South Africa’s urgent need to create jobs requires that the country take advantage of opportunities in the global economy that it can convert into quick wins. The fruit industry presents such an opportunity. The country’s fresh fruit industry is currently the largest exporter of agricultural products, contributing 52% of the value of South Africa’s agriculture export basket. It also represents 28% of total employment in agriculture.
But there’s a great deal more it can do given that demand for fresh fruit is expected to continue growing at an average annual rate of 7.1% over the next two years. This is being driven by the growth of the middle class in China, Africa and other Asian countries.
South Africa is already an established player in global fruit exports, especially citrus. But it has failed to take full advantage of the rise in demand, especially for high value fruits such as berries and avocados. Countries that have successfully done so, like Mexico and Peru, increased their fruit exports by up to 15% per annum between 2013 to 2018. In contrast, South Africa’s fruit exports only rose by 3% over the same period.
The one success story has been citrus. The country’s share in the top six citrus exporting countries more than doubled from 6.6% to 15.7% between 2001 and 2017. It is now the second largest exporter of citrus globally.
Success of the citrus industry has been largely bolstered by research, innovation and technological developments, driven by the industry association – Citrus Growers Association (CGA) – in collaboration with government. These are critical aspects in maintaining markets, negotiating new markets and complying with sanitary and phytosanitary standards imposed by different importing countries. For example, investment in research and development is so important that it accounts for approximately 80% of CGA’s total annual revenue for the 2017/18 financial year. This has also been the case for other large volume fruit exports such as apples and pears as well as stone fruit.
