Cultivating the right to food in Johannesburg’s community gardens

community garden Alexandra townshipby Brittany Kesselman

The right to food is enshrined in the South African constitution (section 27(1)b). At a national level, South Africa is food secure, insofar as the country produces and/or imports enough food for the entire population. Despite this, an estimated 26% of South Africans experience hunger, with an additional 28.3% at risk of hunger. In Johannesburg, the economic heart of South Africa, figures for food insecurity range from over 50% in poor areas to as high as 90% in the most deprived wards. Clearly, a large number of South Africans are not enjoying their right to food.

Food security in South Africa, and specifically in Johannesburg, is not about the availability of food as much as about access to food, and especially about the ability to purchase food. With an unemployment rate of 24.7% in Johannesburg, and food prices rising, many residents can’t afford to buy food. Another obstacle to accessing food is the legacy of Apartheid spatial planning, which located poor households far from the city centre in areas not well served by public transportation or the formal retail sector.

In many developing world cities, the urban poor grow food to supplement their diets and incomes. In some cities, urban agriculture contributes a significant amount of the population’s vegetable intake. However, in Johannesburg, less than 10% of poor households grow food, either for consumption or sale. The low level of participation in urban agriculture, alongside significant poverty, unemployment, and food insecurity, raises the question of why more people aren’t growing food in Johannesburg. The main reasons that have emerged in my research on city food gardens include lack of resources (land, water, tools), lack of interest, and lack of knowledge.

Despite these challenge, food gardens are scattered across Johannesburg, from land around informal settlements to inner-city rooftops. Gardeners in Johannesburg come from different parts of the country and from other countries. They are men and women, young and old, though mostly older. At two case-study gardens, where I’ve done extensive research, participants report having enough food to eat. However, based on a food diary exercise, it became apparent that most are consuming diets of limited diversity and insufficient micronutrients. Thus, even free and immediate access to fresh vegetables doesn’t guarantee a healthy diet. Limited nutritional knowledge, plus limited access to other ingredients and fatigue after working in the garden, seem to be other barriers to a healthy diet.

To date, no food gardener I’ve asked has known about the right to food. To be empowered to claim their rights, South Africans must know these rights exist and understand what they entail. The parameters of the right to food in South Africa remain untested in the courts. The government’s approach is mostly to allow the market to operate freely, offering some support for agricultural production (particularly for small-scale black farmers), while providing safety nets, in the form of social grants, food parcels, and soup kitchens, for those most in need.

The South African government has numerous policies to address hunger, yet they do not seem to be working. Part of the problem is that many food-security-related policies and plans, especially at national level, have focused on increasing agricultural production, even though there’s already enough food to feed the population. The provincial government has supported backyard and community gardens in Johannesburg for nearly 20 years by providing tools, seeds, infrastructure, and training. This support has reached several-thousand backyard gardens and several-hundred community gardens in the province. However, studies have found that this support has not always been well-matched to the needs of gardeners, and often the support period was not long enough to get gardens established.

Johannesburg, or Joburg, also supports urban agriculture. The most recent policy on food resilience (2012) takes a multifaceted approach. In addition to providing direct support to urban farmers (seeds, tools, and training, plus help finding vacant land), the City of Joburg also seeks to increase market access by creating food hubs to enable small growers to consolidate their produce to supply larger buyers. Beyond small backyard and community gardens, the city is setting up “food empowerment zones” at which cooperatives are allocated one hectare each to farm. These sites have processing and storage facilities as well. There are also plans to set up subsidized markets and “people’s restaurants” (in the style of Brazil),which will sell the food garden produce at reduced prices, to make food more affordable. These have not yet been rolled out, but by addressing affordability, they should improve access to food for Joburg residents.

Viewed from the perspective of food gardeners, the policies and programmes of government come up short. While the types of assistance provided are certainly needed, the amount is insufficient to meet the quantity of gardeners reached, as well as the length of time support is provided. Furthermore, many of the biggest challenges food gardeners face relate to things outside the gardens. Access to markets, for those who wish to sell their produce, is a massive challenge, due to spatial marginalisation of gardeners, poor transportation infrastructure, and a highly concentrated and unevenly distributed formal retail sector.

The state’s obligations regarding the right to food are not spelled out clearly in the Constitution and have never been tested before the Constitutional Court, so it remains to be seen whether the government’s existing policies and programmes would pass muster. But as long as South Africans don’t know they have this right, they are unlikely to hold the government accountable.

Brittany Kesselman will be a speaker at the UVM Food Systems Summit on June 16-17, 2015 at the UVM Davis Center.  For more information or to register, visit uvm.edu/foodsystemssummit.

 

Posted in: Health, Social, UVM.