CHAPTER 5: PRESENTATION OF FINDINGS
6.2 Theme A
6.2.2 Agricultural Programmes
The basic objective of agricultural activities is the fight against hunger i.e. the absence of food. Therefore the role of agricultural activities is to create a food secure society. Food security is a broad term, which is defined in different ways by a number of organisations around the world. The basic definition of food security is that it refers to the ability of individuals to obtain sufficient and nutritious food on a day-to-day basis215. Clearly, it is a
213 Bellu, L and Leberati, P (2005) Impacts of Policies on Poverty : The Definition of Poverty, A report for Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, FAO
214 Community Based Programme (online)
http://www.durban.gov.za/City_Services/Commuhnity_Participation/Pages/Community-Based- Programme.aspx accessed 15 February 2014
215 Zulu, P (2012) The Research Design, Lecture Notes delivered on 07 December 2012
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condition when there is a certainty that sufficient and nutritious food will be available.
There are two sources of being food secure. These are:
1. If one has sufficient income to purchase food.
2. If one has sufficient land, to either grow it or rear it. Or have livestock i.e. cattle, sheep or goats.
In the EThekwini Municipality hunger and food insecurity are great challenges facing communities residing within the municipal area. The key challenges faced include land shortages and ability to identify appropriate opportunities for local production of food. The Municipality has initiated a number of programmes to assist in the alleviation of food insecurity. These include the creation of dedicated structures to drive agriculture, aqua and poultry farming; soya bean project, 20 community support farms; 423 community gardens, Cottonlands, hydroponic project, One Home One Garden project, etc.216. Support in the form of seedlings and compost together with expertise is provided to communities to assist them in ensuring their food security.
However there are five factors that have been identified as causing food insecurity, they include217:
• High levels of hunger and food insecurity,
• Shortage of land to undertake food production,
• High unemployment rates lead to low purchasing power,
• Inadequate safety net – few household income earners and high dependency ratios exacerbates the situation, and,
216 EThekwini Metropolitan Municipality Integrated Development Plan. 2011/2012 (online) http://www.durban.gov.za/City_Government/City_Vision/IDP/Documents/201112.pdf Accessed 10 November 2013
217 EThekwini Municipality: 2011/2012 IDP EThekwini Metropolitan Municipality Integrated Development Plan. 2011/2012 (online)
http://www.durban.gov.za/City_Government/City_Vision/IDP/Documents/201112.pdf Accessed 10 November 2013
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• Impact of climate change on food security
A multifaceted approach in the fight against poverty is therefore needed to ensure that the municipality is able to address all the factors that cause food insecurity. The five factors mentioned above represent very diverse and complex causes of food insecurity and therefore need a holistic approach in order to overcome.
6.2.2.1 THE ONE HOME ONE GARDEN CAMPAIGN
The One Home One Garden programmes received a number of mentions in LTTs focus groups. The One Home One Garden campaign is aimed at addressing food insecurities and poverty within households in KwaZulu-Natal218. During the initiation phase, food parcels were handed out, seeds and fertilisers followed thereafter219. The campaign aims at easing the level of dependency of people on the government. Using existing natural resources the campaign aims to assist people to meet their basic needs, thus reducing the burden on the government. The general understanding has been that when people are involved in the production of their own food that would directly fight hunger within their household. In response to this assumption, people who were selected to be involved in the campaign, for them gardens serve as more than just kitchen gardens because they provide meals and improve the supply of food within a household. This translates into them working in gardens
The campaign tries to move people away from depending on social grants to active individuals who take charge of their economic wellbeing. Respondents mentioned that there has been an increase of people who receive social grants. They attribute this increase to unemployment and poverty. They view the One Home One Garden campaign as a means to
218 Johnson, L (2009) Earth Highlights of 2009, KwaZulu-Natal Agriculture, Environmental Affairs and Rural Development
219 Mthembu, N (2010) The “One home, One garden” strategy. Will it work? paper for The Association for Rural Advancement (AFRA) (online)
www.afra.co.za/default .asp?id=1110 accessed on 15 January 2014
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decrease this dependency by enabling people to gain income as some of the produce is sold at different informal markets and generate the much needed revenue. The One Home One Garden campaign indeed has benefits because people are able to utilise the land while earning income from doing so.
