A third of all people living in sub-Saharan Africa face severe food insecurity. They do not have enough money, or the resources to grow food, and regularly go for more than a day without food.

My good friend, Michael McDougall, at EDF Man Capital Markets, raised an important point in his daily newsletter – malnutrition.

Africa has been exporting most of its farm produce raw, and experts say that by exporting raw materials, the continent is exporting jobs as well as money which could be saved to improve the welfare of its people.

Over the past few days, the complex nature of South Africa’s food supply chains has come under the spotlight.

These supply chains are a web of formal and informal interactions between agricultural inputs, logistics, farmers, spazas, bakkie traders, processing plants, shipping, retailing, biosecurity and more. Despite the reference to essential goods and services that need to continue to operate, the announcement by President Ramaphosa of a 21-day lockdown triggered a sharp rise in purchases of food that, according to various retailers, exceeded the volumes that are typically sold over Christmas. Furthermore, the lockdown has caused significant confusion at various nodes in the value chain with regards to what is classified as an essential service and what is not. Initially informal traders were excluded from the list of essential services, which caused a major bottleneck in access to food in many poor neighbourhoods, especially in rural areas. This was rectified in the second amendment to the Regulations on 2 April, when the relevant definition of essential services was changed to include “grocery stores and wholesale produce markets, including spaza shops and informal food traders, with written permission from a municipal authority to operate being required in respect of informal food traders”. This is an important amendment, which allows informal traders such as street hawkers to operate again, but requires a coordinated implementation plan with regard to the issuing of permits and the enforcement of health and safety requirements within essential but informal food trading. On-going cooperation between government and private sector is required to efficiently and effectively remove bottlenecks and enable the continuous operation of all essential goods and service delivery within the food value chain to ensure food security during COVID-19 lockdown.

In its first two briefs on the impact of COVID-19, BFAP provided an overview of the South African food system and food expenditure patterns by consumers respectively. This brief sheds light on the complex nature of the food supply chain and the extent of the essential goods and services required for its effective operation. In his initial speech, the President referred to some of the broader sectors that are exempt from restrictions, but did not provide a comprehensive list of all included sectors at the time. Essential goods or services can generally be defined as those that: • May be bought or acquired primarily for personal, family or household purposes, including but not limited to medicines, food, water or fuel; and • Are necessary for the health, safety, or welfare of consumers. Essential goods and services as defined in Section 213 of the Labour Relations Act (Act No 66 of 1995), and designated in terms of section 71(8) of the Act, are specified as power, health, transport, water and sanitation. For the purpose of the COVID-19 lockdown, an amendment of regulations to the Disaster Management Act (2002) provided increased clarity of food related ‘essential goods’ and these were outlined as: • Any food product, including non-alcoholic beverages; • Animal food; and • Chemicals, packaging and ancillary products used in the production of any food product. April 3, 2020 Bureau for Food and Agricultural Policy (BFAP) 477 Witherite road, Agri hub office park Die Wilgers, 0186 Pretoria www.bfap.co.za This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Although the food and related products stated above were included in the amended list of essential goods, the list of “essential services” related to food and food production was less comprehensive.

The essential services classification needs to extend across agriculture and not just food, as agricultural value chains are intertwined and if not managed carefully, will have a direct and negative impact on food security. For instance, cotton and wool are not included as essential products, but they provide cashflow to farmers, and are critical in the sustainability of livelihoods and food security, as, without cash flow, field crops cannot be planted. Both sectors are also critical components of the animal feed industry. It is therefore important that cotton and wool (export) trade be opened in order to support farm incomes. The export of cotton and wool also requires port services in order to facilitate the country’s exports. The foregoing underlines the fact that the “food industry” in South Africa is complex and includes a number of support services which, directly and indirectly, enable the efficient and effective operations of the holistic food value chain, and therefore fits the fundamental definition of essential services. By implication, such services must also be authorised to function normally for the food value chain to continue functioning in an effective manner. From a food supply chain perspective, essential goods and services entail all activities and processes which support the production, processing, distribution, consumption, and waste disposal of food in the system.

