Numbers not telling full story of food security

STAGGERING statistics on the state of food security trick people into believing that more food needs to be produced, while that is not the case.

Rose Williams, the director of an early warning system for the detection of pathogens intentionally being released into the air, Biowatch, said statistics were used by big businesses and corporate interests to skilfully trick people into being controlled to rely on an industrialised food system and its poisons.

The poisons include chemicals, pesticides, biodiversity destruction, climate crisis, and water and air pollution.

The 2021 UN Report on the State of Food Security and Nutrition stated that up to 161 million more people across the world were facing hunger last year compared with 2019, partly due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Globally, nearly one in three people did not have access to adequate food.

Williams said that when people saw the staggering statistics, the assumption would be that there was not enough food being produced. The solution seems obvious – produce more food. “However, this is not so,“he said.

Associate professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s School of Built Environment and Development Studies, Mvuselelo Ngcoya, said the crisis lay in the industrialised food system, which were harmful, inadequate and precarious.

“It is claimed that most of our food (in South Africa), is produced by some 40 000 commercial farmers. That’s not food sovereignty; you are not a food sovereign nation when your food is dependent on the wills and the whims of such a small number of people,” he said.

Minister of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development Thoko Didiza will commemorate World Food Day 2021 today.

World Food Day is commemorated on October 16 annually to promote global awareness and advocate collective action to assist those who suffer from hunger.