Browsing by Author "Haysom, Gareth"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Alternative food networks and food insecurity in South Africa
    (Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, 2016-06) Haysom, Gareth
    Food security remains a persistent global challenge. Inequality means that food insecurity is disproportionately experienced. Despite positive shifts in the state of food security at a global scale, recent reports from the Food and Agricultural Organisation suggest that in Africa the total number of undernourished people continues to increase. The paper argues that there is a certain “stuckness” in food security responses. The mutually converging transitions of the urban transition, food regime shifts and the nutrition transition demand different ways of understanding the food system, food security and the components thereof, including value chains. The paper reviews efforts designed to respond to these mutually reinforcing challenges but argues that generalisations are problematic. Borrowing concepts from the North is equally problematic. Using the concept of Alternative Food Networks (AFNs), the paper interrogates these networks and asks how such alternative networks manifest in the context of food insecurity in South African cities. AFNs evident in Northern cities and regions are generally privileged and present a perspective of the food system that prioritises sustainability and a deep green and often local ethic, embodying aspirations of food system change. In Southern cities, food system engagement is less about engagement for change, but rather, engagement to enable food access. Traditional value chain parlance sees a value chain extending from producer to consumer. The food access value chain present within poor urban communities in South Africa reflects more than just financial transactions. Transactions of reciprocity and social exchange are embedded within food security strategies, and are often informed by the enactment of agency. Using the term “the food access continuum” this paper calls for a far more expansive view of food access strategies and networks. Understanding these networks is essential to effective food and nutrition security policy and programming.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    The informal sector’s role in food security: A missing link in policy debates?
    (Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, 2016-09) Skinner, Caroline; Haysom, Gareth
    This paper aims to review what is currently known about the role played by the informal sector in general and informal retailers in particular, in the accessibility of food in South Africa. The review seeks to identify policy relevant research gaps. Drawing on Statistics South Africa data, we show that the informal sector is an important source of employment, dominated by informal trade with the sale of food a significant subsector within this trade. We then turn our attention to what is known about the informal sector’s role in food sourcing of poorer households. African Food Security Urban Network’s surveys show that urban residents and particularly low income households regularly sourced food from the informal sector and we explore why this might be the case through an expanded view of access. We then consider existing evidence on the implications of increased supermarket penetration for informal retailers and food security. Having established the importance of the informal sector, we turn our attention to the policy environment. First we assess the food security policy position and then the post-apartheid policy response to the informal sector – nationally, in provinces, and in key urban centres. We trace a productionist and rural bias in the food security agenda and argue that the policy environment for informal operators is at best benign neglect and at worse actively destructive, with serious food security implications. Throughout the paper we draw on regional and international evidence to locate the South African issues within wider related trends.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Introduction to urban food security in the Global South
    (Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., 2022) Crush, Jonathan; Frayne, Bruce; Haysom, Gareth
    This volume addresses the connections between three transformative processes in the Global South. First, the South is undergoing a rapid urban transition fueled by natural population increase and migration. Second, the cities of the South have witnessed major changes in the ways in which their food supply is organized, including new linkages to global processing and distribution networks and incorporation into global food markets. Third, there is a major upsurge in levels of food insecurity in the cities of the South. Undernutrition and overnutrition are both rising in most cities and towns. The chapters in this interdisciplinary volume provide new insights into these global processes and how they are experienced and responded to at the local level.