The following essential food-related supply chains remain operational: • Agricultural and food-related operations, and all agricultural input suppliers and support services; • Fish operations; • Manufacturing facilities for the processing of food, beverages and essential products; • Warehousing, transport and logistics for food, essential products, and health-related goods; • Ports, roads and rail networks, which will remain open to facilitate the import and export of essential products. It is critical that related inspection and regulatory/ documentation control systems and processes operate efficiently and effectively; • Food outlets – including retail, wholesale, spaza shops, malls for food, and essential products. Figure 1 outlines the broad framework of South Africa’s food supply chain and its various components, including the essential services that ensure the smooth functioning of the country’s food system. It includes multiple cross-cutting services such as electricity, banking, telecommunications, water, security, logistics, sanitary and phyto-sanitary (SPS) functions, and waste disposal, among others. Such services are required across the various components of the food supply chain. Transport, as well as health and safety, are pre-requisites that are essential at each node of the food supply chain; critical additional services at ports include administrative functions that ensure documentation and procedures are adhered to for exported and imported essential goods.

FULL REPORT on the LINK ABOVE

Food is fuel to human existence, and in the evolution of human settlements, food— its production, availability, demand and supply — and food systems have steered the development, expansion and decline of human settlements.

In the 21st century, global food systems face dual challenges of increasing food demand while competing for resources — such as land, water, and energy — that affect food supply. In context of climate change and unpredictable shocks, such as a global pandemic, the need for resiliency in global food systems has become more pressing than ever.

With the globalization of food systems in 1950s, the global food production and associated trade has witnessed a sustained growth, and continues to be driven by advancements in transport and communications, reduction in trade barriers and agricultural tariffs. But, the effectiveness of global food system is undermined by two key challenges: waste and nutrition.

Food wastage is common across all stages of the food chain. Nearly 13.8% of food is lost in supply chains — from harvesting to transport to storage to processing. However, limited research and scientific understanding of price elasticity of food waste makes it tough to evaluate how food waste can be reduced with pricing strategy.

When food is wasted, so are the energy, land, and resources that were used to create it. Nearly 23% of total anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions between 2007-2016 were derived from agriculture, forestry and other land uses. Apart from cultivation and livestock rearing, agriculture also adds emissions through land clearance for cultivation. Overfishing, soil erosion, and depletion and deterioration of aquifers threaten food security. At the same time, food production faces increasing risks from climate change — particularly droughts, increasing frequency of storms, and other extreme weather events.

   Global food prices surge to their highest level in a decade

The world has made significant progress in reducing hunger in the past 50 years. Yet there are nearly 800 million people without access to adequate food. Additionally, two billion people are affected by hidden hunger wherein people lack key micronutrients such as iron, zinc, vitamin A and iodine. Apart from nutrient deficiency, approximately two billion people are overweight and affected by chronic conditions such as type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases.

In essence, the global food system is inadequate in delivering the changing and increasing demands of the human population. The system requires an upgrade that takes into account the social-cultural interactions, changing diets, increasing wealth and wealth gap, finite resources, challenges of inequitable access, and the needs of the disadvantaged who spend the greatest proportion of their income on food. To feed the projected 10 billion people by 2050, it is essential to increase and stabilize global food trade and simultaneously align the food demand and supply chains across different geographies and at various scales of space and time.

How food and agriculture fit into the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. Image: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Back in 1798, Thomas Robert Malthus, in his essay on the principle of population, concluded that “the power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must come in some shape or other visit the human race.” Malthus projected that short-term gains in living standards would eventually be undermined as human population growth outstripped food production, thereby pushing back living standards towards subsistence.

Malthus’ projections were based on a model where population grew geometrically, while food production increased arithmetically. While Malthus emphasized the importance of land in population-food production dynamics, he understated the role of technology in augmenting total production and family planning in reducing fertility rates. Nonetheless, one cannot banish the Malthusian specter; food production and population are closely intertwined. This close relationship, however, is also affected by changing and improving diets in developing countries and biofuel production — factors that increase the global demand for food and feed.

Around the world, enough food is produced to feed the planet and provide 3,000 calories of nutritious food to each human being every day. In the story of global food systems once defined by starvation and death to now feeding the world, there have been a few ratchets — technologies and innovations that helped the human species transition from hunters and gatherers to shoppers in a supermarket. While some of these ratchets have helped improve and expand the global food systems, some create new opportunities for environmental damage.

To sum it up, the future of global food systems is strongly interlinked to the planning, management and development of sustainable, equitable and healthy food systems delivering food and nutrition security for all. A bundle of interventions and stimulus packages are needed at both the supply and demand ends to feed the world in the present as well as the future — sustainably, within the planetary boundaries defining a safe operating space for humanity. It requires an intersectoral policy analysis, multi-stakeholder engagement — involving farms, retailers, food processors, technology providers, financial institutions, government agencies, consumers — and interdisciplinary actions.

