Agriculture, Economic Development and Tourism

 Challenges:

The CGA has identified 8 "Burning Questions" which represent the key challenges to achieve Vision 260:

1. Market Demand & Access: Identify where the fruit will be marketed. Sufficient market demand must be met in the markets to absorb the anticipated volume increase. Tariff duty imbalances must be dealt with that provide an advantage to competitors.

2. Road and Rail Transport: How does one get fruit from the packhouse to the port? Current challenges include criminality, which closes roads (such as truck driver strikes and service delivery protests), and non-functioning rail infrastructure that requires repairs and private sector participation.

3. Cold Storage & Warehousing: How to store fruit before shipment? Adequate cold storage and warehousing capacity will be necessary to accommodate export volumes and comply with new regulations. Research shows that capacity gaps exist along corridors.

4. Port Functionality: How does one effectively and efficiently get fruit through the ports onto vessels? While improvements were very apparent in 2025 via Transnet investments and employee incentives, getting properly functioning South African ports is a challenge that continues to date.

5. Shipping Costs & Service: How to ship fruit cost-effectively and timeously? There is a need to implement shipping options that bring structural change to control freight rates and improve service delivery.

6. Alignment of Stakeholders: How to ensure all stakeholders are aligned with the same vision for the accomplishment of Vision 260, which includes forging good relationships with governmental bodies and other important stakeholders in the industry.

7. Communication: How to communicate the plan, its challenges, opportunities, progress and setbacks to growers and stakeholders?

8. Information & Intelligence: How to collect, collate, analyse and distribute essential information for informed decision making?

(b) Risks

The industry identified the following risks for which the Department is also aligned to:

• Market Access Barriers: High tariffs, especially the 30% US tariff that will hit the Western and Northern Cape growers in 2026, along with unscientific plant health measures that may further restrict export opportunities.
• Price & Market Volatility: Unpredictable prices and market dynamics that influence profitability despite volume growth.
• Increasing Cost of Inputs: This causes escalating costs of production, thus squeezing grower margins.
• Infrastructure Failures: Potential breakdown in road, rail, port, and shipping infrastructure that could prevent fruit from reaching markets timeously.
• Food Safety & Plant Protection: Loss of market access by inability to fulfil the food safety requirements or lack of access to necessary plant protection products.
• Government capacity gaps: Poor mobilisation of the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development to negotiate access to new markets and retain existing ones on favourable terms.

The overarching risk is that volume growth alone does not guarantee industry success, since profitability depends on the value chain right through from farm to export market.