Author: OckertC

South Africa’s cold chain usually starts at the first cold room. The losses start hours earlier, in the field. October brought three first-mile stories: a new government packhouse, dairy farmers quitting for lack of milk cooling, and an idle support unit. Together with what has worked in Kenya, they point to the same lesson: a cold room needs an operator, a business model and a buyer before it becomes a cold chain. Read the Full Article "A Cold Room Is Not a Cold Chain: Fixing South Africa’s First Mile"

The US will end South Africa’s AGOA trade preferences on 1 January. It is not a ban, and the tariff rise is modest, but citrus growers say their fruit cannot simply be sent elsewhere. Every export shock this year has landed in the same place: a local cold chain that already wastes food while 17.8 million South Africans are food insecure. Read the Full Article "Enough Food, Wrong Place: AGOA, Hunger and the Cold Chain That Catches What Doesn’t Leave"

In March we named six crocodiles and put numbers on them. Seven months later, the diesel forecast was right, the food-inflation forecast was badly wrong, and the grid held through winter. The diesel shock did not reach the supermarket shelf. It is being absorbed in the middle of the cold chain, cold stores are filling as stock waits longer, and two more levy steps are already scheduled. Read the Full Article "Seven Months in the River: Scoring the Crocodiles"