Department of Agricultural Economics

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Browsing Department of Agricultural Economics by browse.metadata.advisor "Drimie, Scott"

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    Food and nutrition policy in South Africa : the national vision, policy space, and policy alignment
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2019-04) Delport, Casey; Vink, N.; Drimie, Scott; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences. Dept. of Agricultural Economics.
    ENGLISH SUMMARY : As part of the United Nations sustainable development agenda, goals two and three of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aim to end world hunger and to ensure general good health and well-being, respectively. However, providing the world’s population with a healthy, nutritionally adequate, affordable and environmentally sustainable diet is proving to be one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century. Coupled with rising food price volatility, increasing obesity, climate change, environmental degradation, persisting food insecurity and numerous food safety crises, there has been a rapid increase of calls for more sustainable and integrated food systems and food policies alike. However, food policy offers a substantial challenge to governments across the globe as, amongst many other issues, it spans across multiple policy areas- thereby demanding various responses across these said different policy sectors. Furthermore, government structures often create inconsistent policies due to separate political mandates and the perusal of various self-interests. The study by Hendriks (2013) states that the overall goal of food and nutrition security related policies is to; “achieve household food and nutrition security and support individuals in accessing adequate individual dietary intakes to meet their needs at different stages in the human life cycle.” However, as demonstrated within this study, it is clear that South Africa’s current food and nutrition related policies are far from reaching this objective. Building on this, the aim of this study was twofold: firstly to assess the full South African national policy landscape pertaining to the food system in order to understand policy alignment and coherence across and within sectors, and to indicate the implications thereof. Secondly, to provide an alternative way to view the South African food system, and correspondingly provide a framing for more effective alignment and coherence in food policy in order to ensure adequate food and nutrition security. The results of this study revealed three key dimensions that are evidently overlooked in South African food policy: 1) the complexity of the food system, as revealed when taking a social-ecological system lens, which subsequently highlights the challenges, assumptions, and expectations of governing this complex system through policy; 2) what appropriate policy responses to the food system would be; and 3) the (mis)alignment of policy (across sectors). Upon inspection of the policy matrix adapted from the approach by Harris et al (2017) and through use of the social-ecological system approach, results clearly demonstrate significant levels of redundancy, contradiction and internal and external sector misalignment. This in turn has highlighted issues surrounding departmental vision and the necessary mechanisms required to ensure the coordination of sectors and internal directorates mandated to provide the overall policy guidance at provincial and local government. Furthermore, this study illustrates that applying a social-ecological systems approach to food systems has many advantages, particularly with regards to understanding the interconnected dynamics of environmental and societal issues within the food system as a whole. This in turn, has important implications for policy makers to improve policy in general, and food and nutrition policy in particular.