Eating

Most of us have been in a situation where we experience temporary hunger. It might be that we forgot to pack our lunch, or missed a meal and had to wait for the next one to be served. But mostly we did not give it a second thought.

Imagine a scenario of regularly not having enough to eat, or living under the anxiety of wondering where the next meal was going to come from. In a world which grows enough food, around 800 million people right now are hungry, while you are reading this. The former FAO Director General Jacques Diouf rightly called it "the world's largest tragedy and scandal".

There is a good chance that your views on food security (or food sovereignty) reflect your conditioning and investment in society. If you are part of the agro-food value chain, you will most likely dismiss any responsibility for world hunger because you, to be fair, are doing your part to put food on the shelves! And if you earn your money in a different sector (and are not dependent on this one, at least not financially), you might be more critical of it.

And if you are not earning money?

South Africa is food secure on a national level, thanks mostly to our farmers. Why is it then that around 14.1 million people (26% of the population) are "predisposed to hunger and malnutrition" (DAFF, 2016)?

Hard work and profit encourage our entrepreneur farmers to produce food and to take the risks that accompany this. And they should be supported. Emerson praised them, saying farmers cause food to be where there was not food before.

Increasingly, questions are being asked about how that food finds its way to the consumer.  In the light of eating or not eating, it is right that attention falls on agriculture and on the agro-food system, and that there is debate around the process which brings food to our plates.

Follow the debates on the Centre of Excellence in Food Security website, http://www.foodsecurity.ac.za, or take a look at chapters like Food security in The Agri Handbook. There are overviews of all crops, livestock, inputs, markets etc. Find the free pdf download under "Order". The first chapters of the 2016/17 edition will be available online from 1 July 2016.

What's for dinner, luv?

Four blocks from where I live is an intersection on Louis Botha Avenue where unemployed men wait during the day, hoping that someone will offer them a job. That's not permanent employment, just something to keep hunger at bay.

South Africa is food secure as a country -- but 14-million people do not know where their next meal will come from. And another 15-million are only just not as desperate.

Some talk of the nature of agriculture, that increasingly it exists to produces food for the wealthy. Others roll up their sleeves and get on with teaching the vulnerable to grow food gardens. Some, like the Mail & Guardian newsroom, have a challenge out today to try live this day on #6Rand [just over half an American dollar], like many of the people in this country do.

At the same time, the world's scandal is that one-third of the food produced is wasted and lost. Find the Youtube clip, just over three minutes, on this.

Today is the United Nations' World Food Day.

Today, especially, food should be eaten with great awareness.

Find the chapter on food security in The Agri Handbook here.

Wheat and the Ukraine

The news from the commodity trading people is that wheat prices are surging, a result of the crisis in the Ukraine and fears of a disruption there. This region is a major wheat exporter. Combined wheat exports from here will be approximately 26 million tonnes (about 17% of the world trade), according to the latest figures from the US Department of Agriculture.

Read about the wheat industry in South Africa (and globally) in the wheat chapter of The Agri Handbook.