WORLD FOOD DAY OP-ED: El Niño, oil shocks and hunger mean SA needs a synchronised food strategy

Geopolitical conflicts, climate change/shocks, pandemics and an unstable currency have direct, indirect and cascading effects on achieving and sustaining resilient food production in South Africa.

Equally, pandemics either related to animal health (avian influenza, foot-and-mouth disease, swine fever) or humans (Covid-19) affect supply chain dynamics and, therefore, the economics of food scarcity (availability and quality) at different levels of society. The conflict between Russia and Ukraine has significantly affected access to quality seeds and fertiliser, affecting the grain and oilseed sector. Likewise, the war between the United States and Iran has directly affected global fuel costs, especially diesel availability, throughout food supply chains.

When global oil prices spike, the shockwaves hit hardest on the dinner plates of the most vulnerable citizens, particularly in South Africa where inequality remains the most critical in the world.  We have seen this script play out before. During the Covid-19 pandemic, sudden logistical and food value chain and livelihood disruptions severely worsened food and nutrition security nationwide and globally, leaving scars that the country is still dealing with today.

The negative impact of Covid-19 on food security is clearly seen in the rise in the number of people going hungry compared to the pre-Covid levels. The shock of Covid-19 and the lockdown responses disrupted livelihoods, caused massive job losses and spiked food prices, leaving many more people unable to afford the food they need. 

Despite lessons from the past, South Africa remains trapped in a dangerous, reactive loop rather than developing proactive strategies to address food crises during disasters. South Africa’s vulnerability to food crises stems less from individual shocks and more from fragmented and reactive food governance.

With oil prices still rising and uncertain, and meteorologists warning of a likely strong El Niño effect starting late in 2026, another food crisis is looming and requires proactive measures. To survive it, the country’s governance must urgently shift from panic-driven reaction to building systemic resilience and clear disaster risk-reduction planning in its food system. Yet as Cape Town shows, crises can galvanise food systems policy innovation.

However, improving the resilience of the South African food system requires concerted, long-term effort. This is becoming more important amid the current and predicted increasing impacts of climate change, overtly seen in more extreme weather events such as floods and droughts. The dominance of environmentally destructive production practices that depend heavily on imported agricultural inputs and methods, along with contaminated water due to poor municipal wastewater management systems and inadequate road and rail infrastructure, leaves the country particularly vulnerable.

The danger of bureaucratic silos

SA’s vulnerability stems not from a lack of agricultural capability, but from a deeply fragmented governance landscape. Responsibilities for food security, agriculture, nutrition, trade, water, energy, and social protection are scattered across multiple government departments that often operate within their mandates, causing an institutional silo effect. Yet, all of these need to work together to ensure food and nutrition security for all.

This fragmentation fundamentally undermines rapid response. For example, agricultural policies heavily prioritise production and export competitiveness, while social development structures focus strictly on household food access and welfare handouts, with limited integrated planning between the two. Furthermore, a lack of alignment between national, provincial, and local government structures often results in duplication, policy gaps, and massive implementation gaps. 

The absence of a unified food systems governance framework means that critical interconnections between water, energy, transport, trade, food and nutrition are insufficiently addressed. The reality is that SA currently has no national food and nutrition security plan, as the last one expired in 2023.

Further, the proposed National Food and Nutrition Security Council, which is supposed to oversee and coordinate development and implementation, is not delivering fast enough given the urgency of the situation. When a shock hits one sector, it triggers a domino effect across others, and the government and other stakeholders in the food system are ill prepared to respond in a coordinated way. As a result, SA’s food policy approach tends to be reactive rather than systemic, undermining long-term resilience, inclusivity and sustainability within the food system.

The lack of a coherent approach to food and nutrition security is exacerbated in times of crisis by insufficient attention to food in disaster management strategies. This was notable in the response to Covid-19: despite a national state of disaster, there was no effort to manage the spikes in food prices. The vouchers some farmers received during that state of disaster, as well as the food parcels some households received, did not reach everyone in need and were inadequate to address the level of distress people faced.

