The Minister of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development, Ms Thoko Didiza, will on the 11th June 2021 host a United Nations initiated Food Systems Dialogue webinar and the media is invited to participate.

South Africa has been selected as one of the countries to conduct the rapid food systems assessment through the National Systems Dialogue towards the United Nations Food Systems Summit. Food Systems encompasses every person and every process involved in growing, raising or making food, right through to consumption.

The dialogue intends to cover the involvement of all role players in the value chain starting from farmers to fruit pickers to supermarket cashiers, flourmills to refrigerated trucks to neighborhoods who own facilities from which consumers purchase products. 

A significant part of the South African population is still faced with debilitating food insecurity, hunger, malnutrition and endemic poverty, which generally undermine livelihoods of households. Out of about 60 million people in South Africa, almost 19.5% (11.39 million people) have inadequate or severely inadequate access to food according to Stats SA, 2019.

At global level, the United Nations is convening a Food Systems Summit in September 2021 to launch bold new actions to transform the way in which the world produces and consumes food. This is as part of the Decade of Action to deliver on the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals which, among others, has an objective to fight poverty and hunger.

Source: Government of South Africa