Africa’s agricultural productivity has long lagged behind the rest of the world. Crop yields grew across Asia from 1960 onwards, lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty, but stagnated in Africa where cereal yields stayed largely unchanged for the 30 years of the green revolution.

Symbolic for the fall harvest, the pumpkin has become an icon for food during this time of the year and can be found almost everywhere you look.

Insects could be a game changer in the race to combat food insecurity and achieve zero hunger – the theme of this year’s World Food Day.

Since its emergence more than two years ago, COVID-19 has reached nearly every corner of the globe. It has infected hundreds of millions of people, and overwhelmed health systems worldwide. But its impact goes beyond its direct health consequences.

Measures to contain its spread – such as travel restrictions and lockdowns – have also had severe consequences for economies and food systems worldwide.

Despite the global impact, the consequences of pandemic-related restrictions vary widely among individuals. In the West, massive stimulus spending has helped ease the economic burden of the lockdowns. In low and middle-income countries, steep drops in employment and income have rivalled or exceeded those in richer nations.

But most people in poor countries have received no financial support and have few or no savings to fall back on.

Research shows that a disproportionate burden of pandemic-related restrictions has fallen on the world’s poorest. This has raised the question of how to best adapt the mitigation efforts to different types of economies.

My colleagues and I sought to shed light on this issue. Our research examined the impact of pandemic restrictions on smallholder farmers in low and middle-income countries.

In line with existing research on the negative impacts of pandemic restrictions, farmers in low and middle income countries reported that COVID-19 measures negatively affected food purchase, income generation and access to inputs.

Food security
The focus on smallholder farmers is pertinent. This group contributes most of the food production in many countries. They are also vulnerable to food insecurity and poverty.

We conducted more than 9,000 interviews with smallholder farmers from Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Vietnam and Zambia. The seven countries reflect the diversity of COVID-19 containment measures, and all rely heavily on smallholders for food supply.

The containment measures ranged from no restrictions in Burundi and Tanzania, to closures of public spaces, mandatory quarantines, and travel restrictions in Rwanda and Vietnam. This diversity allowed us to assess how the severity of COVID-19 restrictions affected smallholder farmers’ livelihoods and food security.

Our findings also indicate that the severity of these impacts was directly related to the stringency of the measures.

For countries with the strictest control, up to 80% of smallholder households reported major disruptions, largely in their ability to purchase food due to high prices and closed markets.

Under stringent regulations, most smallholders also reported income reductions averaging 50%. The drop was due to few work opportunities, low prices for agricultural goods, and difficulty in accessing markets. This affected households with off-farm and on-farm incomes alike.

   Potential hunger crisis looms- World

In contrast, negative economic and food security outcomes were less frequent and less severe in locations with relaxed measures. Only around 20% of smallholders reported negative outcomes in Burundi and Tanzania. This supports the growing connection between stringent restrictions and rising poverty and food insecurity in vulnerable areas.

Government support
Reports of lost income and difficulty in purchasing food are not unique to smallholder farmers in low and middle-income countries. People around the world have either lost jobs or seen empty grocery store shelves when the pandemic first hit.

What separates the experience of smallholder farmers of poor countries from their counterparts in the West is government aid, and the resulting coping tactics.

The overwhelming majority of farmers we interviewed said they had received no official aid. Unable to turn to their government for support, up to 80% of smallholder farmers in areas under stringent control were forced to reduce their food consumption. Other coping methods included the sale of livestock, unplanned crop sale, drawing down of savings and taking risky loans.

These findings have profound implications because coping methods reduce the buffering capacity of smallholder households and make them vulnerable to future shocks. In many poor smallholder households, coping ways likely forced them into deprivation.

Overall, our results draw further attention to the policy choice between lives and livelihoods. It reveals an almost impossible trade-off between saving lives from the pandemic and losing lives due to deprivation.

Our findings are supported by recent economic analyses showing that the cost-benefit ratio of COVID-19 measures can differ significantly by country. The optimal lockdown is likely to be less stringent in low and middle-income countries seeking to prevent deprivation.

Researchers are not the only ones catching on to this. A recent media analysis of how the pandemic was discussed in five African countries shows that popular media recognised the food insecurity impacts long before many of the scientific studies had been published. Popular narratives framed the situation as a balance between virus containment and food security. This eventually influenced governments to adapt official policy responses and loosen restrictions.

