A food relief project launched amid South Africa’s Covid-19 outbreak uses fresh produce from emerging farmers to combat hunger.
The Covid-19 pandemic has worsened South Africa’s hunger crisis.
The rate of child hunger was nearly double pre-pandemic levels, a year after the country entered a State of Disaster, according to the fourth edition of the National Income Dynamics Study – Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey (NIDS-CRAM).
Almost half of all the survey’s respondents indicated that their households had run out of money to buy food in the previous month, with the figure being highest in April 2021.
Around the same time, a project that had first been launched in Uganda in 2019, made its way to South Africa. This initiative, the OneFarm Platform, was started by the Standard Bank Group as a digital business-to-business programme to connect and provide services across the agricultural ecosystem.
The platform was then launched in South Africa, as OneFarm Share, “as a result of the food crisis caused by Covid-19 lockdowns and to help with sustainability of farming operations in the country.”
“The need for food relief is greater than ever, with over 12 million South Africans unsure of where their next meal will come from,” said Lungisa Fuzile, Standard Bank South Africa’s chief executive.
“Farmers are aware of this need but feel unable to meet it as there is no clear mechanism to manage the requests for donations, and they need an efficient, quick and transparent process to help them donate food.”
OneFarm Share, in partnership with South African AgriTech, and HelloChoice, offers a digital fresh produce marketplace, and connects farmers with food distribution organisations.
Surplus fresh produce from emerging farmers – which would usually be ploughed back into the land – is bought through Standard Bank’s Corporate Social Investment (CSI) funding.
This provides emerging farmers with financial support, while, at the same time, supplying nutritional meals to vulnerable South Africans through two key distribution organisations, FoodForward SA and SA Harvest.
“Some of the challenges that emerging farmers do have [include] that they’ve got variable quality, and often their produce gets rejected by the formalised retail and wholesale sector,” Grant Jacobs, CEO and co-founder of HelloChoice, told Business Insider SA.
“But it doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with the food… maybe the sizing is wrong, or the packaging is incorrect, but the food is still perfectly nutritious.”
“So, what we’re able to do is provide a friendly off-taker which makes it possible for them [emerging farmers] to upscale their businesses [and] that’s of massive economic value to them but also essential from a South African food security perspective.”
Commercial farmers are encouraged to donate surplus produce through OneFarm Share.
“We also provide a base for commercial farmers who want to donate but find it difficult to donate excess produce,” said Jacobs.
“Lots of farmers want to [donate], but it’s quite a thing to find out who the charity is, make sure they’re registered, make sure they collect on time and that the documentation is in place. Last year, 44 commercial farmers were able to contribute, and a lot of those were donations provided free of charge.”
To date, OneFarm Share has acquired more than 7,000 tons of produce from 327 contributing farmers, which has been distributed, through FoodForward SA and SA Harvest, to almost, 2,000 beneficiary charities across all nine provinces.
These registered charities have, in turn, provided around 28 million meal parcels, feeding more than a million people.
“Our focus is on fresh produce. That’s typically one of the items which are omitted from donation food baskets,” said Jacobs, explaining that logistics surrounding the transportation and distribution of fresh goods was more complicated than processed foods.
“Most of these donation food baskets provide dry goods. So, one of the reasons we do it [focus on fresh produce] is to provide nutritional value into the food baskets.”
OneFarm Share has obtained and supplied 41 different types of fresh produce, including potatoes, cabbages, onions, carrots, spinach, apples, and pears.
In addition to focusing on fresh produce, OneFarm Share actively seeks out oft-forgotten rural communities across South Africa.
“Quite a bit of food and donor help goes into the urban areas because it’s easier to distribute and find,” said Jacobs.
“Our focus as OneFarm Share has been to get to those very deep rural provinces where hunger and poverty are rife.”
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This agriculture project – launched in lockdown – has fed more than 1 million South Africans – Business Insider South Africa
