A P1bn food security hole
Mbongeni Mguni | Wednesday May 20, 2026 10:06
Local millers estimate that the country is giving away at least one billion Pula to South Africa annually in terms of importing maize and wheat that could be produced in the country.
Statistics Botswana figures are even more sombre. Imports of cereals, a term referring to raw maize, wheat, sorghum and rice, reached P2.4 billion last year, with nearly all of these grains originating from South Africa, the regional breadbasket.
Simply put, over the decades, the nation’s farmers have failed to produce enough to feed consumers. Millers estimate that over the past 30 years, local production of maize and wheat has not exceeded ten percent of national demand. The trend for sorghum, the national staple, has been better with reports from government indicating the achievement of self-sufficiency in some years.
Generally, however, Statistics Botswana figures on agricultural production show declining yields per hectare across various crops in most years, particularly amongst communal farmers, a situation worsened by the more frequent occurrence of prolonged droughts.
The billions of Pula spent in agricultural input programmes and offtake arrangements such as the Botswana Agricultural Marketing Board’s contract farming schemes, have had limited success in lifting production in key grains.
For a country with proud agrarian roots and an in-built, almost innate instinct towards agriculture and self-sufficiency, the trends seen over the years have been disappointing. The decades-long capitulation to South African agricultural prowess has come at the cost of jobs at all levels of skills, crucial value addition opportunities and, more recently, has contributed to the draining of the foreign exchange reserves.
Over the decades, both communal and commercial farmers in the country have cited fair pricing and access to market as some of the greatest stumbling blocks to greater cereal production. Just recently, a farmer in the North West went viral on social media, destroying large quantities of potatoes due to what he said was the dumping of cheaper South African stock onto the local market.
Farmers, frequently funded by government, have decried the high capital costs involved in the industry and the tendency by market players to dictate pricing and offtake, to the detriment of new entrants.
Market players, meanwhile, who include millers and retailers, say the little production available locally often comes with quality and reliability of supply issues, with contracts frequently collapsing due to either of these factors.
For local millers, an industry that has invested hundreds of millions of Pula in local manufacturing over the years, the continued cereal under-production means a reliance on imports whose access and pricing are more difficult to control or forecast.
Maize and Wheat Millers Association executive, Werner De Beer, says the industry has tried across various initiatives and platforms, to engage local farmers for greater output.
The key to many of the challenges in the industry, he says, lies in land aggregation, a term which refers to the process of bringing together many smaller pieces of land or landholders into one larger, unified holding. The same method is captured under a long-running government priority known as “cluster farming”.
“I've been part of this industry for nine years and for nine years at various conferences, we have shown the benefits, and also tried to educate farmers in terms of benefit of aggregating land,” said De Beer, who is also the CEO of Bokomo. “It's only mega farmers that are successful and profitable nowadays. “Mega farms come into being when you have a cluster of farmers joining forces and they become a cluster of production, which means they save in terms of the capital equipment. “Not every farmer needs a planter, not every farmer needs a harvester and also they buy their fertiliser in huge quantities, which then reduces the input costs.”
While South Africa has a rich generational history of commercial farming, where institutions such as the Cairo Group own more than 15,000 hectares of mechanised, well-funded multi-crop operations dating back decades, Botswana is still transitioning from communal to commercial.
De Beer explains that by grouping together, farmers also leverage other professional services needed to boost their output.
“The top farmers have weather professors determining when the best time is to plant and harvest, etc and they become very successful. “But a small farmer competing against that is up against the impossible, as input costs get higher and higher,” he said.
Land aggregation will also help the economies of scale that are at the centre of many farmers’ challenges in the local market, including pricing and scientific expertise such as soil testing, analysis of water tables and others.
“Aggregation puts you in a better position to negotiate as well,” he explained. “If a farmer comes here and they say, ‘listen, we have 100 tonnes of maize available,’ and yet the Millers Association mills 16,000 tons a month, they have absolutely no negotiating power. “But if they come with 2,000 tonnes as a collective, then they start having negotiating power and so that's very important.”