In other words, the world is slowly coming to the realisation that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to the COVID-19 pandemic. Research shows that stringent measures can successfully prevent excess deaths. But if these measures are introduced in poor countries without the requisite financial assistance, they can undermine the health of the very people they intended to protect.

What works for poor countries
Therefore, the suitability of any crisis mitigation depends on the needs of local populations as well as the capacity of local government to support them.

Crisis mitigation must guard against the exhaustion of buffering capacity in vulnerable households. Potential policy measures to ensure this include tiered mobility restrictions that allow travel for economic reasons, short-term price guarantees to stabilise the food system, and direct aid to rural households.

As governments fight this pandemic and prepare for future crises, they can no longer shy away from thinking through the trade-offs between restrictions and well-being. When COVID-19 struck, we were not prepared to make informed decisions about the trade-offs. The world’s poorest have borne the brunt of the consequences.

Our latest study is part of a growing body of research that provide tools we need to confront these trade-offs. By considering costs and benefits to local populations, policymakers can craft measures that save lives and protect livelihoods of the most vulnerable.

October 16 marked World Food Day, commemorating the founding of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in 1945. Across the world, this day offers an opportunity for countries to assess their food security conditions and efforts to boost agricultural production. One of the measures that some often use to evaluate the food security condition of each country relative to the world is The Economist's Global Food Security Index, which Corteva sponsors. This latest index ranks South Africa at 59 out of 113 countries, an improvement from the 70th position in 2021. This places South Africa as the most food-secure country in the African continent, followed by Tunisia at 62nd.

This improvement is commendable. When looking at the index scoring's technical position, it becomes clear why South Africa's food security ranking has improved. South Africa's scoring came in at 61,4, up from 57,8 in 2021. This shows that South Africa's progress in the Global Food Security Index is not merely because other countries have regressed, particularly since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, which increased global food prices but that there has been an actual improvement in its own underlying conditions.

The Global Food Security Index comprises four subindices, namely; (1) food affordability, (2) food availability, (3) food quality and safety, and (4) sustainability and adaption. The affordability and availability subindices carry a combined weighting of two-thirds of the total index. The affordability subindex includes the change in average food costs, agricultural trade, food safety net programs, and funding for food safety net programs. Meanwhile, the availability subindex includes the sufficiency of supply, agricultural infrastructure, and political and social barriers to food.

In 2022, South Africa experienced a mild deterioration in the food affordability subindex of 7 points. Meanwhile, the rest of the other subindices improved significantly. This decline in the affordability subindex is unsurprising as the country has witnessed a broad acceleration in consumer food price inflation since the start of the year. South Africa's consumer food price inflation averaged 8,0% y/y in the first eight months of 2022, from 6,5% over the same period in 2021. Still, what is worth emphasizing is that this challenge speaks to the rising cost of food in an environment of generally high unemployment.

Notably, the rise in food prices is a global phenomenon and not unique to South Africa. The dryness in South America, which negatively affected the crops in the 2021/22 production season, combined with growing demand for oilseeds and grains in China, and higher shipping costs, and recently, the Russia-Ukraine war, are some of the factors that have underpinned the global food price inflation surge. This, in turn, lifted prices in South Africa, despite the large domestic agricultural harvests in the past three seasons.

Nevertheless, global food prices have come off the levels we saw in the months immediately after Russia invaded Ukraine. For example, in September 2022, the FAO's Global Food Price Index was down by 1% from the previous month. This marked a sixth monthly decline and was underpinned by the deterioration in the prices of vegetable oils, sugar, meat and dairy products. This means that affordability for all countries has far improved from the third quarter of the year. Still, the current price levels are higher than in 2021. For example, the FAO's Global Food Price Index is still 6% up from September 2021. Another key point to emphasize is that food prices were already elevated in 2021 due to disruptions in the supply chains, drought in South America, and increased demand for grains in China, amongst other factors.

A major issue to keep in mind when observing global agricultural indices, such as the Global Food Security Index, is that subjectivity can never be fully eliminated from the authors' judgment. Resource constraints can hinder objective data collection on the ground in each country, and they sometimes rely on blueprint models that might not be site specific. Sources of bias can stem from inconsistency in data quality, frequency and reliability across all countries. The weightings and rankings are also tricky because they must be tailored to suit different socio-economic contexts.

