Much of South Africa’s fruit for local consumption spreads through informal channels: most often, fruitsellers with a stall by the side of the road or at taxi ranks. Pop-up greengrocers, if you will, sometimes trading on a street corner for a few months and then disappearing.These fruit sellers either buy at the wholesale municipal markets or directly from farmers (the so-called bakkie trade).
In this way, people from all walks of life in South Africa are able to include a quotient of fruit into their diet that probably exceeds that of most across the continent. Industry bodies are keen to broaden the palette of fruit sold at these roadside stalls and for that, they call in the services of Ruth Behr.
At the moment Ruth and her team, together making up Promofresh, are promoting plums, at the behest of Hortgro. “When we started about a decade ago our focus was on yellow plums, trying to get people to eat yellow plums, getting people to realise that it is actually a plum, it’s just a different colour,” she recounts. “Today there are definitely many more people eating yellow plums and selling yellow plums, you often see it in the townships.”
Talking plums with a commuter at the Bronkhorstspruit taxi rank in Gauteng Province
Fruit sellers often buy their fruit in jumble boxes with odd sizes at the market and they sort it themselves according to size. Usually, the fruit is displayed as a pyramid on an open plate; a customer buys the entire plate which is decanted into a bag. At the moment, the going rate for a plate with approximately ten plums is between R10 and R15 (€0.67 - €1). When the price of fruit goes up, they will sell the plate for the same price, but with one fewer fruit.
“It’s amazing how much fruit is sold in this way. In the Pretoria CBD where you have office workers, there are a lot of people who buy their food from the hawkers. The quality of fruit sold in Pretoria Central is better than you’d find in townships. They sell fruit loose and they sometimes sell it for R5 (€0.33) a plum or a peach, so they buy the best quality at the market. But then when you go closer to the station, you get it looking more like this again. They absolutely know their market, they know who they’re selling to.”
Plates full of fruit, the sales unit in the informal market
As a result of the emphasis on fruit exporting in South Africa, fruit quality, for whichever market, is excellent, with the major differentiating factors aspects like size, colour or external damage like wind marks. Fruit sold locally have their provenance in the same orchards as those destined for the most fastidious overseas clients.
Part of Promofresh’s mandate is to train fruit sellers in fruit handling and fruit storage. Most fruit sellers have no access to refrigerated facilities, some have their stalls out in the open sun. Many sellers either store unsold fruit in unrefrigerated storage rooms overnight or try to completely sell out their stock every day by dropping the prices towards evening.
Fruit stall in South Africa with traders from Mozambique
Unless they’re promoting a fruit unknown to sellers and customers (like the Sharon fruit or persimmon), Promofresh prefers to keep it real: in the case of plums, for instance, they don’t take samples for tasting along to the stalls but as a matter of principle buy the fruit for tasting in situ from the sellers. At the moment, Laetitia would be the plum commonly found on sellers’ tables.
The role of these fruit sellers (very often women) in public health often goes unnoticed, but through campaigns such as these, the humble end of South Africa’s fruit industry gets some of the attention it deserves.
For more information:
Ruth Behr
Promofresh
Tel: +27 12 343 6167
Email: ruth@promofresh.co.za