Likewise, the special Covid-19 Social Relief of Distress Grant, while important, only made a modest contribution to recipients’ food needs in the face of rising food prices. 

Moving beyond political Band-Aids

Historically, our policy response to these systemic failures has been entirely defensive. Interventions such as food parcels, temporary subsidies, export restrictions, or ad hoc social assistance are launched only after food prices skyrocket or hunger indicators spike. While such measures provide some immediate relief, they are temporary Band-Aids. They do nothing to dismantle the structural vulnerabilities that cause hunger in the first place. 

A food crisis is inherently multifaceted. Agriculture relies entirely on water security for crops and energy stability for irrigation, processing and cold-chain transport. Treating these as separate entities is an outdated luxury we as a country can no longer afford. To build a proactive defence for the country’s food systems, SA must embrace a nexus approach, such as the water-energy-food (WEF) nexus.

This framework transitions our perspective from isolated components to an interconnected system, allowing policymakers to anticipate how an energy shock (like the current oil prices) will strain water resources and ultimately inflate food prices. While better technical integration of these domains can enhance resilience, the heavily financialised, trade- and commodity-oriented nature of the country’s neoliberal food regime means that it is inherently vulnerable to economic and input stresses and disruptions.  

Roadmap for action

Shifting to a proactive framework requires immediate, coordinated commitments across policy, research, and practice; the DSTI-NRF Centre of Excellence in Food Security proposes the following actions: 

• Implement dynamic surveillance and early warning systems: The country needs to move food security monitoring and evaluation beyond passive data collection. South Africa needs predictive surveillance systems where early indicators such as volatile fuel hikes or weather anomalies like the looming El Niño automatically trigger policy interventions before agricultural inputs and food supplies are affected.

• Establish cross-sectoral governance: To dismantle departmental silos and bring other stakeholders on board, the state must establish an inter-ministerial and multi-stakeholder task force or unified food systems council (perhaps the long-awaited National Food and Nutrition Security Council) that forces the departments of energy, water and agriculture to co-design policy and share accountability. This shifts government responsibility for food and nutrition security from individual departments to a cross-government imperative.

• Mobilise the National Food and Nutrition Security Council: The council was formally established in 2022, but – incredibly – it has never met. With the Presidency as chair, the Department of Agriculture holding the secretariat and 11 ministries as members, this is the ideal forum to coordinate disaster preparedness and response.

• Coordinated response actors and actions: Proactive crisis management requires seamless coordination between public officials, private supply chain actors, and local communities in SA. Streamlined operational pipelines ensure resources are deployed efficiently without administrative duplication.

• Build adaptive capacity for both producers and consumers: Instead of relying on unsustainable emergency bailouts, government support must build long-term capacity. For producers, this means investing in more sustainable agricultural practices, such as agroecology and utilising more drought-resistant and nutritionally rich indigenous foods that are better suited to our growing environment and are often also more nutritious. This can include climate-smart, energy-efficient agricultural infrastructure, including solar-powered irrigation, to insulate them from fossil fuel spikes. For consumers, it means reinforcing stable, localised food networks and sustainable social safety nets, including availability and affordability of shelf-stable nutritious foods. 

• Build more domestic seed, crop protection and fertiliser production capacity to reduce import dependence and, therefore, vulnerability to international shocks.

• Develop a disaster risk reduction and response strategy for a ready structured approach to preventing, preparing for, responding to, and recovering from disasters. 

South Africa cannot afford to treat the next food crisis as an unexpected surprise. The warning signs are already visible in global energy markets. By dismantling our policy silos and embracing an integrated disaster risk reduction framework, we can finally break the cycle of crisis management and secure a resilient food future for all. DM

Dr Colleta Gandidzanwa is a Lecturer at the Department of Agricultural Economics, Extension and Rural Development at the University of Pretoria. She has extensive experience in managing collaborative projects in Africa, including ARUA CoE Sustainable Food Systems, CLAB-Africa, FSNet-Africa, and Centres of Collaboration on the economics of agricultural research and development. 

