{"id":6947,"date":"2019-12-04T08:59:28","date_gmt":"2019-12-04T05:59:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=6947"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:30:44","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:30:44","slug":"south-africa-is-missing-out-on-fresh-fruit-export-growth-what-it-needs-to-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2019\/12\/04\/south-africa-is-missing-out-on-fresh-fruit-export-growth-what-it-needs-to-do\/","title":{"rendered":"South Africa Is Missing Out On Fresh Fruit Export Growth. What It Needs To Do"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

South Africa\u2019s urgent need to\ncreate jobs requires that the country take advantage of opportunities in the\nglobal economy that it can convert into quick wins. The fruit industry presents\nsuch an opportunity. The country\u2019s fresh fruit industry is currently the\nlargest exporter of agricultural products, contributing 52% of the value of\nSouth Africa\u2019s agriculture export\nbasket<\/a>. It also represents 28% of total employment in agriculture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there\u2019s a great deal more it\ncan do given that demand for fresh fruit is expected to continue\ngrowing<\/a> at an average annual rate of 7.1% over the next two years.\nThis is being driven<\/a> by\nthe growth of the middle class in China, Africa and other Asian countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

South Africa is already an\nestablished player in global fruit exports, especially citrus. But it has\nfailed to take full advantage of the rise in demand, especially for high value\nfruits such as berries and avocados. Countries that have successfully done so,\nlike Mexico and Peru, increased their fruit exports by up to 15% per annum\nbetween 2013 to 2018<\/a>.\nIn contrast, South Africa\u2019s fruit exports only rose by 3% over the same period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The one success story has been\ncitrus. The country\u2019s share in the top six citrus exporting countries more than\ndoubled from 6.6% to 15.7% between 2001 and 2017. It is now the second largest\nexporter of citrus globally<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Success of the citrus industry has\nbeen largely bolstered by research, innovation and technological developments,\ndriven by the industry association – Citrus Growers Association (CGA) – in\ncollaboration with government. These are critical aspects in maintaining\nmarkets, negotiating new markets and complying with sanitary and phytosanitary\nstandards imposed by different importing countries. For example, investment\nin research\nand development<\/a> is so important that it accounts for approximately 80%\nof CGA\u2019s total annual revenue for the 2017\/18 financial year. This has also\nbeen the case for other large volume fruit exports such as apples and pears as\nwell as stone fruit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read\nmore\u2026<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South Africa\u2019s 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…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6948,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}