Coconuts – Food for Thought

Monday, 27 December 2010 00:40 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

The price of coconuts has become a hot topic and re-active measures are being taken. Through an appropriate econometric analysis, such a crisis could have been predicted well in advance (barring unforeseen natural disasters).

What should be of greater concern is, this could well be the ‘tip of the iceberg’ – of a much deeper national food security challenge.

If our GDP doubles in the next 5 years, it will significantly change the number of people employed, the type of jobs they will do, their lifestyles and consequently their food consumption habits. Is our national food supply chain geared to meet these changes? If more of our population moves into the service and knowledge economies, how will we find people to grow and produce foods? Given that a significant percentage of our agriculture is cottage industry, will we have the economies of scale to cost-effectively produce the foods needed by the population? Which of our foods are we better off producing (at globally competitive levels) and which ones should we out-source to other countries?

One thing is for sure though, there is a lot ‘Food for thought‘!