unrest in South Africa disrupts agricultural logistics, raises food security concerns

Unrest in South Africa’s eastern provinces is posing a threat to the country’s already precarious food security situation by disrupting agricultural trade and transportation, and damaging infrastructure and planted crops in the region, various sources said. Register Now Reports of ransacking at grain warehouses, damage to trucks and the burning of planted crops have emerged from KwaZulu-Natal province amid blocked highways and the shutdown of the country’s major port at Durban. This is likely to halt the movement of food and agriculture commodities within as well as outside the country, sources said. South Africa is a major producer of grains, particularly corn, and last year most of its grain exports headed to Zimbabwe, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan, according to the US Department of Agriculture’s attache. In 2020-21, corn exports from the country were forecast to rise 40% year on year to 3.5 million mt. KwaZulu-Natal, the epicenter of the rioting and looting, is a major ...