I grew up in rural Eastern Cape, where I had a very direct connection with where my food came from. Unlike many new generation city kids, who I am afraid will grow up thinking carrots come from the fridge, I had a clear sense of the time and effort that went into growing fresh produce, before it even reached my mother’s kitchen.
These days, living in the city that I love, I must admit it’s very easy to become disconnected from where our food comes from. However, I believe it is a personal responsibility of each of us to know where the food we put into our bodies comes from. Food is our life force and influences our health, capabilities and even moods, not to mention the impact that the production of food has on the environment.
This was what led us at the Cape Town Partnership to trace the journey of Fred the lettuce. Fred was one of 40 000 iceberg lettuces harvested a week on Carl Gorgen’s farm in Philippi. He was then packed in a box with 11 other lettuce heads before being delivered to one of nine market agents at the Cape Town Market, which is in Epping and supplies more than 8 000 registered buyers and 5 500 farmers.
The market agents get up well before the crack of dawn to be at the market before 5am and try get the best price possible for the farmer, while keeping an eye on supply and demand. Once sold, Fred goes across the road to M&R Marketing, a wholesale distributor of fresh fruit and vegetables, where his outer leaves are removed and he is clingwrapped on to a polystyrene tray.
From there, Fred will make his way into a Cape Town retailer where he’ll be bought by a customer and find his way into our sandwiches and salads. This will happen within a day or two of being harvested, since Fred was only really 25km away to begin with. In fact, the Philippi Horticultural Area supplies about 40 to 50 percent of the fresh produce consumed in Cape Town.
Cape Town is lucky to have food basket agricultural areas such as Philippi Horticultural Area in such close proximity, and it is important to safeguard them as well as developing more to ensure our food security and resilience.
This is just one of the issues raised by acclaimed science writer Leoni Joubert in “The Food Dialogues Report” – a document about the Mother City’s food economy commissioned by the Oranjezicht City Farm (OZCF) and Cape Town Partnership, which we will launch tomorrow, World Food Day on October 16.
Drawing on the 10-part Food Dialogues lecture series held at the OZCF earlier this year, “The Food Dialogues Report” offers an overview of the state of the food economy in Cape Town, its strengths and weaknesses in terms of culture, urban design, politics, economics, nutrition and environmental impact.
It is intended to spread the important information that came up in the lecture series further, not only to private and public entities directly involved in the industry, but also to consumers.
Many of us feel as if our food choices are determined by retailers and farmers. However, consumers can play a big role in determining what the food system looks like. For instance, “The Food Dialogues Report” describes the effect that the Tim Noakes diet has had on suburban grocers who are now stocking far more cauliflower and double cream Greek yoghurt.
This illustrates that redirecting middle-class purchasing power can have a huge impact. More than our own diets however, “The Food Dialogues Report” asks, how we as a community can use that power to influence a more inclusive, affordable and sustainable local food economy for all, from the suburbs to the townships?
Suggestions range from supporting the informal economy by purchasing from street traders and urban farming initiatives, to lobbying for the prioritisation of more food security opportunities when developing human settlements.
It also looks at numerous inspiring case studies in which innovative organisations are addressing both social and food security issues.
Food security is a very real issue in Cape Town, which concerns me greatly. I have just accepted a role as an advisory board member to the Department of Science and Technology/National Research Foundation (DST/NRF) Centre of Excellence (COE) in Food Security. Their work concerns research, capacity building and dissemination on how a sustainable food system can be achieved to realise food security for poor, vulnerable and marginal populations.
I am incredibly excited to be part of the COE – a group of people who are committed to pursue a transformative agenda for South Africa’s food security situation and provide leadership, evidence for decision making and critique of policies and programmes aimed at addressing food insecurity.
Food and nutritional security is imperative for human survival with dignity and takes account of economic vitality, social justice, human health and environmental health. We therefore need a comprehensive and systems approach to food security that recognises and addresses the causes of food insecurity such as poverty, unemployment and inequality.
Many of us assume that the food insecure, the hungry, are the people begging on the street, however, it is a much bigger problem because that perception does not take into account the families that go to bed hungry or are eating a nutritionally imbalanced diet.
What we do know, according to research by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in Pretoria is that 29 million tons (about a third) of food produced in South Africa goes to waste. The CSIR’s conservative estimate is that there are more than 11 million food insecure people in the country.
Food waste, I must admit, is something that I noticed my own family is guilty of. This realisation came from our participation in the My Green House project that got us recycling 90 percent of our own domestic waste. It was astounding to see how much of that is really food that could otherwise have been eaten. Now we’re trying to donate as much leftovers as we can to shelters.
However, the CSIR research says that, while food waste by consumers is the biggest problem in developed countries, in developing countries like South Africa, the bigger problem is food waste that happens in the production cycle – from farm to market. Motivated by this, the Western Cape government’s 110 percent Green initiative has launched a series of Food Tours.
Andrew Fleming and Zarina Nteta of the Cape Town Partnership participated in the first tour, which visited Greyton and surrounds. One of the projects that really impressed them was the Greyton Transition Town’s swop shop in Genadendal where people can swop recyclable waste for food, which is unsellable produce donated by local farmers and shops.
The waste is then used to make Eco-bricks – cool drink bottles stuffed full of rubbish – that were used to build a community school.
What is most significant is that none of the local shops were affected in setting up this non-monetary system, which highlights the need for us to build resilient communities beyond those provided for by the private sector.
As I mentioned in my previous column, resilience is the capability of a community and city to meet the environmental, economic and social challenges of the future. Obviously, the capability to feed all of its people is a crucial aspect of a resilient city.
However, as “The Food Dialogues Report” explains, simply ensuring that everyone has access to fresh, nutritious food will not redress South Africa’s severe food-related health problems like obesity and type-2 diabetes. These are social and cultural issues that relate to the influence of global pop culture and the stressful urban environment that drive us to eat unhealthy but pleasurable foods.
Yes, the modern city makes us fat and sick according to “The Food Dialogues Report”. Not only do we drive more and walk less, but working and commuting for long hours makes us resort to fast food and comfort eating rather than home cooking.
This turns food security into an issue of urban design and means that a resilient food-secure Cape Town needs to address issues of spatial apartheid, density, community building and placemaking.
With strong communities and vibrant public spaces through placemaking, in which urban farms and other city food projects like the OZCF can play a big part, we strengthen our social and cultural identities, which gives each of us more psychological resilience to the stresses of contemporary society.
In this column I have only just given you a taste of all the fascinating information packed into “The Food Dialogues Report”, so I really do urge you to download it for free from www.capetownpartnership.co.za/foodreport. It will certainly give you some food for thought on World Food Day tomorrow. Do share some of those thoughts with us on Twitter using the #ctfoodreport hashtag and tweeting @ctpartnership @OZCFarm.
l Makalima-Ngewana is chief executive of the Cape Town Partnership.