BUSINESS NEWS - The major problem with accurate and comprehensive statistics is that it takes a long time to publish a report after conducting a survey and calculating the numbers. Unfortunately, this is also the case with a recent Stats SA report that aims to measure the extent of hunger and food security in SA.
Nevertheless, the publication of the first report of its kind at the end of March following data collection in a general household survey in 2017 makes for very interesting reading. Firstly, readers would be amazed by the sheer size of the number of people affected by hunger or food insecurity in SA. Secondly, the report identified a definite trend that life in SA is improving faster than in the rest of the world, especially in comparison to other African countries.
Source: Stats SA
Research by the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation recently found that 10.7% of the world’s population of 7.6 billion people face hunger – that is 815 million hungry people. Hunger is most prevalent in Africa with 23.2% of the population going hungry regularly, according to the UN. Thus, hunger is more than twice as prevalent in the rest of Africa than in SA.
The Stats SA report shows that SA is making some progress in its war on hunger. There were 13.5 million South Africans who experienced hunger in 2002, says Stats SA. While the number of people who experienced hunger halved to 6.8 million by 2017, the actual progress has been much better, which becomes apparent when viewed in terms of percentages. The population was much smaller in 2002 (45.5 million people at mid-year) and the percentage of the population that experienced hunger at one time or another was at 29.7% – considerably more than the 12% reported for 2017.
Figures in different reports by the UN show that the situation improved much more slowly in Africa as a whole over the same period. The percentage of hungry people in Africa decreased from 33% in 2002 to 23% in 2017. Admittedly, the figures were skewed in 2002 when a big part of southern Africa was hit by a serious drought in 2002 and 13 million people, mostly in Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi, faced hunger.
Stats SA says the measurement of food security is complex as the concept of food security in itself is very broad.
According to the report, there are four dimensions to food security:
- Food availability
- Food accessibility
- Food utilisation
- Food stability.
The fact that food availability refers to the physical existence of food at national and household level is problematic. Obviously we have enough food at a national level – as a quick visit to any supermarket will show – but not all households have access to adequate food.
Stats SA quotes an international food and agricultural report that states the obvious link between food security, unemployment, poverty and inequality. A different Stats SA report quantified a food poverty line as R441 per person per month in terms of 2015 prices, adjusted to R531 per month in 2017.
The food poverty line is the monthly amount a person needs to be able to buy food to the value of 2 100 calories per day.
For most people living close to the breadline, this equates to porridge and tea for breakfast, bread with jam for lunch, and lentils or rice with tomato, carrots and maybe a little meat for dinner.
Unfortunately, the Stats SA report leaves us in the lurch because the data relates to 2017. Reports from the Department of Labour note a slight increase in both employment and total wages paid during the last quarter of 2018 compared to 2017, but the unemployment rate remained largely unchanged due to a further increase in the population and the number of work seekers. The number of people below the food poverty line has probably increased.
