THE LONG-TERM ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF AGRICULTURAL MARKETING LEGISLATION IN SOUTH AFRICA

The marketing of most agricultural products in South Africa was subject to intervention by statutory bodies over a period of some 60 years. At the time of the promulgation of the first legislation there was a vigorous debate on the predicted economic effects; in 1983 one of the architects of these instruments published a justification in these pages, followed in 2000 by a post-mortem, which confirmed most of the negative predictions that had been made. The purpose in this article is to revisit this debate and to provide a first assessment of the long-term impacts of the legislation.