Dry and brown Southern Africa will need food aid

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Driving through the western maize belt in the North West bordering Botswana, vast stretches of normally lush and green fields lie dry and brown. Farmers are battling the worst drought on record, which has transformed parts of agricultural lands into what looks like desert, says Wandile Sihlobo, grains economist at Grains SA.

So far five out of the country’s nine provinces have been declared drought disaster zones, as crops fail and livestock perish. And it is not just SA. The whole Southern African region has been hit by an intense drought since early last year that was brought on by El Niño weather phenomenon.

With SA being an important regional grain exporter, international food and aid agencies are fearing that millions of people will require humanitarian aid this year."It’s pretty bad," says Abdolreza Abbassian, senior grains economist at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation. "SA is the main (grain) supplier to the whole region and now has to import to cover its own needs," Abbassian adds.

The drought has devastated the nation’s grains output, with maize the key staple for many people in the region. Maize output in the 2015-16 crop season fell almost a third from 14.3-million tonnes to 9.9-million, according to Grain SA.

This year it is forecast to fall another 25% to 7.4-million tonnes. Maize prices have surged to record levels on supply concerns. Yellow maize traded on the JSE up almost 90% to R3,950 a tonne since the start of last year.

Analysts expect SA to import between 3-million and 4-million tonnes of maize to fill the gap, but this comes as the rand has fallen to all-time lows against the US dollar. The region’s ability to meet its needs for maize used for food is further complicated by white maize being the preferred grain for food — eaten as pap — while yellow maize is used for livestock feed.

Although the world is awash with grain supplies, about 95% of the world’s traded maize is yellow, and the only other producer that grows enough white maize to export is Mexico, with the US also growing a small amount. "The last time people had to eat yellow maize in SA and Zimbabwe was in the 1980s," when the countries were hit by a similar drought, says Sihlobo.

White maize in Johannesburg is up more than 150% from January last year, trading at R5,091 a tonne.

The grain farmers are not the only ones affected. "With the drought still in effect, livestock farmers are now battling to keep their animals alive," Chris Venter, CE of Afgri, an agricultural services company, warned last month. "The situation has become increasingly dire, with livestock farmers in the drought-stricken areas now having no roughage for their animals to graze."

With the weather continuing to remain dry, and local currencies sluggish against the dollar, analysts expect grain prices in the region to remain elevated.

"The underlying fundamentals for the prices in the region are going to remain firm in the many months to come," says Abbassian. Some maize exported to other parts of Southern Africa from SA. Grain SA is still forecasting total exports of 810,000 tonnes of maize and maize products to countries including Botswana, Lesotho and Namibia, as well as Zimbabwe.

But countries such as Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique and Madagascar will also be in need of food aid, says Geoglam, a group that works with international organisations to monitor crop conditions in countries at risk of food insecurity.