Integrated Food Security Strategy for South Africa.

The Integrated Food Security Strategy for South Africa is a sectoral national strategy of South Africa in force for the period of 2002-2015. Its main goal is to eradicate hunger, malnutrition and food insecurity over 2015. The strategic objectives are: increasing household food production and trading; improving income generation and job creation opportunities; improving nutrition and food safety; increasing safety nets and food emergency management systems; improving analysis and information management system; providing capacity building; and holding stakeholder dialogue.The Strategy treats the issue of nutrition and food safety providing for the following measures: (1) enhancing public education; (2) improving monitoring methods and support stronger multi-sectoral partnerships; (3) supporting targeted interventions (e.g. micronutrients, vitamin supplements) for the chronically vulnerable groups; (4) strengthening household food security and nutrition training at both pre- and in-service training level and equip the trainees with skills to integrate it and nutrition concerns in development programmes.Additionally, it also discusses the issue of safety nets and food emergency management systems providing for the following actions: (1) strengthening public goods, such as infrastructure, information, research and extension and technology development to the benefit of farmers and rural dwellers; (2) creating effective cost-recovery programmes when services are provided by the private sector; (3) strengthening the coordination and management of emergency relief operations at national and provincial level; (4) compiling baseline information to assess the food insecurity and vulnerability situation of the country; 5) ensuring periodic programme evaluations and feasibility studies; (6) including mapping techniques and Geographic Information System to analyse complex food insecurity and vulnerability information in ways that greatly facilitate understanding and decision-making; (7) ensuring effective product dissemination; and (8) establishing a technical team for food security data and establish a National Food Security Steering Committee to monitor and evaluate progress of the Strategy.Additionally, the Strategy also targets to improve household food production, trade and distribution laying down the following objectives: (1) increasing access to productive resources such as land, technology, credit and training; (2) promote small-scale irrigation and other rainwater harnessing technologies; (3) investing in productivity-enhancing, environmentally sustainable technologies for the agriculture and agro-processing sector, targeting small-scale producers; (4) linking land/water and tenure reform to other farmer support services, including access to financial services and markets; (5) improving access to credit by the poor, including women; (6) promoting the use of idle agricultural land through agrarian reforms; (7) improving access to food production and food processing technologies; (8) improving extension services where extension workers respond to the needs of small-scale farmers who often practice mixed farming and undertake a variety of enterprises; (9) supporting extension agents to disseminate information through the media; (10) improving trade by monitoring the impact of liberalised trade regimes on the incomes and welfare of food insecure groups; (11) enhancing the ownership and exchange entitlement of the poor in the trade of agriculture and food sectors; (12) protecting the agriculture and food sector against unfair trade practices; (13) removing import duties through a support scheme that ensures that government expenditure on social development and empowerment of the vulnerable groups does not diminish and conforms to the WTO regulations; (14) improving household food security by commercialising agriculture to increase income and employment generation among food insecure households; (15) improving rural infrastructure by a proportional cost-sharing approach, which involves the Government, private sector and local communities; and (16) investing in food distribution facilities to move food to deficit areas.Also, income and job opportunities are planned to be increased through: (1) supporting diversified job creation through local economic development, including the growth of small and medium scale enterprises; (2) supporting labour-intensive public work programmes in rural, agricultural areas to simultaneously address chronic problems of food insecurity, unemployment and poor infrastructure, and create productive assets; (3) strengthening off-farm income generation; (4) strengthening access to rural credit facilities; (5) strengthening market systems, i.e. information, infrastructure, etc.; and (6) supporting skills training to create viable income generation activities.In terms of the implementation of the Strategy, at the highest level of the structure is the Inter-Ministerial Committee composed of two clusters, one social and one economic. The Minister of Agriculture will chair the team. The role of the team is to give a political direction by making policy decisions and report to the President and to parliament about food security targets (progress). Stakeholders from public sector, private sector and civil society will constitute the National Food Security Forum.