SA officially took over as chair of the Group of 20 (G20) yesterday, at a volatile, uncertain time. For about the next 50 weeks the country will hold considerable sway over this important group’s agenda.
SA takes up the mantle while its record of advocacy on key issues gives it somewhat of a “run-up” to the multilateral crease. Our agitation against the prioritisation of intellectual property “rents” and profits at the expense of saving lives, the approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and its co-chairing of the UN Panel on Critical Energy Transition Minerals lay the basis for a package of G20 priorities over the next year.
Another area in which SA can pursue achieving a binding consensus is public stockholdings of critical staples as a mechanism to ensure household food security in crises, while also supporting industrial and agrarian goals such as extending support to smallholder farmers.
Public stockholding refers to the procurement, storage and release of food stocks by governments. It is often done through public agencies or other distribution channels, by holding stocks grains and pulses that are prevalent in national diets, for the following reasons: it could be emergency stocks (for supply disruptions or price shocks); buffer stocks to stabilise prices during volatility; or to facilitate the distribution of aid to target groups or households.
In many instances, as is the case with the minimum support price in India, these stocks are bought from “targeted producers” such as smallholder farmers, rural producers or state-owned distribution networks at prices that may not accord with prevailing market prices.
Such considerations are relevant for Southern Africa, which is subject to frequent droughts and is in the throes of an emergency situation due to food insecurity. For example, drought has resulted in Zambia losing nearly half its expected annual maize crop, while Zimbabwe is forecasting a harvest of only about a third of the average for a normal year.
In response to this, SA may wish to use its leadership of the G20 to not only highlight these challenges but also to create risk and crisis mechanisms such as regional buffer stocks, to help deal with this crisis and in anticipating disasters caused by climate and ecological risks.
Such a position may serve to not only accelerate efforts to achieve the UN’s sustainable development goals, but also build on existing proposals made by the African Group, the ACP (African, Caribbean and Pacific countries) and the G33 on public stockholdings for food security purposes at the 13th session of the ministerial conference of the World Trade Organisation in Abu Dhabi in February.
Public stockholdings also serve as an effective measure to risk-manage supply uncertainty for net food importing nations, arising from unilateral export bans instituted by major producer countries wishing to protect their own narrowing supplies.
SA’s newly assented-to Public Procurement Act requires that the trade, industry & competition minister consider the “designation” of any product affected by “security of supply or capability to supply” issues, taking into account the contribution of other role players in the supply chain of the commodity or product (including distributors and product agents); and the effect of local production and content on employment.
The public stockholding framework proposed by the G33 not only protects producers and consumers in developing countries from growing trade unilateralism and protectionism, but serves as a mechanism grounded in “solidarity”, to build the resilience and capability to respond with speed to food insecurity.
A strong commitment towards public stockholding of staple food products may not only be a good test case for the new procurement regime, but similarly support the fusing of the industrial and agrarian changes we all wish for.
• Cawe is chief commissioner at the International Trade Administration Commission. He writes in his personal capacity.
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