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Official data show that a small proportion of Eastern Cape households evidently derive their main or primary income from farming. But the same data also show that the majority of households with access to small plots suitable for farming are concentrated in Eastern Cape. Furthermore, comparative analyses of standard indicators of human wellbeing and development of Eastern Cape with the rest of South Africa show that the province consistently reports worse than national average rates of poverty, food insecurity, unemployment and inequality- reaching extreme levels in rural locations. Over the medium term, higher economic growth and service-oriented sectoral change, might be inadequate to reverse this dismal track record in human well-being. In this context, this paper considers the potential of better targeted public spending on agricultural development for resource-poor small farmers to raise living standards in the Eastern Cape. According to the latest official evidence, slightly more than half a million households in Eastern Cape (representing roughly 40% of all South African households) reported that they have access to farmland- with average land size in the order of 1-1.25 ha per farmily. Interventions aimed at boosting agricultural productivity among these small producers, such as the CASP launched in 2004/05, must be better targeted to meet the needs of the intended beneficiaries.

The Human Sciences Research Council has established a policy research initiative to monitor household food security and to identify and evaluate policy options. In this special edition, a selection of articles from this project is assembled. While deep chronic hunger has fallen with the expansion of the social grants, under-nutrition is a very serious and widespread challenge. This special edition draws together the best available evidence on household food security with the aim of stimulating wider debate.

Poor households access their food from the market, subsistence production and transfers from public programmes or other households. In the past rural households produced most of their own food, but recent studies have shown an increase in dependence on market purchases by both urban and rural households, in some cases reaching 90% of the food supplies. Food expenditures can account for as much as 60–80% of total household income for low-income households in some parts of sub-Saharan Africa. Subsistence/smallholder agriculture can play an important role in reducing the vulnerability of rural and urban food-insecure households, improving livelihoods, and helping to mitigate high food price inflation. There is a need to significantly increase the productivity of subsistence/smallholder agriculture and ensure long-term food security. This can be achieved by encouraging farmers to pursue sustainable intensification of production through the use of improved inputs. This will require a dramatic increase in the use of fertiliser, organic inputs and conservation investments, combined with the development of well-functioning input and output markets to help farmers acquire and use improved inputs, market their (surplus) output and reduce transaction costs and risks. Increased productivity will reduce pressure on marginal lands, as the intensification of cultivated land will reduce pressure to crop fragile marginal lands. There is a need to determine methods of identifying cost-effective ways to improve access to inputs by, among other things, improving delivery, and assisting farmers to earn cash to purchase inputs and invest in infrastructure, thereby improving food security.

This article investigates the conceptual and methodological challenges to develop a set of baseline indicators for South African food security targets. A food security target is a well-defined and measurable goal to reduce the numbers of people who lack enough food of the right quality to live healthy lives. To derive baseline indicators for household food security, the following question is asked: what is the average cost of a nutritionally adequate food basket per person? The cost of recommended nutrient intake is based on estimates of dietary energy costs. Reported food expenditure for each household based on 2005/2006 Income and Expenditure Survey data gets compared to two dietary energy cost baskets. The food expenditure shares of the poorest households vary between 38% and 71% according to different surveys. At food expenditure levels reported in the IES, one in five households meet their average dietary energy cost. Deep levels of food insecurity exist in rural areas with 85% of rural households unable to afford even the ‘below average dietary energy costs’. Food security policy based on refined baseline indicators can better target food insecure households. Another policy benefit is that robust indicators help to develop effective monitoring capabilities.