This study quantifies the possible income and nutritional impact of the recent commitment by the South African Department of Agriculture to increase budgetary spending on agricultural development. Three levels of models are utilized. The first, a large-scale partial equilibrium model, generated an outlook for maize grain under two possible future scenarios; the first is the baseline scenario under which it is assumed no additional government investment in the agricultural sector takes place, the second allows for the impact of an investment within the maize subsector large enough to increase local maize production by 15% above the baseline. The second model, a rational distributed lag model, links the grain sector to the maize meal down-stream market.... |