SA Harvest says 26% of SA population is food insecure

Despite 11.8% year-on-year food inflation, South Africa wastes 10 million tonnes of food per year. Furthermore, 26% of the population is food insecure, according to the food rights charity SA Harvest.

The organisation has called on the government to implement legislation around food wastage, to help channel wasted food to poor communities that need it most.

In the meantime, SA Harvets’s Sustainability manager Lindsay Hopkins says that there are choices that can be made to avert a food crisis in the near future.

“So, we’re just concerned about the amount of food that is going to waste every year which is over 12 million tons of food in this country alone. And it’s 20 million people going hungry every night. It just doesn’t make any sense at all.

hopkins adds, “Then on top of that, the methane gasses that organic food releases in the environment when it is sitting and rotting. It is very potent and is a direct result of climate change….”