In De Beer’s experience, the challenge in cluster farming has come down to a reluctance by farmers to cooperate. “To get the farmers to agree is an issue because the first thing they say, who's going to be in charge? Who's going to determine the price? And so that's proven difficult.”
The situation means millers’ raw material often has to come from outside the country, but accessing imports is not easy. According to the Association, obtaining grain import permits can be a lengthy and expensive process and these crucial documents are only valid for a month, even though authorities are aware of the chronic under-production on the country’s fields.
The industry is also frequently rocked by grain import suspensions, as well as regulatory issues in key source markets such as South Africa, which threaten optimisation of capacity in the local mills. Disruptions in border logistics also mean that it can sometimes take up to five days for a truck to come through the border, with the millers’ transporters charging them up to 6,000 Rands per day in standing fees per truck.
“So we may need to bring in about 80 trucks per day between all the millers in the country in order to keep production going, which if you work out that cost wastage, is 80 trucks times R6,000 per day times five days. “It is an enormous amount that we could have put towards price reduction,” De Beer told Mmegi.
The millers are also caught in a diplomatic “Cold War” with BAMB. The state grain marketing board boasts the largest storage capacity in the country and also is the primary offtaker for most farmers, meaning it largely controls prices in the market.
Where at some point millers and farmers negotiated directly, BAMB came in with its higher storage capacity and government-backing to offer prices higher than SAFEX, the South African pricing benchmark used throughout the region.
The grain marketing board reportedly offers prices up to 50 percent higher than SAFEX when selling to millers, which then puts a squeeze on their margins in their negotiations with retailers, as well as in what they are directly able to on-sell to consumers.
The trend goes against agreements made at the Agronomic Board, a platform comprising farmers, millers, BAMB and various arms of government.
“At the interim Agronomic Board, we stated or agreed the pricing mechanism would be the current SAFEX price, plus an eight percent levy that the millers are prepared to pay to support local farmers, as well as half of the transport rate,” De Beer said. “So, if you then put it into the pricing formula, we pay a premium of 20% above SAFEX for locally produced grains. “But sometimes that pricing mechanism is not adhered to and when there are negotiations between BAMB and a farmer, they will disregard the pricing mechanism agreed to and then offer the farmer even higher, which they then pass on to us.”
De Beers recalls a particularly difficult year for millers.
“There was that one year where it cost the millers P10 million for that harvesting season because of the prices that BAMB enforced on us and also the threat from government that they would block the borders unless we bought all the produce from BAMB. “That P10 million, obviously you can't pass it on to the retailer or trader because they look at the SAFEX. “The Spars, the Pick n Pays, the Choppies, Sefalanas, look at the prices of SAFEX and as soon as you go beyond that, they say, okay, now we'll import. “So it really is a challenge from time to time.”
The millers say despite the challenges, they remain committed to supporting local production and national self-sufficiency, a critical component to the millions of Pula invested in manufacturing capacity over the years.
Besides the various initiatives underway, part of the push is to engage major landholders such as Morupule Coal, to make use of dormant areas for crops. Another idea is to develop a database of regional, generational cropping expertise that can be wooed to Botswana to help manage or run cropping enterprises. That concept was seen when Zambia turned into a net exporter by capturing fleeing white Zimbabwean farmers.
Maize and Wheat Millers Association executive and Bolux CEO, Melinda Jacobs, believes some mindset change is also required in how Batswana view agriculture.
“I also think the concept of the Botswana culture to say that you farm when you retire, needs to change,” she told Mmegi. “We need youngsters, youngsters who can start farming at the age of 25, so that when they are 40, they are the experts and they transfer that skill. “That conversation has been happening, but it has not moved any further.”
In the meantime, the millers’ offer stands.
“We've always given the commitment to say, everything produced locally, at the correct quality and at the market-related price, the millers will take up,” she said. “That commitment and we have stuck with it. We have done that.”