What We Learned Testifying at South Africa's Food Inquiry

We testified at South Africa’s national food inquiry. Here’s what happened.

Last week I left the farm and found myself in a room at the Nelson Mandela Foundation in Johannesburg. I described to a panel of South African Human Rights Commissioners what Black Soldier Fly are — and talked about the 80+ tonnes of organic waste that pass through our farm every year, and what happens to it.

It’s hard to talk to government about small-scale farming, especially in the context of 14 million South Africans going to bed hungry in 2024. How can small-scale farming respond to that? I think we can at least try.

The most serious food inquiry South Africa has held

The SAHRC’s National Inquiry into South Africa’s Food Systems is, as far as I know, the most serious official process this country has ever initiated on food. The commissioners were compassionate, rigorous and engaged despite a series of incredibly long days. They asked every presenter hard questions. They kept pressing ministers who were avoiding the hearing, until they finally showed up. And as Professor May highlighted, in some ways the food system works perfectly — just not for the people who need it most.

Amandla.mobi members stood outside with placards. Inside, researchers and civil society organisations tried to explain why, in a country that exports food, 22% of households can’t reliably access it. The major retailers, invited to attend, were notable by their absence.

Food security is complex, not complicated

We were there to offer something different: a framing. Food security, we argued, is not a complicated problem to be solved. It’s a complex system to be cultivated. The distinction matters enormously for what the state should be doing — and what it should stop doing. (I’ve written more about complex versus complicated problems here.)

There’s a principle from health law that stayed with me: government not only has obligations to make things better, it has obligations not to make things worse. Positive rights may require resources the state doesn’t have; but negative rights — not actively undermining people’s ability to feed themselves — can be realised without vast amounts of money.

Why this acre is worth something

What happens on this one acre of land in the Lochiel smallholdings is, we believe, worth something — and it was good to say so, out loud, in a room of really good people. We don’t solve the problem of corporate capture or big food. But I believe we change something locally in a deep way, and that change compounds and multiplies.

In the pieces that followed, I dug into some of the questions the commissioners raised: how growing for subsistence differs from growing for market, why global supply shocks reach our kitchens, and whether permaculture is just for rich people.

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