ABSTRACT
The agricultural sector in South Africa is changing rapidly, driven by changing patterns of demand that have come about as a result of demographic change, especially rapid urbanization and the rise of a middle class with sufficient disposable income. This has set in motion a number of fundamental changes in the food retail sector, giving rise to a “supermarket revolution” that started more than a decade ago and had already spread into secondary cities and the larger towns (Weatherspoon and Reardon, 2003) because of the liberalization of foreign direct investment rules and the rise of the middle class. In this chapter, we have provided three case studies (vegetable oils, citrus and beef) which illustrate how production and trade patterns are changing in reaction to these changes in the structure of demand. The changes are not uniformly positive and are often retarded by poor infrastructure and excessive bureaucracy but generally point to potential positive changes.
