IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/ragrxx/v53y2014i4p68-91.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Implications of increasing world oil scarcity for national food security in South Africa

Author

Listed:
  • J. Wakeford
  • M. Swilling

Abstract

Economic and social stability depend on a healthy, functioning and affordable system of agricultural production and food distribution. In recent years, however, international and domestic food prices have risen considerably, partly as a result of rising oil prices. A growing body of literature indicates that world oil supplies will become increasingly scarce and expensive in the coming years, due to the depletion of easily extractable reserves. This poses a significant threat to agricultural production in South Africa, which is overwhelmingly derived from oil-intensive commercial farming. To mitigate the risk of serious disruptions to food production and distribution, the agriculture sector may require government support in the form of temporary fuel subsidies and, possibly, prioritised fuel access in order to cope with oil price shocks and potential fuel scarcity. Furthermore, to boost resilience and improve sustainability for the longer term, the agriculture sector should embark on a programme aimed at gradually reducing the reliance on petroleum products by adopting practices such as conservation agriculture and agro-ecological farming methods. In addition, since the current food distribution system is heavily reliant on road transport, and thus exposed to fuel price and supply shocks, the mitigation strategy should aim at a partial relocalisation of agricultural production and consumption, for example, by developing urban agriculture.

Suggested Citation

  • J. Wakeford & M. Swilling, 2014. "Implications of increasing world oil scarcity for national food security in South Africa," Agrekon, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 53(4), pages 68-91, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:ragrxx:v:53:y:2014:i:4:p:68-91
    DOI: 10.1080/03031853.2014.974626
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/03031853.2014.974626
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/03031853.2014.974626?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Li, Sufang & Tu, Dalun & Zeng, Yan & Gong, Chenggang & Yuan, Di, 2022. "Does geopolitical risk matter in crude oil and stock markets? Evidence from disaggregated data," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 113(C).
    2. Su, Chi-Wei & Qin, Meng & Tao, Ran & Moldovan, Nicoleta-Claudia & Lobonţ, Oana-Ramona, 2020. "Factors driving oil price —— from the perspective of United States," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 197(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:ragrxx:v:53:y:2014:i:4:p:68-91. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/ragr20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.