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Food security in South Africa: key policy issues for the medium term - January 2004
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Introduction
Identification of focus areas
South Africa is unlikely to appear in the 'high risk' category in any international rating of food security. Despite its comparatively unfavourable natural resource base, in most years, it is a net exporter of agricultural commodities. Its per capita income is high for a developing country. It does not have a tight foreign exchange constraint. It is not landlocked. Its transport infrastructure is generally good. Its constitution entrenches the right to adequate nutrition for all and it has devised a national Integrated Food Security Strategy (IFSS). Clearly, food ought always to be available in South Africa. So why should food security be a priority policy issue for South Africa?
A first part of the answer is to be found in the acute food shortages and hunger presently being experienced just across the border. In Zimbabwe alone, 7 million people are reckoned to be in danger of starvation. But unlike most previous famines, there are strong indications that this one is not simply a short-term phenomenon brought about by a single season's unfavourable weather or even by temporary political turbulence. While both of the latter are certainly important immediate causes of the current emergency, in combination with the HIV/AIDS pandemic, it appears that the damage caused to so many rural households' - and indeed to national - physical, financial and human asset bases will make it increasingly difficult for them to restore their production to previous levels, even when the rains and political stability return. In other words, food insecurity that is already widespread and acute, now looks likely also to become chronic.
Independent of food security within its own borders,
a first major policy question for South Africa (Issue 1) is whether and (if appropriate) how best to prepare for and respond to the likelihood of chronic high levels of food insecurity in fellow SADC countries. Issue 2 explores further how HIV/AIDS is impacting on food security and what policy implications follow.
Yet, even given its own national 'food secure' status, more than 14 million people, or about 35% of the population in South Africa, are estimated to be vulnerable to food insecurity, while the development of as many as 1,5 million, or about one quarter, of children under the age of 6 is reckoned to have been stunted by malnutrition. The Constitution - if not society's values and the sheer economic cost of forgone production potential - dictates the need to reduce and, if possible, eliminate vulnerability to and the negative consequences of food insecurity within South Africa.
More often than not, the reference to 'food' in 'food security' is taken to identify the problem as essentially agricultural. While it would be incorrect to characterize it as being focused exclusively on agriculture, South Africa's IFSS declares its 'primary objective (to be) to overcome rural food insecurity by increasing the participation of food insecure households in productive agriculture sector activities'. Since roughly 70% of the country's poorest households live in rural areas, the focus of this paper is on food insecurity in rural communities, although in Issues 8 and 9 - on the role of food gardens and on the impact of price fluctuations, respectively - explicit consideration is also given to urban food poverty.
Increasing domestic agricultural production may indeed be the valid mainspring of strategies to reduce food insecurity in countries - including several in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) - in which agriculture is still one of the leading contributors to gross domestic product (GDP). But where this is no longer the case - as in South Africa - while it is certainly true that agriculture has played an important historical role in putting food on the table for low income households, that it continues to do so and that it could indeed contribute more than it presently does, it is essential to premise policy on a clear understanding that household food security is primarily a function of total household income, however derived, and much less a function of the food that individual households produce for their own consumption. Composite income estimates should therefore include the value of agricultural (and other) goods produced for own consumption (see Issue 3 below).
All but a very small proportion of households, even in rural areas, are net deficit food producers in South Africa. Given the nature of our economy and the particular endowment of our natural resources, it should not be a political objective to change this to more than a limited degree. This does not mean that it would be a misallocation of public resources in South Africa to try to raise the contribution of agriculture to low income households' food security - a valid policy goal for a number of reasons. Vegetable and fruit gardens have a particularly important potential role in improving the flow and composition of nutrition (see Issues 2, 8 and 11). But, as explained below, additional spending geared to this end should be carefully balanced against alternative approaches, such as boosting welfare grants or delivering more food parcels, both indispensable short-term measures. Investment in agriculture should yield sustained benefits in the long run, but it will take an equally sustained commitment on the part of the public sector to expenditure and institutional restructuring to achieve it. Reducing the constraints on food production faced by low-income households and convincing them of the returns to be had from devoting more of their own resources to agriculture is not a short-term task.
Roughly 1,2 million households in the old 'black rural areas' derive some part of their income from farming. In general, this is a residual activity conducted after most other activities necessary for the functioning of a household have been completed. (To avoid misunderstanding, 'residual', in this context, has no negative connotation. It refers solely to 'time remaining for farming' - which it should be a goal of development policy to increase!) Typically, about one half of the labour time of resident adult, able-bodied householders will be spent on farming but will generate no more than about 5% of income, usually mostly in kind. By far the greater part of household income generally consists of welfare payments and migrants' remittances, with earnings from local wage employment and/or self-employment in non-farm microenterprises sometimes adding a little as well.
Issue 3 elaborates on what is known about the composition and determinants of income of food insecure households in South Africa.
