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Food Security in South Africa

Food security in South Africa is under threat with an emerging food crisis in urban informal settlements around Johannesburg – and other South African cities – looming. This threat demands new solutions and new types of food systems that are locally embedded and sustainable. According to an independent researcher and political economists Scott Drimie ending hunger will require restructuring the ways we produce, process, distribute and consume our food. “Finding and supporting local, equitable and sustainable alternative food system to complement the existing infrastructure is vital for the future wellbeing of the country” says Drimie. This comes after recent research in the urban informal periphery that shows high levels of food insecurity characterised by persistent hunger and very low dietary diversity. The research conducted in areas such as Alexandra, Orange Farm, Sol Plaatjie and the inner city of Johannesburg, correlates with national research that demonstrates significant levels of stunting (low height-for-age) for children aged 1-9 years nationally in urban informal areas in South Africa between 1999 and 2005. According to the research, dominant reasons causing food shortages in urban informal settlements are unreliable income, unemployment and loss of jobs. Over 65% of respondents in one study experienced a food shortage in the last 12 months. The causes of food insecurity in urban areas are different to that of the rural due primarily to a number of phenomena that are unique to or exacerbated by urban living. These include inter alia, a greater dependence on cash income, weaker informal safety nets, lifestyle changes, particularly diet and exercise patterns, greater availability of public services but questionable access by the poor, and greater exposure to environmental contamination. “These complexities have literally denied people living in urban informal settlements access to affordable, quality food,” argues Drimie. Food has become the largest single household expense in most urban informal settlements. This is despite strategies to deal with these challenges such as limiting portions, reducing needs, borrowing food, seeking credit, buying processed food and liquidating assets. Drimie says “factors such as high cost of non-supermarket foods, inadequate transport and a lack of refrigeration continues to undermine these efforts to mitigate the impacts of the currently flawed food system”. This also impacts on the food quality people access, with refined, energy-dense food being cheap in comparison to more nutrient dense food, which forces people to resort to unhealthy diets. “The challenge is to find alternative food systems that effectively reaches these places and give people wider access and choice of healthier food,” says Drimie. Finding solution to these seemingly intractable challenges in Johannesburg has opened a dialogue on how to do things differently in terms of supplying produce directly to consumers. The current food system that exists in South Africa does not reach the people in urban informal settlements, which contributes to the worrying levels of malnutrition among children. A good example of an attempt to engage these issues is the Johannesburg Fresh Produce Market, predominantly supplied by large commercial farmers from across the country. The produce is then supplied to giant retailers with some made available to an Informal Trading Market, the Nelson Mandela People’s Market, which is intended to supply smaller traders who would then supply informal urban settlements via vendors. However, the market is saturated with middle-men that effectively diverts this produce to more lucrative markets, a process that harms the consumer through higher food prices. The system keeps reproducing a layer of middle-man raising the challenge of creating a complementary system that will not necessarily stamp out the middle-man but reduce them. Drimie says part of the solution is to “rethink the current system and develop a mechanism to get local producers to compete” directly in the food market close to consumers. “The system makes it impossible for the local suppliers to trade directly or indirectly with local farmers that are either seeking longer term arrangements or do not have access to alternative markets” says Drimie. To turn this situation around, a wide range of producers in areas like Magaliesburg, which in the past were able to produce and supply food to Pretoria and Johannesburg, must be reintegrated into the Johannesburg food system to allow more local distribution channels to open. Interesting opportunities arise in creating new kind of relationships between local producers, larger retailers emerging in formalising urban areas, residents of urban informal areas and supported by better off middle class people in wealthier suburbs to offset the risks. “Notions of community supported agriculture provide such opportunities,” says Drimie. There are other options that shoul be considered. In dealing with urban food security there is a need to create a culture of growing local food, encouraging people to produce their own food. There is also a strong need to mobilise social movements around food to challenge the inequities of the current system and to provide voice to a class of consumers that is seldom heard. Lack of knowledge is a major concern; education should be prioritised to help change people’s behaviour with regard to the kind of food they choose to eat. Food insecurity in South African cities has long been an “invisible” phenomenon to policymakers, scarcely recognised in contemporary political debates. Drimie says “more urgent urban problems such as unemployment, overcrowding, decaying infrastructure and declining services eclipse what is often perceived as a “rural issue”. The intuitive connection between poverty and food insecurity assures policymakers that by dealing with their priority issues, urban food insecurity will be excised. However, the complexity of cities and the structural drivers of food insecurity undermine this rationale. The issue transcends notions that urban development will submerge urban hunger or that solutions such as urban agriculture will moderate its worst excesses. “This is a critical issue that requires urgent and immediate attention”, says Drimie.

Further reading Crush, J. and Frayne, B., 2010 The Invisible Crisis: Urban Food Security in Southern Africa, Urban food Security Series No. 1, African Food Security Urban Network, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON. M. Ruel, J. Garrett, S. Morris, D., Maxwell, O. Oshaug, P. Engle, P. Menon, A. Slack and L. Haddad, “Urban Challenges to Food and Nutrition Security: A Review of Food Security, Health, and Caregiving in the Cities” Discussion Paper No. 51, Food Consumption and Nutrition Division, IFPRI, Washington DC. J. Garrett and M. Ruel, “Food and Nutrition in an Urbanizing World” Choices (1999): 10-15; J. Garrett and M. Ruel, eds., “Achieving Urban Food and Nutrition Security in the Developing World” IFPRI 2020 Vision Focus 3, Washington DC, 2000. J. Vearey, L. Nunez, and I. Palmary, 2009. HIV, migration and urban food security: exploring the linkages, RENEWAL—Regional Network on AIDS, Livelihoods and Food Security. South Africa Report: RENEWAL and Forced Migration Studies Programme, University of the Witwatersrand. http://www.ifpri.org/renewal/pdf/JohannesburgFinal.pdf.