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South Africa commemorates the World Food Day (WFD) on the 16th of October to create awareness around issues of global food insecurity whilst addressing the plight of many people against poverty. Noting that this event is commemorated around the globe on the 16th of October every year.

The WFD is an annual reminder that food insecurity and malnourishment remain prevalent and are poised to worsen due to a range of ongoing threats, such as climate change, inflation, geopolitical conflict and energy crisis, resulting from loadshedding of electricity in the country. Many countries in the world are still faced with the triple challenge of poverty, unemployment and inequality.

The WFD theme for 2023 is “Water is life and water is food. Leave no one behind”.

The South Africa 2023 World Food Day will be held on the 26th October 2023 and will be held in KwaZulu-Natal in King Cetshwayo District in Umhlathuze Local Municipality.

The South African government through the Presidential Employment Stimulus (PES) is currently providing agricultural inputs to subsistence producers in all Provinces. Key is that this support includes water tanks which provides subsistence producers with the most needed resource, water access for own food production; thereby confirming the importance of the 2023 WFD Theme.

The World Food Day is also an opportunity to reflect on our food security conditions. South Africa is fortunate to have a vibrant agricultural sector, agro-processing, and entire value chain that ensures our national food security and contributes significantly to exports and job creation. South Africa has seen expansion in its agricultural production over the years and currently exports about half of its agricultural produce in value terms, at the same time providing sufficient domestic production supplies.

Still, there are household challenges, with rising food insecurity, more so since the Covid-19 period. This means the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform, and Rural Development with its partners in the food value chain have an even more urgent task to boost small-scale and medium-scale agricultural production to enhance household food security while continuously supporting the commercial sector.

Some of the instruments we have structured to respond to the food security challenges in various communities and job creation are the Agriculture and Agro-processing Master Plans, Blended Finance Instrument, and various farmer support programs, such as CASP and revitalization of tribal land, aimed at comprehensive agricultural development drives.

Overall, while South Africa has a thriving agricultural sector, we remain with stubborn food insecurity matters, which speaks to job-creation challenges and a need to boost household food security.

The Department would like to appreciate the support that it gets from sponsors every year during the commemoration of this event; these supplies of food are a sign of solidarity to the situation that the vulnerable find themselves in throughout.

Hence the need for a collective effort towards tackling the food insecurity, thereby achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.

Issued by Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development