Western Cape grain farmers warned that high input costs, weak producer prices and a distorted wheat market threaten the future of local production, with serious consequences for rural economies and food security, at an Agri Western Cape session with Minister of Agriculture Willie Aucamp at Nampo Cape in Bredasdorp. Dr Dirk Strydom, managing director of Nampo, said wheat margins in the province had been under pressure for some time; it can take a farmer five to seven normal years to recover from a drought, and a continued decline in wheat would pull barley and oats down with it in a region with few cropping alternatives.

'We are far from an open free market, as we're having to compete with farmers in other countries who receive subsidies and other government support,' said Agri Western Cape president Villiers Loubser, a Swartland farmer, asking not for subsidies but for government to act on tariffs and imports and criticising delays in triggering the tariff mechanism. Producers questioned South Africa's dependence on roughly two million tonnes of imported wheat, and grain farmer José de Kock said producers had become price-takers while millers, bakers and traders kept making money: 'We've been footing the bill for years but cannot afford to do so anymore.'

Such concerns led the wheat industry to request a Section 7 investigation under the Marketing of Agricultural Products Act into trade and tariff policy, value-chain efficiency, storage, logistics, food security and innovation, which the National Agricultural Marketing Council launched in May. Aucamp said he had discussed it with Grain SA but had not yet seen a report. 'I know for a fact that our grain farmers are not being treated fairly,' he said, arguing that lower-quality imports set local prices — a Bureau for Food and Agricultural Policy analysis of 2024/25 found local wheat's baking value about 39% higher and milling value about 14% higher than comparable imports, while the grade-weighted SAFEX price was about 9%, or roughly R700/t, below the weighted import price.

'It is not a sin for a farmer to make a profit,' Aucamp said, adding that food security debates overlook 'food profitability'; the area planted to wheat has fallen to its lowest in almost a century. He conceded the limits of his portfolio — tariffs sit with the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition — calling the number of departments whose decisions affect agriculture 'highly frustrating', and said change would need 'real political buy-in'. He cautioned against over-regulation, urged farmers to move further down the value chain and to act collectively through organised agriculture.

Closing the session, Western Cape agriculture minister Ivan Meyer called the grain farmers' problems 'existential' and said addressing them needed the political will to shape the situation, with the industry's concerns fed into government planning and engagements with National Treasury.

Source: Farmers Weekly South Africa