http://www.info.gov.za/speech/DynamicAction?pageid=461&sid=31499&tid=87356

“How can the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries overcome the challenges we face and how can we ensure that food security is not just another topic of discussion? Each day we are inundated with media reports of the unstable food supplies owing to unstable weather conditions. What are we doing?

Our government, and particularly the department, has been at the forefront of the mantra: “One family, one food garden” to get every church, school, clinic and community space to establish food gardens. Small steps must be undertaken to ensure that we produce our own food.”

Of course. That’s the answer to it all.

The minister also reinforced the notion that rural poverty far outstrips urban.

She concludes with this
“In closing, food security will only be through inter-linkages between other government programmes, the agri-industry, the agro-processing and retail sectors, the research based institutions, the non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and civil society.

Countries with equivalent economies as ours such as India, Brazil have managed to reduce the levels of income inequalities, and have reduced hunger up-to zero levels. We should ask ourselves what it is that they have done that we are not doing, and put our shoulders to the wheel to ensure that the Freedom Charter proclaims, ‘food shall be plentiful and no one will go hungry.’ “

What a puzzle.