World Food Day: Addressing SA’s food security challenges

Xikombiso Mbhenyane and Nomakhushe Nxusani

The Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO)’s annual World Food Day is celebrated globally on October 16.

This year’s theme is “Right to foods for a better life and a better future”.

An estimated 2.8 billion people across the world lack access to nutritious food.

The South African food system produces a wide diversity of foods, with high levels of national self-sufficiency in production of grains, meat, eggs, dairy and deciduous fruits and vegetables.

In his article in Global Food Security, Ken Giller says abundant, affordable and nutritious food for the growing population, including sufficient land and economic investments in agriculture, are needed to solve the food security conundrum of sub-Saharan Africa.

The food system in South Africa also requires reconceptualisation.

In an interview with the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Andrew Bennie, from the Institute for Economic Justice, said the South African food system was commercialised and organised along commodity lines, each with their own well-resourced commodity associations that lobbied for their own interests.

La Via Campesina, the global movement that first proposed a food sovereignty declaration in 1996, defines food sovereignty as: “the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through sustainable methods and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems”.

The policy approach, known as “indigenous food sovereignty”, aims to address the root causes of the problems facing indigenous people and their capacity to meet their own demands for nutritious, culturally appropriate indigenous foods, as Belinda Gutierrez and her co-authors pointed out in “Current Developments in Nutrition”.

The South African food system requires a rethink to offer sustainable solutions for the sufficient supply of healthy food, while ensuring that “communities have the right to decide how to supply themselves with food, and that there is already enough food available, without the influence of industry”.

Efforts should be made to ensure that healthy foods are promoted to reduce the increasing prevalence of non-communicable diseases.

Despite many interventions, and while South Africa is regarded as food secure nationally, the reality of households experiencing hunger exists, with children being particularly vulnerable.

This calls into question the realisation of the “food rights” recognised in two sections of the Constitution: section 27(1)(b), which states that everyone has the right of access to sufficient food, and section 28(1)(c), which states that every child has the right to basic nutrition.

The recently released data by the Human Science Research Council (HSRC) reports that overweight and obesity remain above 50% in adults, with older adults being more vulnerable. Sixty-nine percent of obese individuals lived in households with food insecurity.

Unhealthy diets are the primary cause of all forms of malnutrition including obesity, which are now prevalent in most countries.

Concerns about insufficient access to food at household level have resulted in a greater policy focus on livelihoods, incomes, expenditure, markets and prices in achieving food security objectives with many suggesting that more food items should be tax exempt and social grants should be increased.

People who are more vulnerable are often compelled to eat staple foods or rely on unhealthy foods.

The HSRC report recommends strategies that could help address this.

These include a focus on areas with high levels of malnutrition, encouraging families to produce their own food, investments in food banks, support for fruit and vegetable markets located close to households and campaigns to educate the public on the benefits of consuming nutrient-rich foods and dietary diversity.

The future well-being of South Africans can be achieved if these strategies are implemented and the targets on agriculture and health in the National Development Plan 2030 are met.

* Professor Mbhenyane holds the research chair in Food Environment, Nutrition and Health in the Division of Human Nutrition at Stellenbosch University.

Nxusani is a doctoral student in Nutritional Sciences at SU.

Cape Times