David Nsibo is an early career researcher at the University of Pretoria, focusing on the genetic variation and disease causation of foliar pathogens of cereals. He is supervising/co-supervising students in various programmes, contributing to the development of efficient management strategies for maize production.

Professor Marc Wegerif is an Associate Professor and Development Studies Programme Coordinator at the University of Pretoria. He is also a Principal Investigator on the DSTI-NRF Centre of Excellence in Food Security. He is involved in work on the South Africa’s National Food and Nutrition Security Plan and other food system policy and advocacy work.

Oscar Sithole is PhD candidate in Development Studies at the University of Pretoria, funded by the Department of Science, Technology and Innovation (DSTI)–National Research Foundation (NRF) Centre of Excellence in Food Security (CoE-FS). His scholarly work is grounded in advancing people-driven food systems from below, with a particular interest in how subaltern communities organise and mobilise to resist exclusion, inequality and hunger.

Dr Shonisani Ramashia has over 16 years of experience spanning technical, academic, teaching, research,and food industry environments, with expertise across Food Science and Technology. Her research focuses on indigenous foods, climate-smart crops, food processing, nutrition, value addition, and commercialisation.

Dr Florian Kroll is a food systems researcher with the DSTI-NRF Centre of Excellence in Food Security. His work focuses on understanding food systems policy and governance, with a particular interest in the intersection between political economy, nutrition, ecosystems crises and statecraft. 

Stephen Devereux holds the DSTI-NRF Research Chair in Social Protection for Food Security, affiliated to the Centre of Excellence in Food Security, at the University of the Western Cape. He is a co-founder of the Union Against Hunger.

Hettie Schönfeldt is a prominent figure in the field of nutrition research. She has been a researcher at the University of Pretoria for over 20 years, focusing on the link between nutrient quantity and quality of foods to sustainable food systems. Schönfeldt serves as a scientific advisor to Afrofoods and is a co-director of the African Research Universities Alliance Centre of Excellence in Sustainable Food Systems. 

Professor Mohammad Naushad Emmambux is a professor in the Department of Consumer and Food Sciences, University of Pretoria, and is the research leader for food processing at the DSTI/NRF Centre of Excellence in Food Security. He lectures in food chemistry, plant food science and technology and food rheology. He is currently on the editorial board of Starch Journal and an associate editor for Journal of Cereal Chemistry. 

Professor Rina Swart is a registered dietitian and nutritionist with the HPCSA, specialising in Public Health Nutrition. Her academic journey includes serving as the Nutrition Programme Leader within the DSI/NRF Centre of Excellence in Food Security since 2014. She has also been involved in various leadership roles within the Nutrition Society of South Africa and the World Public Health Nutrition Association.

Professor Lise Korsten is Co-Director of the DSTI–NRF Centre of Excellence in Food Security at the University of Pretoria, where she leads work on food safety, regulatory control, plant health and food waste. She has advised Parliament on food safety and helped develop a national framework for a Food Control Authority. She is a former president of the African Academy of Sciences.

Dr Bockline Omedo Bebe holds a PhD and MSc in Animal Science from Wageningen University and a BSc and Diploma in Animal Production from Egerton University. His career spans over 20 years, during which he has held various significant positions, including Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research and Extension at Egerton University and Director Research and Extension.

Carla Bernado is the Communication and Engagement Manager for the DSTI-NRF Centre of Excellence in Food Security (CoE-FS) and the African German Centre for Sustainable and Resilient Food Systems, Applied Agricultural and Food Data Science (Ukudla).

Dr Madalisto Kamenya is an Agricultural Economist and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pretoria’s Centre of Excellence in Food Security. His research focuses on food system sustainability, food security, agricultural value chains, and policy-relevant approaches to strengthening resilient and inclusive food systems. He holds a PhD in Agricultural Economics from the University of Pretoria.

Dr Thobela Nkukana is a senior lecturer in poultry nutrition and production at the University of Pretoria. She serves as a sub-editor for the South African Journal of Animal Science (Sajas), serves as an Editorial Board member and journal sub-editor of Welwitschia International Journal of Agricultural Sciences.