Still, the key message is that South Africa is in a better place regarding food security and leading the continent. This does not mean there should be complacency. South Africa will need to continue improving food security through expansion in agricultural production and job creation in various sectors of the economy. As we have previously stated, at a technical level, the ideas of expanding agriculture and agro-processing capacity to boost growth and job creation were well established as far back as in the National Development Plan in 2012. They were again highlighted in the 2019 National Treasury paper and, most recently, in the 2022 Agriculture and Agro-processing Master Plan.

These include expanding agricultural activity in the former homelands and government land, enhancing government-commodity organizations' partnerships in extension services, investment in the network industries (water, electricity and road infrastructure), port infrastructure, and state laboratories. Some interventions are more regulation-focused and therefore do not require significant capital spending by the government, although these still need institutional capacity building. Such regulatory interventions include modernizing regulations such as the Fertilizers, Farm Feeds, Seeds and Remedies Act 36 of 1947, with which many role players in agriculture continue to express dissatisfaction. The Agricultural Product Standards Act's enforcement to ensure that the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform, and Rural Development leads the implementation and does not assign it to third parties is another critical intervention that could be explored. Regarding regional focus, Limpopo, KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape, the most food-insecure provinces, also have vast tracts of underutilized land. These provinces should be a priority in agricultural development plans. With a commercial focus where conditions permit, agriculture improvement would help job creation and household food security in South Africa.

Weekly highlights

Kenya’s decision to open the door to GM maize is a good omen

In the first week of October 2022, Kenya lifted the ban on the cultivation and importing of genetically modified (GM) white maize. This change is in response to growing food insecurity in the country. Kenya has struggled with drought in the recent past and remains a net importer of maize. Still, this adjustment doesn’t mean the borders are automatically open, there will be an assessment of each GM trait by the Kenyan Biosafety Authority before actual imports and cultivation can occur. Assuming some of this scientific legwork has already been done, we could see imports start in the next few months or a year.

If the work can be completed in months, this could save Kenya some trouble. In the 2022/23 season, Kenya needs to import a substantial volume of maize, estimated at about 700 000 tonnes. This is roughly unchanged from the previous season, which also posted poor domestic production. In the 2021/22 season several sub-Saharan African countries, including Zambia, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and South Africa, had ample maize harvests. This made it easy for them to meet Kenya’s import needs, with Tanzania and Zambia leading the way. However, this year things are different. Tanzania’s maize harvest is down roughly 16% year on year to 5.9-million tonnes due to sparse rainfall at the start of the season combined with armyworm infestations and reduced fertiliser usage in some regions because of prohibitively high prices.

The fall in production and firmer domestic consumption mean Tanzania will have less maize to export. Tanzania’s available maize for export is about 100 000 tonnes. This is well below the previous season’s exports of 800 000 tonnes, which saved Kenya when the country was most in need of maize. The country in the region with the most abundant supply of maize at present is South Africa, whose maize exports for the 2022/23 season are forecast at 3,5-million tonnes. South Africa struggled to access the Kenyan market for many years because of its ban on imports of GM products. But this change in regulations offers a new opportunity for South African maize exporters (provided the Kenyan Biosafety Authority gets its ducks in a row soon).

In future, the liberalisation of the Kenyan seed market should benefit its farmers in the same way as in South Africa, Brazil and the US. In fact, the sentiment towards the cultivation and importation of GM crops is changing worldwide, partly because of the global food crisis and countries’ efforts to boost domestic production. For example, at the beginning of June the Chinese National Crop Variety Approval Committee released two standards that clear the path for cultivating GM crops. Now that this hurdle has been cleared, the commercialisation of GM crops in China is a real possibility. The EU is also reviewing its regulations on cultivating and importing GM crops, an essential step in a region that has long had an anti-GM stance.

South Africa was an early adopter of GM technologies. We began planting GM maize seeds in the 2001/2002 season. Before their introduction, average maize yields in South Africa were about 2,4 tonnes per hectare. This has increased to an average of 5,6 tonnes per hectare in the 2020/2021 production season. Meanwhile, the sub-Saharan African maize yields remain low, averaging below 2,0 tonnes per hectare. While yields are also influenced by improved germplasm (enabled by non-GM biotechnology) and improved low and no-till production methods (facilitated through herbicide-tolerant GM technology), other benefits include labour savings and reduced insecticide use, as well as enhanced weed and pest control. With Kenya struggling to meet its annual maize needs, using new technologies, GM seeds and other means should be an avenue to boost production in future.