Information about the geographical distribution of the most food insecure households in South Africa is less detailed than one would wish and it is not automatically the case that that the poorest households are also the most food insecure - a household's total income may be low, but be composed largely of food crops produced for own consumption or, for example, of farm workers' rations, thereby making it less food insecure but leaving it with very little disposable income to service its other cash needs. But, to the substantial extent that these two categories do overlap, since the majority of South Africa's poorest households are known to live in the former 'black rural areas', the following highly stylized picture has a number of crucial conclusions and implications for policy:
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Both directly and indirectly, the growth of the macroeconomy, and in particular of employment levels, remains one of the most important determinants of household food security. Macroeconomic management that achieves faster growth and greater job creation without seriously negative side effects is an overarching fiscal and monetary policy challenge.
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Welfare payments are perhaps a still more important determinant, since so many of the poorest households will, at least temporarily, not be able to count on remittances. But they are precarious, since, so often, they depend mainly on the survival of an elderly household member. Though grants should ideally be no more than a 'last resort' component of a safety net and should be designed to minimize the disincentive to engage in self-supporting economic activities, anything that can sustainably be done to increase the amount, the range of types and the accessibility of welfare payments will significantly help reduce food insecurity.
Issue 4 focuses on how infrastructural and institutional constraints affect access to non-agricultural components of income.
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While, on the average, agriculture contributes only a small part of total household income, its importance increases considerably for households - typically those affected by HIV/AIDS - that do not receive remittances and/or welfare payments and who are therefore among the most food insecure.
Issue 8 highlights the potential contribution of home gardens to food insecurity, particularly in such instances, both in rural and in urban areas.
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Since it is mostly women who are responsible for agricultural production, interventions that enable them to increase the productivity of time spent on farming activities and to spend less time on routine household tasks, such as fetching water, firewood and groceries, are likely to be most effective in increasing agricultural output. Readier access to functioning, affordable infrastructural services - especially piped water, electricity and transport - should therefore be an effective catalyst for increasing food security.
Issue 6 examines how infrastructural and institutional supply-side constraints affect food production and the implications thereof.
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Better infrastructure and service delivery will also help households increase income earned from local non-farm microenterprises - sometimes craft manufacture, but more often services such as retailing conducted in small towns.
This extends the exploration of Issue 4.
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Improving access to microfinance (non-specific, short term liquidity) is a key co-facilitator of almost all kinds of local microenterprise activity, including farming mainly for own consumption - the dominant form of agriculture in the former 'black rural areas'. Most microfinance is provided by the private sector or local co-operative groups, but parastatals such as the Land Bank could - and arguably should - play a more active role in this respect. Where most agricultural production is not for the market, conventional agricultural credit is generally inappropriate.
This further extends the exploration of Issue 4.
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Government has an important direct role to play in generating local non-farm income earning opportunities through its public works programmes. It is essential that the evaluation that most current programmes are now undergoing be used to place them on a more sustainable footing rather than to terminate them, wherever possible. In addition, since the infrastructure development approach that characterises most current public works programmes generally leads to a substantial contraction in local employment opportunities once capital spending is over - with only a relatively small number of maintenance jobs remaining - it is important to consider the potential for public service options, such as day-mothering or running soup kitchens, to complement public works with employment which also has positive externalities but which is more likely to be ongoing as well as more gender-appropriate.
Public works and public service programmes both generate important opportunities to earn non-farm income (see Issue 3) and make up key components of proactive systems to minimize and respond to food emergencies (Issue 10).
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Basic risk management principles, no less than limited capital and management resources, determine that few low income households that have access to farm land will wish to rely on farming for more than a relatively small part of their income. While increasing the percentage of income earned from agriculture - say, from 5-10% to 10-15% - is a valid policy objective and will call for considerable additional public expenditure, it is important not to focus disproportionately on this objective as a means of reducing food insecurity. For this reason, it is more appropriate to attempt to achieve such an increase mainly as a valuable by-product of improving infrastructure rather than through increasing expenditure on agriculturally specific support measures, such as extension services.
Issue 6 deals with the impact of infrastructure on agriculture, while Issue 7 examines how and why agricultural support services, such as training and extension, have deteriorated and policy issues arising.
Though the greater part of the country's poorest households reside in the former 'black rural areas', a second substantial group is to be found among the households who have acquired land since 1994 in the former 'white rural areas' under the Department of Land Affairs' land redistribution and land restitution programmes. Thorough assessments remain to be carried out, but preliminary indications are that many, if not most, of the households involved are currently unable to derive a significant part of their income from this land. Consequently, their income levels and patterns are likely to be fairly similar.
In Issue 5, the focus falls on how land reform - in both the former 'white' and the former 'black rural areas' - impacts on food security.
However, the set of constraints that they face will usually differ from smallholders in the former 'black rural areas' - in particular, they will generally have more secure tenure and be served by better public infrastructure. The approach needed to help reduce the incidence of food insecurity among households in this category is therefore rather different and calls, among others, for greater and more comprehensive post-settlement support and an imaginative re-visit to institutional forms and arrangements. Individually conducted small-scale agriculture must be one of the most difficult and most precarious ways of making a living and it may be helpful to examine ways in which, for example, partnerships with well established, larger scale farmers could assist in reducing the acute capital and management constraints that most individual smallholders experience.
Issue 5 goes on to examine the scope for and record to date of joint ventures as a means of enhancing the income of land reform beneficiaries.
