AgriSA agricultural economist Kulani Siweya said this week that the findings were dire and pointed to the enormous cost of South Africa’s poor road maintenance on the functioning and growth of the sector.
The amount of money small-scale farmers spend on fixing roads is unsustainable and may cripple them in the long run, according to AgriSA. The association, which was briefing the media on the results of a survey it conducted on the impact of deteriorating roads on the agricultural sector, revealed that many farmers were attempting to fix roads themselves.
The survey revealed that respondents transported an average of 94% of their produce on roads.“The produce moved in the last financial year, just by those surveyed, was worth more than R7.1 billion. This explains why 69% of the respondents at some point attempted to fix the roads themselves,” he said.
“These farmers are incurring related costs of more than R200,000 per participant. “Operational challenges, because of the state of our roads, have led to an estimated average loss of 16% in turnover during the last financial year surveyed,” Siweya said food producers, including small-scale farmers, could not be expected to carry these costs, especially considering the state of the economy.