S.Africa: FOOD AVAILABILITY WARNING: Shoprite food security warning for South Africa

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South Africa’s biggest retailer, Shoprite, has published its inaugural Food Security Index for 2024, showing that the country’s food security levels are at their lowest point since 2012.

According to Shoprite, the concept of ‘food security’ was first defined at the 1996 World Food Summit, defined as a situation “where all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for a healthy life”.

For its index, developed by economists from the University of Stellenbosch, the group looked at a more specific definition:

A country can be said to have food security when there is enough food in a country, its population has economic and physical access to food (it can purchase food and access it physically at convenient locations), there is sufficient diversity in the diet of its population, and there are not periodic dips or deterioration in these dimensions, and they are stable over time.

The Index evaluates four dimensions of food security, namely availability, access, utilisation and overall stability, from 2012 to 2023, and creates a baseline to measure food security in South Africa yearly using publicly available and annually updated data.

While South Africa peaked at 64.9 on the Index in 2019, this number dropped to 45.3 in 2023 (zero indicates severe food insecurity).

“It means that, on average, more South Africans experienced greater or deeper food insecurity in 2023, compared to any other year between 2012 and 2023,” the group said.

The Index series starts after the Global Financial Crisis when food security was near an average value of 52.4. The series shows a brief recovery after this difficult economic period.

A small drop in food security values followed the 2012 global food price crisis, before returning to the mean value in 2015.

However, the drought of 2015/6 had a sudden and sharp downward impact on the South Africa Food Security Index before recovering dramatically.

The start of the COVID-19 lockdowns took the Index down from its peak value of 64.6 in 2019.

Inflationary pressures during the Ukraine war period and tough economic circumstances in South Africa assisted in creating further drops in Index values to the lowest food security levels in 2023 to a value of 45.3.

“One of most concerning observations drawn from the Index is that child hunger remains a major issue.”

The index found that one in four of the poorest households reported that children in their homes went hungry in 2023.

By 2023, 11.8% of households said they were consuming a lower variety of food than usual given economic constraints.

At a national level, food availability declined from a peak of 2.8 tons of raw food per person per year in 2017 to 2.6 tons in 2022.

Food security also varies significantly across the country. While Limpopo performs surprisingly well, the Eastern Cape had moved into “poor” territory by 2023.

Gauteng had the highest levels of food security in 2023, while the Northern Cape had the lowest.

Shoprite flagged a host of interventions and recommendations that can be made by policymakers to improve food security in the country, including turning to alternative sources of nutrition, increasing access to foods through VAT changes and keeping better record and track of nutritional outcomes in the country.

The group added that child nutrition should be prioritised.

“National Treasury must strongly consider zero-rating VAT on certain key food products, especially protein-rich items used by lower-income households,” it said.

“There is currently a process underway to reconsider the food items which are VAT-exempt and to potentially expand the zero-rated VAT list.

“Multiple stakeholders have argued for adding affordable protein sources to this list – supported by the meat and poultry industry. This needs to be urgently considered and put into action, considering both the hunger and nutrition problems in South Africa.”

Source: https://businesstech.co.za/news/lifestyle/795794/shoprite-food-security-warning-for-south-africa/

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