Last December, government extended the ban for another two years to have it run into 2025.
The first veggie ban came into effect on January 1, 2022, targeting 16 vegetables such as onion, butternut, tomato, watermelon, carrot, potato, cabbage and ginger.
The embargo was intended to support local farmers, increase national food security by encouraging local vegetable production and improve horticulture competitiveness.
Hospitality and Tourism Association of Botswana (HATAB) chairperson, Joe Motse last week urged the Ministry of Agriculture and producers to come up with strategies for how the country can ensure continued and sustainable availability of these vegetables. “The restrictions are meant for us to be able to diversify and make business,” he said when addressing HATAB’s annual conference in Maun .
“We need to be able to work together to ensure that we don’t have a continued lack or a bulk of a certain product over a certain period and then it stops.
It affects us at home and in our businesses.” He added that people should not depend on the government to do everything but should put their heads together and see how they can address the difficulties of low supply. Motse said HATAB members held exhibitions where they got together with agricultural producers and managed to identify potential suppliers. He said there is an opportunity for people to become consolidators and distributors of vegetables and other products. “We have as a country noted improvement in terms of local production as a result of the restriction and, indeed, it is commendable. We needed that encouragement to be productive,” he added.
Last year, approaching the end of the first ban, government revealed that due to the ban, local production of horticulture had increased from 36,244 tonnes to 45,221 tonnes, which is an increase of 25%, while food imports, which vegetables are a part of, reduced significantly by at least 23.3%.
Now, four months into the second ban, government is yet to do a study to determine the degree to which the imposition of restriction on importation of vegetables has to date influenced the country’s balances of trade. While the ban was meant to develop the agriculture value chain and foster citizen empowerment, the restrictions in the past two years exposed the supply chain weaknesses between local producers and major retailers. Apart from shortages, the ban escalated prices and worsened consumers’ predicament. Consumers also complained that where local production was available, the quality was not always up to standard.
The supply chain weaknesses meant the unreliable availability of key vegetables such as tomatoes, onions, and potatoes. The high vegetable prices forced farmers to channel more resources into farming the banned vegetables, therefore, increasing output to fill the supply gap induced by the import ban.
