Food Security and Agriculture

Sustainable agriculture contributes to poverty alleviation by reducing food prices, creating employment, improving farm income and increasing wages. Agricultural growth has a strong and positive impact on poverty, often significantly greater than that of other economic sectors. Food insecurity adversely affects all levels of social and economic life. With 30% of South Africa’s population vulnerable to food insecurity, it is vital to address the situation for the current and future stability of the country.

The majority of the world’s poor are farmers and herders, who earn most of their living from the land. Making agriculture work for the poor must be a central component of policy approaches to poverty reduction and economic growth. The rise in food prices worldwide, which was apparently caused by supply disruptions, changing diets, the use of food crops for biofuel and inappropriate agricultural policies, including subsidies, has brought the issue of food security to the forefront. An inability to afford food leads to malnutrition, poor health and disrupted education, as children are taken out of school to help earn money to buy food. Food insecurity can lead to high health and medical costs, as well as poor educational development.

The Current Situation

International

• There are 923 million undernourished people in the world.
• An additional 75 million have been pushed below the hunger threshold by rising food prices.
• Food prices rose 52% between 2007 and 2008.
• The number of hungry people in sub-Saharan Africa increased from 169 million (1990-1992) to 212 million (2003-2005).
• Global cereal supply is at its lowest level in 30 years. The growing popularity of bio-fuels as a cleaner energy alternative could increase demand for these cereals, putting further upward pressure on prices.

South Africa

• 1.5 million South African children suffer from malnutrition.
• 14 million people are vulnerable to food insecurity.
• High unemployment rates, an inadequate social welfare system and high HIV/AIDS infection rates have all contributed to food insecurity.
• Land distribution in South Africa is among the most unequal in the world, with 55,000 white farmers owning 85% of agricultural land. About 12 million black farmers inhabit 17.1 million hectares of land, of which only 2.6 million hectares is arable land.
• Government initiatives to support rural farmers have generally favoured commercially viable emerging farmers and groups, while poor, small-scale households are often ignored.
• The high prevalence of HIV/AIDS makes food security even more critical. The lack of a sufficient, sustained supply of nutritious food contributes to the progression of AIDS-related illnesses and undermines adherence and response to antiretroviral therapy.

SASIX considers investment in projects that:

• Help communities regain access and rights to land, and undertake skills training and capacity-building with them.
• Promote recognition in the form of title deeds to farm dwellers in new land development activities, as well as equity share schemes.
• Research land issues and issues of poverty alleviation and sustainable rural livelihoods, and provide support for policy development.
• Increase the access of food-insecure households and communities to resources such as land, environmentally sustainable technologies, credit, training and markets.
• Ensure better access to finance, tools, skills, and knowledge for small-scale farmers, including information technology – particularly providing market information.
• Create opportunities for small-scale producers to supply markets, including investing in the development of cooperatives and upstream and downstream production activities.
• Invest in training for small-scale producers, including entrepreneurial expertise.
• Help communities establish income-generating projects, including small-scale commercial agriculture and sustainable harvesting of natural resources.
• Enable women, often responsible for agriculture production, to increase the productivity of their time spent on farming activities.
• Promote women’s access to and participation in commercial agriculture by supporting cooperatives, increasing access to credit or supporting skill development in the industry.
• Invest in productivity-enhancing, environmentally sustainable technologies for small-scale producers.
• Promote small-scale irrigation and rainwater harvesting technologies.
• Have strategies to specifically link women and rural food gardeners to the economic mainstream.
• Support the various needs of small-scale farmers and community gardeners who often practice mixed farming and undertake a variety of enterprises.