Xingwana, at the African Biofortified Sorghum (ABS) open day
16 February 2007
Members of the Executive Council,
Chairperson of the Agricultural Research Council (ARC),
Members of the ARC,
Director-General (DG),
Heads of Department,
Chief Executive Officers (CEOs),
Your excellencies, ambassadors and high commissioners,
Senior officials,
Distinguished guests, friends and comrades,
Ladies and gentlemen:
My desire this morning is to paint a picture of the food security and
nutrition challenges we confront as a country, share with you how we are
tackling the challenges and explore opportunities of how we can work together
in South Africa and the rest of the African continent.
In per capita terms South Africa is an upper-middle income country. Despite
this relative wealth, the experience of most South African households is of
outright poverty or of continuing vulnerability to being poor. In addition, the
distribution of income and wealth in South Africa is among the most unequal in
the world and many households still have unsatisfactory access to education,
healthcare, energy and clean water.
The government's programme of food security and nutrition is to attain
sustainable access to a minimum daily, safe and nutritious food for a healthy,
active and better life for all the people of South Africa. The Integrated Food
Security and Nutrition Programme (IFSNP) has been implemented by various
government departments, including the Department of Agriculture playing an
important role. Food security can be defined as "access for all people at all
times to enough food for an active, healthy life."
This covers:
* food availability: effective or continuous supply of food at both national
and household level
* food access or effective demand: ability of nation and its households to
acquire sufficient food on sustainable basis
* reliability of food: utilisation and consumption of safe and nutritious
food
* food distribution: equitable provision of food to points of demand at the
right time and place.
South Africa recognises that food security is not possible without using
improved appropriate, locally bred cultivars of some indigenous grain crops
such as sorghum, millet and other staple food crops. Therefore the nutritional
content of such staple foods becomes important for everyone to attain food
security particularly for young children and the elderly. In order to avoid
food insecurity it's important to explore various options that will enhance the
micronutrient content of staple foods such as supplementing people's diet.
However, a sustainable approach to enriching staple foods with micronutrients
is to develop improved varieties or cultivars through research and
development.
Malnutrition is not merely lack of food or simply a medical problem, it is
the outcome of complex inter-related social, economic, political and other
processes. Where malnutrition does not cause death, it impacts on the quality
of life and opportunities of those affected and on their ability to earn
adequate income. While the risk of death increases with severity of
malnutrition even those affected by mild to moderate malnutrition have limited
prospects of living.
In South Africa, as in the rest of the continent, poverty is the key driver
of malnutrition.
Immediate causes of malnutrition include inadequate dietary intake and
diseases, underlying causes are related to household food insecurity,
inadequate maternal and childcare and lack of access to basic health services
and an unhealthy environment.
Other causes of malnutrition have been identified as related to the
availability and control of social, economic and organisational resources.
Micro-nutrient malnutrition is a public health problem of considerable
significance in South Africa: one in three children display marginal vitamin A
status, 20% is anaemic and 10% iron deficient.
I'd now like to shift our attention to how the South African government is
tackling the nutrition or malnutrition challenge.
To combat malnutrition, the immediate, underlying and basic causes of the
problem need to be addressed and there must be short, medium and long-term
actions at various levels and by many role players.
South Africa's government intervention to the nutrition challenge
acknowledges that social spending by government and relatively low-cost direct
nutrition programmes such as behaviour change strategies and micro-nutrient
fortification, can have considerable impact.
Progress in overcoming malnutrition in South Africa necessitates that
nutrition goals be explicitly incorporated into the activities of economic and
social sectors with realistic levels of collaboration between sectors to
achieve these goals. Service delivery sectors (agriculture, health and welfare)
implement activities with distinct nutrition related objectives while others
(trade and industry, finance, water affairs and forestry) are aware of the
potential impact of their activities on nutritional status.
The government's national programme of action identifies areas which are
critical with regards to its mandate of delivering a better quality of life for
all. The agriculture programme of action clearly identifies the need to, among
others, ensure that there is food security in order to support its overall goal
of providing a better life. This is demonstrated, ladies and gentlemen, by the
fact that in October 2006 the Department of Agriculture launched the Food
Insecurity and Vulnerability Information Management System (FIVIMS) to be able
to answer basic questions that were raised at the 1996 World Food Summit in
Rome.
Furthermore, the national research and development strategy of 2002 as
developed and published by the government of the Republic of South Africa,
identifies a number of challenges with regards to the fields of research and
development and they permeate across the whole of government. The strategy
recognises that in the past policy frameworks for development have
significantly underestimated the importance of science and technology and as a
result, development policies have not led to sustainable outcomes or improved
the quality of life for the most marginalised people of the developing
world.
Permit me, ladies and gentlemen, to salute the Africa Biofortified Sorghum
(ABS) project for the work that you are doing to search for long-term solutions
to this challenge. On behalf of the South African government, I'd like to thank
the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for providing funds to the tune of
US$18,6 to an African led consortium to work on one of Africa's most important
challenges. Indeed the choice of sorghum was appropriate because sorghum is the
firth most important grain crop in the world and the third most important grain
crop after maize and wheat in South Africa! After millets, sorghum is the most
drought resistant grain crop and a highly versatile crop that can contribute to
household food security, forage and ethanol production. Now with this project
we can add the fourth dimension of alleviating malnutrition through enriching
the micronutrient content of sorghum.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'm aware of the pan-African scope of the ABS project.
In this regard, I'd like to point out that the consolidated science and
technology plan of action articulates Africa's common objectives and commitment
to collective actions to develop and use science and technology for the
socio-economic transformation of the continent and its integration into the
world economy. A key programme cluster in this plan of action focuses on
biodiversity, biotechnology and indigenous knowledge with priorities relating
to the development of new technologies and creating capacity to ensure
sustainable use of these technologies.
The plan also seeks to encourage sharing and transfer of technologies which
can contribute to some of the core aspects of socio-economic upliftment on the
African continent. A number of other programs under New Partnership for
Africa's Development's (NEPAD) Comprehensive African Agricultural Development
Programme (CAADP) and parts of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) of the
United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) also try to address
issues related to food security.
We are encouraged by the fact that three South African scientific
organisations including the ARC, the Council for Scientific and Industrial
Research and the University of Pretoria, are part of the nine-member ABS
consortium.
The ARC, where we are today, is the principal agricultural research
institution in South Africa and I'm encouraged to hear that the ABS project
fits perfectly with the council's research agenda and the government's broad
objectives in relation to science and technology as well as agriculture.
Issued by: Department of Agriculture
16 February 2007
Source: Department of Agriculture (http://www.nda.agric.za)
