We trust that the food we buy is safe. But there is another question that is becoming just as important:
Can ordinary South Africans still afford good-quality food, while farmers can still afford to produce it?
Food security is not only about having enough food. It is also about quality, safety, availability and price. And somewhere between the farmer and the consumer, there is a major gap that needs to be understood.
The farmer's side of the story
For the commercial farmer, producing food is an expensive and risky business.
A farmer has to pay for land, seed, fertiliser, pesticides, machinery, diesel, electricity, water, labour, veterinary services, insurance, repairs, transport and finance. Weather can destroy a crop or reduce livestock production, while disease, theft and market conditions can add further risk.
Yet the farmer does not decide what the consumer pays in the supermarket.
This is one of the biggest misunderstandings in agriculture.
A farmer may receive a relatively low price for a product while the consumer pays considerably more for that same product in a shop. Between the farm and the consumer are transporters, packers, processors, wholesalers, retailers and many other costs.
The farmer therefore asks an important question:
If the consumer is paying more for food, why is the farmer not necessarily receiving more?
Farmers need a price that covers their production costs and provides enough return to remain in business and invest in the next season.
If farming becomes financially impossible, food production eventually suffers.
The consumer's side
The consumer has a completely different problem.
For many families, food prices have become one of the biggest pressures on the household budget. Consumers want fresh fruit, vegetables, meat, milk and other nutritious foods, but they also have to pay for electricity, transport, housing, education and other basic needs.
When food becomes more expensive, families often change what they buy.
They may buy less meat, choose cheaper cuts, buy fewer fresh vegetables or move towards cheaper processed foods. This can have consequences for nutrition and long-term health.
This is where affordability becomes part of the food-safety discussion.
A food product may be safe and nutritious, but if a family cannot afford it, it does not provide real food security.
The price farmers receive matters
There is often a great deal of attention on the retail price of food, but we should also pay attention to the farm-gate price.
The farmer needs to receive a fair return for producing the food.
If a farmer grows vegetables at a loss because production costs are too high, the farmer cannot continue indefinitely. If livestock farmers cannot cover feed, grazing, veterinary, transport and other costs, they may reduce their herds.
Eventually this can affect the amount of food available and put even more pressure on prices.
The answer is not simply to demand that supermarkets reduce prices. The entire food chain needs to be examined.
We need to understand how much the farmer receives, how much is added through transport and processing, what the retailer's costs are and what the consumer finally pays.
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Transparency throughout the food chain is important.
Quality starts on the farm
Food safety remains equally important.
Fruit and vegetables should be produced in healthy soil and with suitable water. Pesticides must be used responsibly and according to regulations. Farmers need to observe the required periods between spraying and harvesting.
But food safety does not end at harvest.
Transport, storage, refrigeration, processing, packaging and retail handling all influence the final product.
The same applies to meat. Healthy cattle, sheep, pigs and poultry are only the beginning. Proper slaughter, processing, refrigeration and transportation are essential before meat reaches the consumer.
What are we putting into our shopping baskets?
Consumers also have to take responsibility.
We need to look beyond the price and attractive packaging.
How much sugar is in the product? How highly processed is it? Is the packaging damaged? Has the product been stored correctly? Is the date still acceptable? Does fresh food look and smell as it should?
There is a growing problem where cheaper, highly processed foods can sometimes become more attractive to households simply because they fit the budget.
This creates a difficult situation: the cheapest food is not always the food that provides the best nutritional value.
The real challenge for South Africa
South Africa needs both profitable farmers and consumers who can afford food.
These two groups should not be seen as being on opposite sides.
The farmer needs a sustainable price. The consumer needs an affordable price.
Somewhere between these two points lies the future of South African food security.
We need to ask whether the food chain is operating as efficiently as possible. Can transport costs be reduced? Can unnecessary waste be reduced? Can farmers receive a better return without putting an impossible burden on consumers? Can consumers get better information about the food they buy?
These are not simple questions.
But one thing is certain: South Africa cannot have long-term food security if farmers cannot afford to farm, and consumers cannot afford to buy the food that farmers produce.
Food safety, food quality and food affordability must therefore be considered together.
At the end of the day, the farmer wants to produce safe, good-quality food and make a living. The consumer wants safe, nutritious food at a price the family can afford.
The real measure of a healthy food system is when both can succeed.
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2008 was a dress rehearsal. Rice tripled, wheat +136%, maize +125%, fertilizer tripled. Export bans spread, riots in 12+ countries, Haiti's PM fell. It ended in 6 months because 4 buffers happened to hold: the oil price crashed and reversed the energy shock, food stocks existed to release, rich donors paid (World Bank, IMF, FAO $1.2bn pledge), and the next two harvests were good. Those were luck, not built-in resilience.The same machinery is running now in October 2026, but buffers are thinner:Input shock: Strait of Hormuz closed since March, cutting ∼30% of traded fertilizer and 35% of seaborne oil. China and Russia restricted fertilizer exports. FAO says the shock hits yields in 6-9 months, now through the 2027 planting.
FAO Food Price Index rose 3 months in a row to 136.0 in Sept, highest since Nov 2022, +5.8% y/y, still 15% below March 2022 record.Stocks: Global cereal stocks ∼950m tonnes, ∼32% stocks-to-use, second-largest harvest expected. Looks okay, but that's <4 months of consumption. A 5% short harvest takes ∼150m tonnes. Two bad years takes nearly a third. Half of stocks are held by China.Weather: Strongest El Niño in living memory building, NOAA 69% chance strongest on record, temps in Eastern Pacific already at all-time highs. Not simultaneous global failure, but consecutive failures over 2-3 seasons is likely. Compares to 1877 and 1972-74. WFP expects +49m more people in acute food insecurity by end-2027. 2027 is second year of El Niño when heat hits hardest.No saviors: Humanitarian system entered this El Niño with 2 confirmed famines at once in Gaza and Sudan, unprecedented. Poor import-dependent countries spending ~half income on food, paying fuel, fertilizer and shipping surcharges. Asian govts already spent reserves on energy shock.UK assessment:
On 23 Sept, UK foreign secretary took a suppressed national security assessment to UNGA. Redacted version from Jan says with high confidence every critical ecosystem is on pathway to collapse, highly likely (80-90%) crop failures/disasters intensify to 2050, and failure in 2+ breadbaskets would "almost certainly" (95%+) drive food prices so high even UK struggles to import. Export bans now an intelligence judgement, not a surprise.Why risk models miss it: Standard risk management is frequency-based and suffers survivorship bias - the archive only contains contained famines. It can't see an uncontained case where exterior is not solvent and next harvest doesn't come. Author advocates a solvency test instead: does capital on hand cover losses ahead? Water, fiscal room, humanitarian budgets, farm credit, exporter willingness all score worse than 2008.Where we are: Three pathways active at once - input shock, correlated harvest failure, and purchasing-power failure in ∼1bn people across Egypt, Sudan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Kenya, Somalia, Tanzania, Mozambique, Yemen, Lebanon, Haiti, Iran, Afghanistan. System not bankrupt but capital is thin, being drawn down. Hormuz closure and export bans are reversible; climate part is not for 2027 harvest.
