September 21, 2010
South African corn may find a market in China's poultry
South Africa's surplus corn may feed Chinese chickens rather than neighbouring countries, due to regional worries about GM crops.
South African farmers grew 13 million tonnes of corn in the harvest that ended around May. That included a surplus of four million tonnes, an excess that has pushed down prices and threatens to bankrupt 10,000 farmers.
"The industry was not prepared for what happened. The surplus was causing panic. Over-production is not a sustainable way of producing," said Mariam Mayet of the African Centre for Biosafety.
Most of South Africa's neighbours had bumper harvests as well, driving down demand.
Countries like Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Malawi, despite suffering chronic food shortages, refuse to accept South African corn because of worries about importing genetically modified organisms.
South Africa began planting GM crops in the 1990s, and now they account for 57% of all corn planted in the country. Often, the harvests are mixed together at mills, so that importers consider all corn as genetically modified.
"Even some countries that don't have proper biosafety laws have a ban on GM, like Zimbabwe," Mayet said.
South Africa's surplus has to go to special markets - countries for which GM is not a problem, she added.
The government earlier this month sent a delegation to China to discuss selling the surplus, most likely as feed to chicken farmers.
"The negotiations will become formal hopefully in October, when a Chinese delegation will come to South Africa," agriculture ministry adviser Ramse Madote said after returning from the trip.
Neither the proposed price nor the terms of the sale have been made public, but farmers fear that they will get a low price because the Chinese know South Africa will not get better offers.
"The terms being negotiated with China are bound to reflect South Africa's lack of alternative options," said Philip White of the Regional Hunger and Vulnerability Programme, an anti-poverty group.
