South Africa's drive to create a competitive and food-secure nation was boosted on Tuesday with the launch of the Centre of Excellence (CoE) in Food Security, at the University of the Western Cape, which would bring together a cohort of experts and researchers from 19 South African and international institutions to research the drivers of food insecurity.

This came as recent studies by Statistics South Africa revealed that some 45% of the population lived below the poverty line and about one in ten households experienced “some form of hunger” every month.

Research activities at the CoE would be carried out in four thematic area: food creation, which covered production, processing and preservation; food distribution, which concerned markets, livelihoods and value chains; food consumption, which involved health, nutrition, choice and behaviour; and food governance, which would focus on safety, standards, policy and rights.

The centre, which was one of a number of such partnerships as a result of a collaboration between the Department of Science and Technology and the National Research Foundation (NRF), would look to identify how global and national food systems were changing and how this affected the sustainability, availability, access and attributes of food, as well as identifying the “food insecure”.

It would also aim to develop and identify policies, technologies, interventions and products that would enable access to affordable and nutritious food in an ecologically, economically, socially and politically sustainable manner.

Science and Technology Minister Derek Hanekom emphasised that food security was high on the State’s list of priorities.

“Obviously, food security is a subject that requires comprehensive treatment. This is true of most important socioeconomic issues, of course, but food security is arguably an extreme case, because it involves questions of agricultural production systems, market dynamics, nutrition, people's habits and preferences, our social security system and so on. 

“This is a reason why achieving food security is such a challenge and why the CoE approach is particularly appropriate in this case,” he noted.

NRF CEO Dr Albert van Jaarsveld added that the centre would enable South Africa to tackle the challenge of food security and inadequate nutrition faced by a significant portion of its population.

“It is initiatives such as these that will ensure we build more skills and resources and conduct more research to help confront the issues of poverty, hunger and malnutrition in our country,” he commented.