World Food Day on October 16 marks the 80th anniversary of the UN’s Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO) under the theme, “Hand in hand for better foods and a better future”. But solidarity only matters if it reaches the table. The worsening malnutrition crisis in the Eastern Cape is not an outlier — it is the sharp edge of a national problem.
A recent StatsSA survey shows that more than one in five households across the country struggle to get enough to eat.
This World Food Day comes five years before the 2030 deadline for the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with the 2023 special edition SDG report warning that progress on about 30% of targets has stalled or reversed. This global warning echoes in our local reality: children missing meals, parents going without, and families facing impossible choices. The message is clear — pledges must now become protection.
That’s why, during South Africa’s G20 presidency, we placed food affordability and market stability at the top of the agenda. The “ubuntu approaches on food security and nutrition, and excessive food price volatility”, endorsed in Cape Town, centre dignity, agency and solidarity in policy making. The focus is on fair and transparent trade rules, timely price and supply information, climate-smart farming and safety nets that protect household buying power — exactly what South African families need.
That’s why, during South Africa’s G20 presidency, we placed food affordability and market stability at the top of the agenda. The 'ubuntu approaches on food security and nutrition, and excessive food price volatility’, endorsed in Cape Town, centre dignity, agency and solidarity in policy making.
This means accelerating the implementation of the 2024-2029 national food and nutrition security plan (NFNSP), the government’s five-year programme to cut severe food insecurity from 17.5% to 12.5% of households. This is led by the department of agriculture, working with health, education, social development and municipalities through a new multisectoral food and nutrition security council. The aim is to ensure that a healthy food basket becomes cheaper and readily available, especially in the hardest-hit communities.
Civil society and research partners have shown how well-managed buffer stocks can shield poor households from sudden price surges; we should test this carefully, at modest scale, and measure the results. On the sidelines of the G20 agriculture meetings, South Africa signed co-operation agreements with Brazil and Japan to share technology and open markets. We’ll turn these into practical support: joint trials on seeds and animal-health tools, on-farm demos, buyer linkups and help for smallholders through our farmer support teams and a mix of grants and low-cost loans. This will help more producers meet standards and reach new markets as we modernise the rules.
The sharpest pain in this crisis is what food costs — and it’s not the farmers driving it. As one speaker put it at the G20, tomatoes can leave the farm at R5/kg-R6/kg, and land on the shelf at about R16. Much of that gap builds up in the middle: multiple mark-ups, opaque fees, long transport routes, spoilage and delays.
Our job is to shorten the chain so food moves faster and costs less. That means backing the country’s real breadbaskets, our fresh-produce markets, where the mammas, hawkers and spaza buyers line up before dawn and keep prices keen because there aren’t layers of middlemen. We need to make it easier and cheaper to buy and sell there, which requires reliable cold rooms, fair trading rules, on-time payments and clear daily price boards.
The goal is simple — farmers paid fairly and on time, and families paying less for a healthy basket close to home. In parallel, the government is considering proposals to ease the impact of food prices on vulnerable households, drawing on evidence from public monitoring and international best practice.
In the Eastern Cape, none of this can wait. The current crisis should trigger a province-wide “war room” on child malnutrition that links health, social development, education, agriculture and municipalities — supported by national departments — to stabilise food access now while structural measures come online. Children’s rights to food and basic nutrition are not negotiable; our response must match the urgency.
World Food Day’s theme is not rhetoric, it’s a plan of action. The FAO reminds us that agrifood systems are under pressure from conflict, climate shocks and economic stress, and that a hand-in-hand response — from the government, business, communities and international partners — is the only way forward.
Crucially, South Africa’s farmers produce enough food to feed our country; when people go hungry, it is because of price and access, not a lack of production. Nobody in South Africa should go hungry. We will make the national plan and its council deliver, cut waste and the bottlenecks that push up prices, and apply the ubuntu approaches so the poorest are protected first. That is how we honour this day, and how we ensure that next year, fewer families in the Eastern Cape and across South Africa face an empty plate.
• Steenhuisen is minister of agriculture
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