Related Articles
Top Stories
Feb 13 2012 12:15
Miner Xstrata says it has brought forward maintenance on two furnaces to assist Eskom to save power.
Feb 13 2012 10:43
Although jobs were created, the economy is still 420 000 jobs short of the peak employment level before the 2009 global financial crisis, says Adcorp.
Feb 13 2012 07:58
Greek lawmakers have approved a new round of drastic austerity measures after a long day of street battles between police and protesters left dozens injured.
Cape Town - South Africa is still not producing enough maize to use in its biofuels programme and the government was right to exclude the grain from the plan, a Monsanto official said on Monday.
South Africa's government removed maize from the list of crops that could be used in its biofuels strategy two years ago, citing concerns over food security.
Some farmers had seen use of the grain for biofuels as part of a rescue plan for producers who have in the past seen surplus harvests depress maize prices.
"I think it's a very good thing to support biofuels and renewable energy, but South Africa at the moment is not producing enough maize to go into biofuels production," Arthur Schroder, Monsanto's Corn Breeding Lead for Africa, told Reuters on the sidelines of an agribusiness conference in Cape Town.
Monsanto is the world's largest seed company.
He said the government had rightly prioritised food security despite South Africa's surplus maize output in the past two seasons.
"For South Africa at the moment, setting up a biofuels plan for maize is very risky, so I think it is wise to look at a biofuels programme focusing on other products," Schroder said.
South Africans consume between 8-9 million tonnes of maize a year.
The country, Africa's biggest maize producer, harvested a bumper crop of 12.70 million tonnes of the staple grain during 2007/08, and output for the current 2008/09 season is expected to be about 11.51 million tonnes, the government's Crop Estimates Committee (CEC) said last month.
Traders and farmers had expected this season's output to be lower after a genetically modified seed variety produced by Monsanto and planted by 400 farmers on about 75 000 hectares failed to pollinate.
"The pollination problem has been fully investigated and compensation for the farmers is also almost complete... I think about 80% of the farmers have been compensated at this stage," Schroder said.
He said the company had made some changes to the defective variety and resumed sales.
"What we are doing for the coming season is that we are selling the hybrid that was mainly affected as a blend... basically we're mixing it with another hybrid to ensure that it will pollinate."
- Reuters