Cape Town - Bloomberg’s latest South African Shisa Nyama Index shows South Africa’s food costs are rising again.
The cost of a basket of goods in Bloomberg’s South African Shisa Nyama Index, designed to show the price of a traditional backyard barbecue in townships and rural areas, rose 15% in June from a year earlier. That compares with 12% in May.
Crunching data from the Pietermaritzburg Economic Justice and Dignity (PMBEJD) group, Bloomberg’s index tracks the prices of some of the key ingredients in a shisa nyama, including maize meal, onions, frozen chicken portions, beef and wors.
PMBEJD’s data collectors track food prices on the shelves of 47 supermarkets and 32 butcheries.
These target the low-income market in the greater areas of Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town, Pietermaritzburg and the remote towns of Springbok and Mtubatuba.
According to the data for June 2023 Household Food Index in Cape Town, in June last year, 30kg of maize meal cost R264.72, while this year the price rose to R318.47, a 20% increase.
A 10kg bag of rice which cost R132.74 last year, had shot up by 5% this year and shoppers were parting with R139.32.
A 10kg bag of frozen chicken portions could be had for R358.27 in June 2022, while a year later, the price was R406.40, a 13% increase.
The price of 10kg of beef, however, dropped by 8% to R153.48 from last year’s price of R166.71, while the cost of 10kg of wors also came down from R117.73 to R89.48.
Onion prices surged 97% in June with a 10kg bag shooting up from R83.47 to R169.10, while the cost of edible oil which cost R228.37 last June fell 24% to R173.00.
The data comes ahead of the 2023 Food Dialogues taking place across Cape Town from today to July 18. The Food Dialogues focus on society’s challenges in the context of what organisers, SA Urban Food & Farming Trust, said were multiple disparate crises, which together have an overwhelmingly greater impact than the sum of the individual events.
Trust chief executive Kurt Ackermann said: “We are barely out of a global pandemic, and are now dealing with load shedding, a pending water crisis, the impacts of climate change and potential natural system shocks.
“How we strengthen our food systems to face these challenges is what we will focus on during this year’s event.”
mwangi.githahu@inl.co.za