Ronald Eglin

The price of food has increased at an alarming rate. Take a 5kg bag of maize, which increased from R17,58 in December 2007 to R19,19 in March 2008. The price of a frozen chicken rose from R18,24 to R23,20 and a 2-litre container of fresh milk from R9,93 to R15,88 during the same period.

The price of maize, a staple diet for millions of South Africans, has reportedly increased by 40% in the past year.

Globally the price of food is also increasing at a much faster rate than ever before. In the past year, global food prices have increased by an average of 43%, according to the International Monetary Fund. Incomes are not keeping pace with these food-price increases.  

In his statement to the Monetary Policy Committee on 10 April 2008, governor of the South African Reserve Bank Tito Mboweni said: “Consumer price index inflation has maintained its upward trend, reaching 9,4% in February 2008. Petrol and food prices were again the main drivers of inflation and increased at year-on-year rates of 29,5% and 14,3% respectively.”

The more well off can compensate for these food (and petrol) price hikes by cutting back in other areas of their expenditure, such as enjoying less entertainment and taking fewer foreign holidays.
For the poor, however, the majority may not be able to buy the same basket of food they were buying in the past, and hunger is starting to bite.

The Daily Dispatch reported recently that the UN World Food Programme (WFP) had already warned that the high food prices threatened to plunge over 100 million people into hunger.

Moreover, World Bank Group president Robert B Zoellick says that “poor people are suffering daily from the impact of high food prices, especially in urban areas and in low-income countries”.

There does not seem to be one main reason for this sudden increase in food prices but rather a combination of factors. For example global warming, with its associated severe weather patterns like droughts and floods, leads to the damage of food crops. Changing weather patterns also mean that areas once suitable for growing certain foods can no longer do so. Areas that relied on growing their own food now have to import food from other areas.

The concern around global warming has led many people to propose the use of bio-fuels as an alternative to greenhouse gas-causing carbon-based fuels like coal and oil, resulting in many countries producing crops like maize for bio-fuel instead of for food.

“Ethanol production is on course to account for some 30% of the US corn crop by 2010, dramatically curtailing the amount of land available for food crops and pushing up the price of corn flour on international commodity markets” (www.bbc.com/costoffood).

India and China’s middle class, emerging as a result of the economic development of these and other countries, has led to more people now demanding processed foods and meat-based diets. Food previously used to feed people is now being used to feed cattle and livestock.

Due to the relatively good period of food production and supply over the past few decades, many countries have reduced their buffer stocks – and now, with the sudden under-supply of food as described above, these countries do not have reserve food supplies to fall back on.

No one action is going to address all these hunger-contributing factors. It will take great effort on many fronts to make food more affordable. For a start, government needs to step in and subsidise the price of food, especially for the poor and vulnerable.

This can be done through a number of mechanisms, like providing credit to food producers to cover some of their production costs; reducing VAT on basic foods; providing food parcels (although this has proved difficult where it has been tried in that the food often does not reach those most in need); providing food vouchers; increasing social pensions; and providing a basic income grant.

However, such strategies should only be seen as a stop gap: emergency mechanisms to address the immediate food crisis.

In the longer term, there is a need to move as much as possible to self-sufficiency in food, where local production matches local demand – so that local economies do not rely as much on global and external forces to determine the price and availability of food.

Urban agriculture is a good place to start to work towards greater food security, with Cuba being a good example of a country that managed to navigate its way through an estimated 60-plus% reduction in food availability in 1994 (Urban agriculture in Havana – Jorge Pene Diaz, in CPULS: Continuous Productive Urban Landscapes, editor Andre Viljoen, 2005, Architectural Press).

Before the collapse of the Eastern European block – with whom Cuba conducted most of its foreign exchange – in the early 1990s, Cuba’s agricultural economy was based on the export of commercial crops such as sugar, and the import of food crops, using ‘cheap’ fuel to pay for transport into and out of the country. Food production was also based on heavily mechanised production techniques with the use of petroleum-based fertilisers and insecticides.

One of the main strategies they adopted to overcome this crisis was to encourage and support food production in and around urban areas. Urban agriculture was defined as agriculture “occurring 10km around provincial capitals, 5km around municipal towns, and 2km around small towns”.

Other actions taken by Cuba to promote urban agriculture included the following:

Municipalities in Cuba made available, in an organised manner, open land and land in institutional sites (schools, clinics, etc) to people who wanted to engage in farming.

Land survey was conducted by Cuban municipalities to identify potential land – mostly open and undeveloped, but at times previously used – for urban agriculture.

All the land identified had to be easily connected to the municipal water and electricity systems. Urban agriculture was incorporated as a zoning land-use activity within municipal town plans.

The type of agricultural activities established ranged from commercial gardens, run by the operators selling ‘vegetables’ from the farm gate, to gardens sited within the grounds of factories, health facilities, schools and so on to supply the local needs of these institutions, and small-scale plots cultivated by individual families for subsistence purposes.

The Cuban government also provided training and information on organic agriculture methods, natural methods of pest and disease control, and soil fertilisation. Urban agriculture advice offices were set up where people could go to get information on how to access land for production purposes, farming techniques and marketing support.

Institutes of higher learning redirected their training and outreach programmes promoting and supporting local organic agricultural techniques. Much of this research had started about a decade earlier as the institutions began to predict the need to change from highly mechanised agricultural production techniques to a more organic approach.

By 2002, 35 000 hectares of urban land were being used for the intensive production of fruits, vegetables and spices.

Today, over 50% of Havana’s fresh produce is grown within the city limits. The growing of food close to where it is needed has the added advantage of contributing towards a solution to global warming by reducing the need for the transport of food, thereby reducing the demand for greenhouse gas-causing petrol and diesel.

Bio-fuel options that do not compete directly with food crops (like those that use the waste from other crops) also need to be considered.

Other forms of renewable energy, like wind and solar, also need far more attention and support, as they do not compete directly with food production.

As can be seen from the Cuban experience, a crisis can be turned into an opportunity. The interest in urban agriculture, which has been simmering below the surface for more than a decade in South Africa, now needs to be brought to the fore.

Urban agriculture can contribute towards reducing the impact of global food- and energy-price increases on the lives of the poor.

References
Daily Dispatch – 23/04/08 – Summit to tackle food tsunami.  
Girardet, H, 2004. Cities, People, Planet: John Willey and Sons, 2004. 
Global Food Insecurity and Price Increase – situation report 1 May 2008, USAid.
Sunday Independent, 22 April 2008. 
World Bank. Rising Food Prices Threaten Poverty Reduction, Press release – 9 April 2008

Local Government Transformer June-July 2008