The state feeds 1.6 million children a day through school nutrition alone. Now the MEC for Agriculture and Rural Development in Gauteng says that buying power must be deliberately channelled to the smallholder and emerging farmers the department supports because production support without a market is not a solution.
By Maile Matsimela, digital editor at African Farming
It is a frustration every emerging farmer in South Africa knows: you receive inputs, you put in the work, you grow a crop – and then the market is nowhere to be found. At the Gauteng Provincial consultation on the National Food and Nutrition Security Plan, held at the Pretoria Council Chamber on 1 September, MEC for Agriculture and Rural Development Vuyiswa Ramokgopa said she has heard that frustration, and she intends to fix it.
“Government must be the off-taker of first resort,” she declared. “We cannot be giving people seeds, saying to them, go and plant veggies, and then when you’re done, you must go door to door and knock and hope that someone will take your produce.”
Her argument is built on a simple number: The state buys food every day. In Gauteng alone, the school nutrition programme feeds 1.6 million children, with 80% of those products coming from the agricultural or agro-processing sector. That is daily, recurring, guaranteed demand – and the MEC’s position is that it should be deliberately directed towards the farmers the department supports, rather than left to existing supply chains that too often bypass them.
“We should be using and leveraging our own procurement to drive sustainability for local farmers who can then supply it to our schools, our hospitals, and even these very government events where we are eating and drinking every day,” she said. “And in so doing, we provide a sustainable income and a growth path for the farmers that we support.”
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From hand-outs to an integrated system
For Ramokgopa, the problem with the old approach is not just that farmers lack a buyer – it is that giving seeds and walking away was never a system in the first place. “We can’t be satisfied, colleagues, with simply handing people seeds and giving people space,” she said. “We must ensure the food that is being produced in our different regional nodes is actually able to sustain and provide a sustainable source of food and nutrition for those communities.”
The department has moved towards what she calls an integrated model: household and community production, producer support, aggregation, market access and agro-processing. The point is to treat the full chain as one system. If you invest in a cooperative of women vegetable growers, you must also pair them with an aggregator and link them into a market.
“By pairing them with an aggregator and linking them into a market, you can then also not only solve the subsistence issues but also to provide a sustainable income all the time,” she said.
Localising production and shortening supply chains, she added, is key to managing affordability and expanding urban agriculture in the province’s peri-urban and urban nodes.
The Gauteng paradox – where the opportunity is
Gauteng does not face a food scarcity problem. It has some of the world’s most sophisticated fresh produce markets, trading volumes daily in Tshwane. Yet one in five households suffers from chronic hunger and food insecurity, and one quarter of children are stunted due to malnutrition.
For Ramokgopa, that gap between abundance and access is precisely where the opportunity lies for farmers. If the state is willing to be the off-taker, and if production is localised and supply chains shortened, then smallholder and emerging farmers are positioned to fill the gap, not as charity cases, but as commercial suppliers to a guaranteed market.
Beyond government – retailers and agro-processors must come to the table
But government procurement alone is not the whole answer. Ramokgopa stressed that food security is a whole food system challenge, and that means the market for the farmers she supports extends well beyond the state. She named the formal retail sector, the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector and agro-processors as players who must be part of the conversation.
“Ultimately when we speak about affordability of food, when we speak about access to food, the people who need to be part and parcel of how we resolve those challenges are retailers and the people involved in that FMCG value chain,” she said.
South Africa has had almost 60 policies, strategies, plans and programmes dealing with hunger and malnutrition. The problem, she said, is not the absence of programmes but the fragmentation between them. And farmers bear the brunt, often falling between departmental mandates without a clear pathway to market.
Also read: From our editor: Hunger in a land of plenty
A number farmers can hold her to
Ramokgopa put a target on the wall: The department has set itself an Annual Performance Plan (APP) goal of facilitating at minimum a 10% reduction in reported hunger levels in Gauteng by 2030. She invited stakeholders to hold the department to it. “What you don’t mention, doesn’t get done,” she said.
The department has also developed a heat map identifying regions disproportionately affected by hunger, and she called on the National Department to collaborate on building a sharper database for targeted interventions, so that support reaches the right farmers in the right places, growing what communities actually need.
She closed with a call that applies as much to farmers as to policymakers. “We must declare boldly that we want to end hunger,” she said. “Gauteng certainly is recommitting today to a zero-hunger future. Not ten, not thirty, but zero.”
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