Measures of this nature to increase the agricultural productivity of land reform beneficiaries should have a positive impact on low-income household food security and are clearly deserving of public sector support. But to the extent that they draw on the fiscus, the relative numbers of households should be borne in mind: between
130 000 and 140 000 households have received land in this way, little more than a 1/10th of the number of farming households in the old 'black rural areas'. Fiscal support should not be too disproportionate. And, whatever the gains from initiatives to increase agricultural output on resettled land, it will be no less important for resettled households to retain access to income from the same diversity of sources on which their counterparts in the old 'black rural areas' have come to rely
(see Issue 3)
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It can reasonably be assumed that the roughly 30% of lowest income households who reside in urban areas are almost all among the most food insecure, given their lack of access to agricultural land. In this context, policy to reduce food insecurity clearly needs to focus more on macroeconomic growth, welfare payments and support for microenterprises. However, particularly outside the metropolitan areas, adequate delivery of basic services cannot automatically be assumed and may have significantly negative effect on food security. Poor access to water, for example, would make vegetable gardening difficult. This highlights the need both to ensure the adequacy of urban infrastructure and services and to examine the potential and limitations of urban agriculture to contribute towards reducing food insecurity. In respect of vegetable gardening, this applies equally to many rural households
(see Issues 7 and 8)
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Beyond measures to raise income and agricultural output, the IFSS draws attention to the need for systems, both proactive and reactive, to address acute food insecurity brought on by disasters such as drought, floods and political instability. Accessibility is a critical consideration. Though vulnerability assessment, advance warning and emergency distribution systems are all now being developed, they are still in their infancy. As clearly identifiable public goods - or services - with obvious positive externalities, these should be high priorities for public spending to accelerate their development. But the challenge posed by this group of needs extends well beyond the allocation of additional fiscal resources: more than money, it requires closer communication, co-ordination and collaboration between government at all levels and between government, NGOs and the private sector. This is an institutional problem best tackled with the assistance of organizations with international experience and that calls for determined attention from no body less than Cabinet.
Issue 10 discusses how the development of proactive and reactive systems to minimize and respond to food emergencies best be assisted.
Additional aspects of a comprehensive approach to policy concern affordability and nutritional adequacy. Low-income households - even those who produce some of their own food - spend a greater proportion of their income on purchased food items than any other income group and are therefore particularly vulnerable to price increases, especially the kinds of sudden - and often quite sustained - increase that are not compensated for to some degree by a rise in nominal income. The incidence of such increases has grown markedly over the past decade with the deregulation of agricultural markets and the exceptional volatility of the Rand.
The case for trying to cushion the impact on the most vulnerable groups is clear, but what is much less clear is how best to go about this. While the international currency exchange rate system has had to be taken as a given, domestic agricultural markets appear to be more amenable to local intervention and various proposals have recently been made in this regard.
Nevertheless, optimal intervention to stabilize or to offset the effects of volatile food prices on the poorest remains a considerable policy challenge, especially given the long history of unsuccessful forms of intervention (Issue 9).
Nutritional adequacy is determined by the volume and composition of food intake. To the extent that both depend on the availability, accessibility and affordability of food, the preceding discussion may be reckoned to have raised most of the relevant issues already. But because adequacy of composition is also a matter of household awareness, it is a public health and a public education issue as well. In both instances, policy improvement once again has both fiscal and institutional dimensions.
Issue 11 examines the most cost effective ways of improving public health services and public education to reduce malnutrition.
Table 1 summarizes:
| Issue no. |
Focus |
| 1 |
Should public sector policy in South Africa accommodate the dynamics of the regional food market? If so, how might this best be done? |
| 2 |
How is HIV/AIDS impacting on food security? |
| 3 |
What is the extent of food insecurity in South Africa? And what are the major determinants of food security for low-income households? |
| 4 |
How is food security affected by institutional and infrastructural deficiencies that constrain access to non-agricultural components of income? |
| 5 |
How does land reform impact on food security? |
| 6 |
How do infrastructural and institutional supply-side constraints affect food production in low-income households? |
| 7 |
How and why have agricultural support services deteriorated? |
| 8 |
What is the appropriate role for food gardens in promoting food security? |
| 9 |
What influence do food price fluctuations have on food security? And how might their influence best be mitigated? |
| 10 |
How can the development of proactive and reactive systems to minimize and respond to food emergencies best be undertaken or assisted? |
| 11 |
What are the most cost-effective ways of improving public health services and public education to reduce malnutrition? |
Methodology
The discussion is issue- rather than analytically-orientated. A brief literature-based review of the most relevant features of the status quo is followed, in each instance, by the identification of key issues for public policy formulation in the medium term, i.e. the period 2004-2006. The focus is primarily on policy issues that do not appear to have been adequately addressed yet by the respective Departments and/or that do not yet appear to have been brought to the attention of National Treasury and that may therefore be fruitful topics for discussion between the respective parties in developing strategy and expenditure plans for the medium term. However, instances where the key issues are already well known but where public expenditure appears either substantially inadequate and/or sub-optimally directed are also highlighted.
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