The Agricultural Product Standards Act, 1990 (Act 119 of 1990) of South Africa provides
for the standardisation of quality norms for agricultural produce (DAFF, 2018). The
purpose of this research was to investigate the quality and compliance of fresh produce
sold in the Tshwane metropolis with the Agricultural Product Standards Act of South
Africa. A cross-sectional study survey was conducted in six regions of Tshwane
metropolis, in which 200 fresh produce vendors were randomly selected from various
vending sites to analyse their level of knowledge regarding the Act. Furthermore, different
fruits and vegetables were sampled from different vending sites and inspected for
compliance with the Act.The vast majority (89%) of respondents did not know of the
existence of the Act. Quite a small proportion of fruit (51.5 %) and vegetable (56 %)
retailers indicated that their agricultural fruit products have been monitored. A large
proportion of fruits (from 86% to 99.8%) and vegetables (from 85.4% to 97.5%) met all
the various quality requirements. In general a fair proportion of fruits (58%) and
vegetables (65%) complied highly with the Act in terms of quality. There was a significant
positive correlation between monitoring by officials and the level of compliance. The
Department of Agriculture Forestry and Fisheries should make sure that farmers and street vendors of agricultural produce register their businesses and are trained on the
interpretation of the provisions of the Agricultural Product Standards Act. This will allow
them to be tracked and traced for proper development concerning matters related to the
Act. / Life and Consumer Sciences / M.A. (Consumer Science)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:unisa/oai:uir.unisa.ac.za:10500/26547 |
| Date | 12 1900 |
| Creators | Chauke, N'wamhlaba Cynthia |
| Contributors | Tabit, F. T. |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
| Format | 1 online resource (xii, 138 leaves) : color illustrations, color graphs, application/pdf |
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