6.2.2.2 MEASURING THE ONE HOME ONE GARDEN USING THE THREE TYPES OF POVERTY REDUCTION MECHANISMS
In chapter two, literature review, the poverty reduction mechanisms were identified. There are three types of poverty reduction mechanisms. The first one is poverty alleviation which is concerned with alleviating the symptoms of poverty or reducing the severity of poverty without transforming people from poor to non-poor. The second is lifting people out of poverty which is concerned with reducing the actual number of poor people by transforming them from the poor to non-poor status. The third is poverty prevention which is concerned with enabling people to avoid falling into poverty by reducing their vulnerability220.
Using these three types of poverty reduction mechanisms, the One Home One Garden Campaign fits the first mechanism i.e. alleviating the symptoms of poverty without transforming people from poor to non-poor. This is because the One Home One Garden campaign assists only in terms of food security but not in terms of transforming a home from a poor to a non-poor status. The campaign is a strategy for livelihoods that has not brought any significantly positive difference within households and individuals under the campaign. This failure of the campaign to bring about positive difference has been attributed to a number of things. Firstly, the cultural psyche of the people which places agriculture as an out-dated system with delayed gratifications further hinders the success of the campaign. People only view employment in different non-agricultural companies as the only means to a food secure life. Secondly, the environment hazards such as hail storms pose a great danger and uncertainty. This uncertainty causes people to be sceptical of engaging in agricultural activities. Lastly, in between the seasons, households are exposed to hunger. Households sometimes run out of food and this reverts them back to the state of
220 Palmer and King (2007) Skills Development and Poverty Reduction: A State of the Art Review, European Training Foundation,
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food insecurity221. The importance of saving food in barns or any other form of storage has not been emphasized with a view to the future.
The campaign does not speak to the second type of poverty reduction mechanism i.e. lifting people out of poverty by reducing the actual number of poor people and transforming them from the poor to non-poor status. The fact is that the campaign is responsive in the short- term, rather than the long-term. The question of availability against this background does not hold water, because food is available seasonally.
The third type of poverty reduction mechanism is poverty prevention, which is concerned with enabling people to avoid falling into poverty by reducing their vulnerability. This mechanism can only be achieved when the first two are achieved. The campaign has to fulfil the two mechanisms which are, alleviating the symptoms of poverty and lifting people out of poverty. Prevention of poverty can only take place once the campaign has sufficiently alleviated poverty through ensuring that people have access to nutritious food throughout the four seasons of a year i.e. winter, summer, autumn and spring.
Statistically the numbers show that there is a small percentage of households involved in agriculture. Out of 2.8 million households using agriculture as their main source of income or as their main source of food in KwaZulu-Natal only about 700 000 are said to be doing so222. In percentage terms this represents only 25% of the household population. This percentage is relatively small when one looks at the concerted efforts by government and other stakeholders to make agriculture a viable mode of poverty reduction. These numbers show very little effectiveness of the many programmes of the Department of Agriculture, Environmental Affairs and Rural Development that are geared towards improvement in agricultural production amongst the emerging farmers and food security for the poor, who rely on social grants rather than grow their own food. Furthermore since the KZN province has a large population of people living in rural areas where historically agriculture has been
221 Khanyile, K (2011) Food Security at Eqhudeni (Nkandla): A Case Study of the 'One Home One Garden' Campaign as a Poverty Alleviation Strategy, School of Built Environment and Development Studies, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban
222 Gwala, M (2013) Response to State of KZN Province Address, A Paper presented to the KZN Legislature Pietermaritzburg
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a common practice these statistics reveals that the government’s efforts to revive the field are failing.