A NEW study by the African Food Security Urban Network (Afsun) reveals startling results that have shocked South Africans, leading to various debates about what we can do to combat the extreme levels of food insecurity.
Roughly 12 million South Africans are food insecure at the same time as the country is generally considered a food secure country. Globally, 80 million people are facing starvation.
Internationally, food security is defined as the ability of people to secure adequate food. Researchers have defined food security as the access by all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life. The key component is access to enough nutritious food.
The right to access to sufficient food is embedded in sections 26 and 27 of the constitution. The 2030 National Development Plan outlines food security as an important component to our vision for growth.
The plan identifies “food security, water security and rural development; adaptation strategies and environmental resilience; more effective models of black economic empowerment; exercise, diets, nutrition and other preventative health areas; social cohesion and language; disability policy; and partnerships for innovation” as priority areas.
The millennium development goals, to which South Africa is a signatory, have set the goal of halving the proportion of people who go hungry over the period 1990 and 2015, and to halve poverty and unemployment by 2014.
Every year, on October 16, the international community marks World Food Day to heighten public awareness about food security.
In South Africa, last week’s revelation that the number of people facing starvation is roughly 20 percent of our population was met with shock and disbelief.
While the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries has been consistent in its message about poverty across our social fabric, many struggle to believe that urban dwellers are facing poverty just as much as their rural counterparts. What can citizenry do?
A UN Development Programme (UNDP) report of 2006 pointed out that food insecurity is closely linked to poverty, income and unemployment. These challenges were also outlined by President Jacob Zuma in last year’s State of the Nation address, in which he challenged all citizens to fight the triple challenges of poverty, unemployment and inequality. All government programmes inherently fight poverty.
Additionally, the UNDP report revealed that poverty and unemployment have a strong relationship with food insecurity, and in most cases food insecurity manifest in multiple deprivations. Food insecurity, it said, begins with the loss of employment, which in turns leads to a significant degradation in living standard.
While analysing the reasons for food insecurity, we also take cognisance of rising food prices and the impact these have on households’ ability to afford nutritious food. According to the National Agricultural Marketing Council’s quarterly food price monitoring reports, from January 2008 to October 2010, consumers in rural areas on average paid R16.74 more than consumers in urban areas for the same food.
A major task facing the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries has been, and remains, the provision of assistance to SMMEs and co-operatives.
To date, there are 230 000 smallholder farmers and beneficiaries of land reform programmes and 35 000 commercial farmers.
There is an urgent need to support smallholder farmers by assisting them with access to markets, access to finance and access to skills as an additional means to support existing food security objectives and programmes.
Having said that, smallholder farmers cannot stay “emerging” forever. We need them to take part in the economy, to take part in export businesses, and to take opportunities to grow their businesses so they can also employ workers.
A total of R12 574 082 has been spent across nine provinces on 18 large-scale co-operatives. These have the potential to create more than 50 jobs each, with the primary aim to direct resources and efforts towards sustainable projects.
The comprehensive agricultural support programme is a mechanism through which the assistance is provided to people in rural areas to grow their own food, so they can sustain themselves and their families. Our department has set itself a target of establishing 15 000 smallholder producers, with a particular focus on women. We have seen many inspirational stories of women who are doing it by themselves through co-operatives and their own farming businesses, and employing other women.
Some of the constraints that smallholder farmers face relate to lack of access to land, and poor physical and institutional infrastructure. Most smallholder farmers are in rural areas, particularly the former homelands, where lack of physical and institutional infrastructure limits their expansions. Lack of access to proper roads, for example, limits the ability of a farmer to transport inputs and produce, and to access information.
Many people have been wondering what society can do to help the government combat food insecurity.
This question fortunately comes at a time when several media reports have alerted us to rampant food waste, with 900 million tons of food apparently discarded annually.
Perhaps we should start there. Whether we live in urban or rural areas, we need to take note of how much food goes to waste.
There is also growing need for us to support NGOs such as Food Bank SA, so that food donations reach even the most remote areas.
We need to assist NGOs in widening their distribution logistics.
There is growing need for a social campaign focusing on changing our mindsets about food production, and cascading down to what we, as consumers, are doing to contribute to this problem and how we can change our behaviour.
The call is to all South Africans from all walks of life to contribute to food security by planting vegetables in their households.
l Joemat-Pettersson is the Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries