The harmonization of the fertilizer regulatory framework across the SADC region can no longer be delayed.

This was said by South Africa's Minister of Agriculture, John Steenhuisen during the Joint Committee meeting of SADC Ministers of Agriculture and Food Security, Fisheries and Aquaculture. 

.Steenhuisen said hunger reality demands urgency in SADC and the harmonisation of fertilizer regulatory framework would go a long way in averting the risk of food insecurity.

The estimated number of those facing hunger is said to be around 58 million of the regional population.

Steenhuisen said the framework would strengthen investment certainty, improve fertiliser availability and affordability and support regional production capacity.

It would further help protect smallholder and commercial farmers from future external shocks.

"We cannot continue entering each planting season fragmented by unharmonized standards, duplicative registration systems and regulatory bottlenecks that unnecessarily increase costs for farmers and slow regional trade. The proposed Memorandum of Understanding on the Harmonisation of Fertiliser Regulatory Frameworks is urgently needed and, in South Africa's view, should be fast-tracked well before 2027."

 The recurring global shocks, including the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine conflict to the current instability affecting the middle eastern supply routes, have exposed SADC's vulnerability to fertiliser supply and price volatility.