FOOD IMPORT, FOOD PRICE INFLATION, WAGES AND AGRICULTURAL EMPLOYMENT IN SOUTH AFRICA

Agricultural industry plays a significant role in the South African economy, specifically in creating jobs. However, this sector is facing significant challenges owing to economic and social unrest. Within the application of both Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) and Error Correction Model (ECM) on time series data from 2010q1 to 2021q4; this paper assessed the effects of food imports, inflation, and real wage on agricultural employment in South Africa. The results from bounds testing indicated that food imports, inflation and real wage stimulate long-term disruptions in agricultural employment. However, short -run results indicated that agricultural employment is only affected by the real wage. Based on these findings, this study suggests a policy that incorporation of both inflation rate and real wages policy to improve employment in the agricultural industry. Additionally, easing the import of food products that are complements to domestic agricultural products should be another strategy to increase the number of people employed in the agricultural industry.