Households are drowning in a relentless spiral of debt, high interest rates, various living costs increases, food price inflation, anxiety and desperation as they are forced to make impossible choices with meagre financial resources.

To try to put food on the table in these strenuous circumstances, vulnerable households are buying cheaper, less-nutritious and sometimes less-safe food, as recent media reports have highlighted, while others survive by eating less and skipping meals altogether. Acute levels of hunger and starvation are rising sharply all over our country, leading to malnutrition, which, sadly, goes largely undetected in poor communities.

South Africa is facing myriad crises. These include the slow and very unequal post-pandemic recovery; high unemployment; the stinging cost-of-living crisis affecting millions of households; an inept government and poorly performing state-owned enterprises; and externalities such as shocks related to climate events, global market dynamics and the like.

These crises negatively influence our country's food availability and food affordability dynamics, which inevitably disproportionately affects the poor, resulting in our current food crisis of epidemic proportions. To further contextualise this: we have the highest incidence of child malnutrition in the world; the highest rate of youth unemployment in the world; a basic healthy food basket costs about R4,500, while the average household income is much less than this; we have more than 18 million people on social grants which are grossly inadequate to meet their dietary needs and living...