WE CAN SECURE OUR OWN FOOD!

When my family moved to a Boksburg suburb in 1995 I was amazed at how many farms were in the land around the suburb. It was almost as if we’d moved to this massive farm where there were houses here and there. Farms on the land grew vegetables like beetroot, cabbages and the usual mielies.

Close by there were about three fields growing these and other crops. Five years later there were two fields. Today ne former field is barren and where there were two fields before there are now more houses. To me that says housing is a priority over food, which doesn’t make much sense. Food is the most important need that humans have. It sits on top of the food chain, so to speak.

I read a report in the Sunday Times earlier today and it said Mzansi is now a net importer of food, which basically means we buy from outside countries more than we export to others. Thinking about those disappearing farms it made me super concerned that our population is growing but yet our food production is not growing as fast. Not only is farming becoming less and less attractive as a career choice for young people, but it’s also not encouraged by society. Parents would rather see their children becoming BEE moguls than farmers. Even our role models in business are not people who struggled to build businesses from the ground up; they are people with enough political and societal clout to go out and borrow money in order to buy into a business built by someone else. I guess farming is not sexy and glamourous.

The little communities all over the country, from Upington to Umlazi, from Musina to Malmesbury need to get back to community farming. We need to start thinking about providing for ourselves as much as possible. Have you been to the supermarket lately? Have you seen the prices they put on food, on meat especially? The other day I was shocked to discover that a pair of avocados which I used to buy for less than R20 three years ago, are now over R30. A loaf of brown bread goes for R9 right now. Food prices are not going to decrease because input costs like fuel, labour and interest on farmland (mortgages and bonds) keep increasing.

In cities and towns we have an obvious space problem yet a garden the size of a door can make a huge difference to our everyday food bills. In the rural areas where they have vast tracts of arable land there seem to have been a death of will in people making their own food. I don’t know if it’s because they are expecting the government to feed them or if it’s just pure laziness. Whatever it is it contributes towards pushing up food prices because the fewer people make their own food, the more they rely on supermarkets to provide it, the higher prices go up (demand and supply). As a kid I had a small garden at home which produced veggies like spinach, carrots, green beans and cabbages. Not difficult to run and the results were excellent.

*picture courtesy of Photobucket.com