Food security, wheat production and policy in South Africa: Reflections on food sustainability and challenges for a market economy

Journal for Transdisciplinary Research in Southern Africa

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Food security, wheat production and policy in South Africa: Reflections on food sustainability and challenges for a market economy
 
Creator de Wet, Francois Liebenberg, Ian
 
Subject development economics; sociology of development South Africa; wheat production; food security; regulation of food prices; agricultural economics; food deprivation poverty; (wheat) import and export
Description The traditional concept of security has broadened over the past decades. Food security in South Africa is an imperative for human and non-human survival. In the contemporary political economy, there is a real nexus between globalisation, exploitation, the state, scarcity of resources, the market, peoples’ need to feel secure, notions of state responsibility and food production. Political economy and human security in theoretical debates and face-to-face politics are intrinsically linked. The notion of a ‘secure community’ changed. Food security and the right to quality living became a social imperative. Understanding current agricultural economics requires the ability to link security and access to food for all. In this case study, wheat production in South Africa is addressed against the interface of the global and the local including South Africa’s transition to a democratic and constitutional state with a Bill of Rights. The current security approach represents a more comprehensive understanding of what security is meant to be and include, amongst others, housing security, medical security, service delivery and food security, as set out in the Millennium Development Goals and the subsequent Sustainable Development Goals. The issue of food security is addressed here with particular reference to wheat production, related current government policies and the market economy. The authors chose to limit their socio-economic focus to a specific sector of the agricultural market, namely wheat, rather than discuss food security in South Africa in general. Wheat was chosen as a unit of analysis because as a crop, wheat used in bread is one of the staples for the majority of South Africans and given the current negative economic developments, wheat as a staple is likely to remain integral, if not increasing its status of dependability
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor None
Date 2018-01-30
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — Literature and qualitative study
Format text/html application/epub+zip application/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/td.v14i1.407
 
Source The Journal for Transdisciplinary Research in Southern Africa; Vol 14, No 1 (2018); 11 pages 2415-2005 1817-4434
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://td-sa.net/index.php/td/article/view/407/657 https://td-sa.net/index.php/td/article/view/407/656 https://td-sa.net/index.php/td/article/view/407/658 https://td-sa.net/index.php/td/article/view/407/652
 
Coverage South Africa current literature study
Rights Copyright (c) 2018 Francois De Wet, Johannes C. Liebenberg https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
ADVERTISEMENT