Discussions of food security often revolve around the availability of food supply.
This is a critical component of the discussion, but not the only one. The fact is that South Africa must take a holistic view on the economic dynamics of the country if we are going to meaningfully tackle poverty and hunger.
Failure to do impedes our ability to end hunger and limits our understanding of the interventions needed to enable the agricultural sector to play a greater role in food security.
Food security, as a global concern, began to seriously infiltrate public discourse after the World Food Conference in 1974. In the resulting “Universal Declaration on the Eradication of Hunger and Malnutrition”, food security was defined as “availability at all times of adequate world food supplies of basic foodstuffs to sustain a steady expansion of food consumption and to offset fluctuations in production and prices”.
While the definition is important, the world has since recognised that the availability of food is only one aspect of the challenge of hunger. This is why, in recent times, the concept of food certainty has arisen to broaden the international effort to end hunger to other critical aspects including food affordability, safety, accessibility and use.
SA agriculture exports amounted to $3.4bn in second quarter
South Africa is largely a food-secure country. But the weaknesses in our food system are exposed when we consider the broader definition of food certainty. This is especially true when we consider food affordability. It isn’t enough for a country to produce sufficient food to feed all its people. People must also have the means to buy the food in sufficient quantities to provide adequate nutrition. This boils down to income.
Sadly, South Africans face the daily reality of an unemployment rate above 30% in most provinces. This is worse for South Africa’s youth who face an unemployment rate above 50%. The country does have a social security system that provides grants to more than 10 million South Africans. But with a grant of just R350 for the unemployed, this is not enough to ensure access to sufficient nutritious food.
Food prices in Africa - published in the journal for the Studies in Agricultural Economics
The fact is, notwithstanding our social security system, employment remains the best remedy for hunger.
In this context then, economic policy is not only an economic issue but also a social and health issue. It must, therefore, be judged not only for its impact on gross domestic product (GDP) or exports but also on how well it advances food certainty. This is especially true for policies that affect employment.
The agricultural sector is not only important in its production of food but also in its creation of employment. The sector creates a disproportionate number of jobs when compared to its contribution to GDP. While the sector represents 1.5 % of nominal GDP, it makes up 5.4% of the jobs in the country. Many of the jobs are in poor rural communities that lack alternative employment opportunities.
Any policy, then, that promotes employment in agriculture increases not only food production but also the ability of workers and dependants to access nutritious food. Conversely, pressures on agricultural sector employment have ripple effects for national food certainty, especially in rural communities.
Farmers, like other economic actors, face mounting pressures. If we want to address the issues that prevent more employment and continue to be a food-secure country, more focus needs to be placed on ensuring that key challenges impacting sectors across the economy are addressed.
Load shedding, the petrol price and high input costs are weighing down the financial sustainability of farming operations. In this context, the government must exercise greater caution in the implementation of policies that can exacerbate the pressures. Nowhere is this more evident than in the National Minimum Wage.
On the one hand, decent wages are an integral part of ensuring that workers earn enough to feed themselves and their loved ones. But this must be balanced against the pressures on the sector which could undermine the viability of those jobs.
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To this end, Agri SA has recommended an inflation-linked increase in the national minimum wage to keep the increase economically feasible. The priority of keeping the sector sustainable must underpin all economic policy, from taxes and raw water tariffs to wages.
At its congress in next month, Agri SA will bring together actors across the sector to discuss the state of the sector and to engage the government on the pressures facing the sector. The congress will provide an opportunity to find the delicate balance needed in economic policy to promote the ability of the sector to produce the food South Africans need, and to provide the livelihoods that give workers access to the food.
Ultimately, to live up to our constitutional right to access sufficient food, as well as our international commitment to Sustainable Development Goal 2 of achieving zero hunger by 2030, we must boost employment and grow the most labour-intensive sectors.
This means pursuing evidence-based policies that consider and prioritise food certainty for the poorest and vulnerable in the country. This a tremendous responsibility on the agricultural sector, which government must help to achieve through its policies.
