Food policy needed now

South Africa is yet to implement an integrated national food policy to ensure food security and lessen malnutrition.

A report on a discussion on food safety and security in parliament in February said there was an urgent need for state departments to work together to tackle food security.

One of the objectives of the parliamentary discussion was to bring together different House committees to determine, among other things, the status and socio-economic aspects of food security and its causes.

The report, tabled in parliament earlier this month, said that South Africa focused on food production and not enough was being done to promote healthy nutrition.

Despite being assessed as being food secure on a national level, in 2014 an estimated 13.8million people were reported to be food insecure .

Sheryl Hendricks, of the University of Pretoria, said there were more than 60 programmes dealing with food insecurity and malnutrition but with no co-ordinating structure.

Hendricks said the national drivers of food insecurity were transportation costs, poor economic growth and poor co-ordination and duplication of programmes.

She called for the creation of a structure that would provide leadership to reduce duplication and the wasting of resources.

Lise Korsten, a professor in the department of plant sciences at the University of Pretoria, said universities are struggling to get students to undertake postgraduate studies on food safety.

"The industry is not providing bursaries for students to study biotechnology to ensure that pesticides and other chemicals are developed and tested locally," the report read.

The committees involved in the discussions resolved that a new integrated approach was essential to deal with food security.

"The committees noted that co-ordination of the activities of national, provincial and local governments are still a very critical challenge that affects the efficiency with which resources are used to address food security and nutrition," the report said.