‘Make food waste illegal,’ Gauteng symposium on ending hunger is told

The Gauteng MEC for agriculture and rural development, Vuyiswa Ramokgopa, and her office, in tandem with the Nelson Mandela Foundation, on 8 April held a symposium on ending hunger, at the Nelson Mandela Foundation in Houghton.

“We at a department level have been seized with — when I started eight months ago — three priorities: ending hunger, supporting commercialisation of small-scale farmers, and creating sustainable and meaningful jobs in the province,” said Ramokgopa.

She said that South Africa was a successful food-producing country, producing enough to export, with a well-developed food industry. It was, for “all intents and purposes, a middle-income country”.

“On paper alone, there’s no reason why, at the very least, we shouldn’t be able to feed our people. This engagement is an acknowledgment, an admission really, that as government we can’t do this alone,” said Ramokgopa.

She said the government had the ability and responsibility to reach different stakeholders.

Gauteng MEC for Agriculture and Rural Development Vuyiswa Ramokgopa, along with other panellists, at the symposium for ending hunger, at the Nelson Mandela Foundation. (Photo: Supplied)

Perspectives on food security, production and markets 

Alan Browde, the CEO and founder of SA Harvest (a food rescuing organisation ensuring that food headed for landfills reaches people in need), said that in 4½ years, SA Harvest had delivered 18 million meals, which amounted to 1½ days of food for people in need in South Africa.

“We have to keep this in perspective. This is a crime against humanity,” said Browde. “Firstly, there is an unimaginable situation of millions of our children going to sleep hungry every night. As we talk now, a child is dying from malnutrition and hunger. Only legislation can make the massive impact that we need to change Gauteng and the country. What we need is action. A low-hanging fruit is food waste and legislating in Gauteng that food waste has to be illegal.”

He cited the Garot law in France, which bans supermarkets from discarding edible food, mandates food donations to charities and incentivises food recovery, redistribution and awareness campaigns.

“It [the Garot law] has had a huge impact in France; we have to do that. Talking is great, but let’s pick one or two things today and move. The Union Against Hunger demands creating a ministry of food,” said Browde.

Sarel Pienaar, the vice-president of Agri Gauteng and a commercial farmer, said that Gauteng had the best farmers in South Africa.

“We have brilliant farmers, [who] without a lot of help from the government, are doing a great job. The obstacles are labour laws; they cannot afford the labour costs and input costs.

“The fresh produce markets have not kept up with the demand for food in our metros. The space remained the same, but the population has grown significantly over the past 30 years in Gauteng.

“Accessibility to the markets is also a problem, with security, especially, around the market that’s lacking. Trucks get highjacked and freight gets stolen or thrown off trucks when they have to stop at traffic lights. There have been some good changes concerning security inside the market recently, though.”

He said the market in Tshwane was very hot, leading to food wastage. A solution would be to make the market cooler.

“A lot of substandard food gets left on the land, and although it’s not always suitable for the buyers at the fresh produce market, [it] can also be sold at lower prices by other means than maybe the market to help with hunger and the needy in Gauteng.

“So if some other distribution channel can be established between farmers and organisations that helps the needy, that would benefit both the farmer and the poor,” said Pienaar.

Success story

Tintswalo Makhubele, from Imvuselelo farming cooperative at Eikenhof in Johannesburg, told how the cooperative began with limited support from the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development. It now supplies the local Pick n Pay, Spar and the Johannesburg Fresh Produce Market.

“We are not emerging; we are farmers,” said Makhubele. They are aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals of poverty alleviation, education and decent work, among others, and have trained 30 young farmers to run their own operations.

Priority

“We felt that developing and passing legislation on food wastage should be a priority for the MEC and central pillar of the office’s work,” commented Mark Heywood, a human rights activist and co-founder of the Union Against Hunger.

Heywood said that food wastage, including edible farm produce, should be properly redirected to people in need. He said the MEC could pass legislation on this within a year.

Darlington Mushongera, a senior researcher at the Gauteng City-Region Observatory (GCRO), presented an overview of the hunger crisis in Gauteng. Every two years since 2009, the GCRO has carried out a quality of life survey that includes more than 200 questions. T This year, they added the question “In the past 12 months, has there ever been a time when there was not enough money to feed the children in the household?” to the survey.

In terms of household income sources, in 2023/24, more than one source of income was at 65.6%, social grants 2.2%, formal employment 20.1%, informal employment 5.8%, family remittances 2.8%, and no source of income at 1%.

The GCRO also maps the food poverty line, the lower-bound poverty line and the upper-bound poverty line. The food poverty line is the minimum amount of food a household needs to survive. Mushongera said that from 2009 to 2024, the percentage of those living below the food poverty line had risen from 10% to 16%. DM