Data releases this week

We start the week with a global focus, and today the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) will publish its Weekly US Crop Progress data. In these data, our focus is on the US crop-growing conditions as the season progresses, and the harvest has started. This data also helps us form a view of the crop quality in the US. In the previous release, in the week of 09 October 2022, about 54% of the maize crop was rated good/excellent, which is the same level as the previous week. Importantly, this is down by 6% from the same week a year ago. This general decline is mainly explained by the drier weather conditions in some States over a few couple of months.

Moreover, about 31% of the crop had already been harvested, slightly behind last year's pace of 39% in the same week. Meanwhile, about 57% of the soybean crop was rated good/excellent, also unchanged from the previous week. This is down by 2% from the previous year's rating in the same week. In terms of the harvest, about 44% of the crop had already been harvested, compared with 47% in the same week last year. In addition, the USDA will release the US Weekly Export Sales data on Thursday.

On the domestic front, on Wednesday, SAGIS will release the Weekly Producer Deliveries data for 14 October 2022. This data will help us get insight into the size of the crop as harvesting has been recently completed in most regions of the country. In the previous release of the week of 07 October, about 13,7 million tonnes of maize had already been delivered to commercial silos, out of the expected harvest of 15,3 million tonnes. In the same week, about 2,1 million tonnes of soybeans had already been delivered to commercial silos out of the expected harvest of 2,2 million tonnes. Moreover, 832 610 tonnes of sunflower seed had already been delivered on the same day out of the expected harvest of 845 550 tonnes.

On Thursday, SAGIS will publish the Weekly Grain Trade data for 14 October 2022. In the previous release on 07 October 2022, which was the 23rd week of South Africa's 2022/23 maize marketing year, the weekly exports amounted to 58 514 tonnes. About 42% of this went to Japan, 40% to Taiwan, and the rest to the Southern Africa region. This brought the total 2022/23 exports to 1,9 million tonnes out of the seasonal export forecast of 3,5 million. This is slightly down from 4,1 million tonnes in the past season due to an expected reduction in the harvest.

South Africa is a net wheat importer, and 07 October was the first week of the 2022/23 marketing year. The total imports are now 44 406 tonnes, from Australia, Germany and Poland. The seasonal import forecast is 1,53 million tonnes, slightly down from 1,58 million tonnes in the previous season. In the 2021/22 season, the major wheat suppliers are Argentina, Lithuania, Brazil, Australia, Poland, Latvia and the US. As we stated in our previous notes, if one looks into South Africa's wheat imports data for the past five years, Russia was one of the major wheat suppliers, accounting for an average share of 26% yearly.

If you want to know how much food the world wastes, the internet is your friend.

Roquette, a global leader in plant-based ingredients for Food, Nutrition and Health markets and a pioneer in new vegetal proteins, and Equinom Ltd., an innovative Israel based breeding technology company, have signed a partnership agreement for the development and sourcing of new pea varieties with high-protein content.

Environmental health is concerned with how the environment - not only air, water and other organisms - but our homes, work and leisure places, means of transport and technology - affects human health and well-being.

These days, almost everyone is aware of just how important it is to eat breakfast—it sets you up for the day, gives you the energy you need to get things done, and kick starts your metabolism.

Neonicotinoid pesticides including acetamiprid and imidacloprid (that are responsible for deaths of millions of bees) are affecting developing human nervous system and may even harm developing brains of the unborn babies, experts at European Food Safety Authority say.   

South Africa’s food and non-alcoholic beverages price inflation accelerated to 3.9% y/y in September 2018, up by 3.5% y/y in the previous month – the highest rate in five months.

The medium-term budget policy statement has addressed some of our bread-and-butter issues, but now that it is behind us it is time to reflect on another: food security.

"If it tastes good, just spit it out." Too many times, that's how people feel when they are trying to lose weight. Unfortunately, too often those things that taste good are full of calories, fat and/or sodium. And while you might think salads are better for you than other foods, think again.

When it comes to spices, cinnamon is a classic. People love cinnamon for its unique flavor combination of sweet and spicy. This food pantry staple is used in baking, teas, cereals, and as a tasty addition to Betsy’s Best Gourmet Cinnamon Almond Butter, Peanut Butter and Sunflower Seed Butters.

Looking through the refrigerator at home, we are often assailed by doubts: “Will the chicken still be good after all this time?” “What about the cheese?” “Wait, when did I buy this — wasn’t it last week?”