The Southern African Response to Food Security and the Global Food Crisis

Given the recent global food price hikes, which revealed the vulnerability of social and economic development in the face of food insecurity, this paper contextualizes the situation in the Southern African Development Community (SADC).

This report analyzes the policy responses of some of the countries in this bloc and their implication for intraregional trade and regional integration and the broader objectives of food security. Generally, countries in Southern Africa are in a more or less permanent food-security crisis, and policy formulation and responses are geared toward this reality on an ongoing basis. Therefore, in examining the regional response, there is not a huge divergence between ongoing policies and responses and immediate reactionary responses to the food crisis. However, this paper attempts to situate these policy measures in the continental Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Program (CAADP), which has broad support across Africa and is the focal point for addressing the impacts of the crisis via a coordinated policy response in the region.

Key Findings:

• Southern African countries are in a more or less permanent food security crisis, and policy formulation and responses are geared toward this reality on an ongoing basis. There is thus not a huge divergence between ongoing policies and responses and immediate reactionary responses to the food crisis.

• SADC countries intend to institute a strategic reserve of four grains, with livestock as a fifth product; however, it is noted that attempts to use strategic grain reserves to help stabilize grain prices have undermined market incentives for private traders to perform normal trading functions that could otherwise have satisfied governments' food security objectives in most years.

• Rural households adjust better to agricultural price increases than urban households, because rural households can fall back on subsistence farming for consumption or even turn into net suppliers of agricultural products in a rising price market.

• The above indicates why not only access to food is important, but also having the domestic capability to produce food, if this is based on comparative advantage linked to natural endowment, which is an attribute of the African agricultural sector. This provides a solid basis for challenging proponents of continued subsidization of agricultural exports in developed countries.

• There is an inherent danger in inappropriate government trade policies. For example, taxes could aggravate price increases, encourage smuggling and impoverish local farmers; lower import tariffs could reduce government revenues; price controls could be counterproductive; and untargeted consumer subsidies could be extremely expensive for government budgets.

Key recommendations:

• It is crucial for engendering food security to prevent the global food crisis from weakening the region, and it is essential for SADC to seize the opportunity of making food security a tool that contributes to unlocking the agricultural potential of the region to produce enough food for its people, enhancing its commercial capacities to generate tradable surpluses and creating jobs for rural people.

• Policy measures available in the short run include providing safety nets and social protection to the most vulnerable consumers in both rural and urban areas and supporting the ability of smallholder farmers to increase short-term production.

• Improved trade policies can also yield important gains, using existing and emerging WTO rules.