Food Security In South Africa

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ntroduction In this assignment I will be discussing some of the factors affecting food security in South Africa, and whether or not the agriculturists will be able to feed the population in future. It is very important to know about food security since food is something we depend on our daily lives, why would we be without food, or agriculture? Do we even know what agriculture and food security? If we do not it definitely means we do not know why we are alive. So, according to (Miller and Spoolman, 2015 pp.279), food security refers to the access, by all people at all times, to adequate, safe and nutritious food for a healthy and reproductive life. While on the other hand, Burke and Lobell, 2010 think that food security is a situation when…show more content…
Drought and floods Drought is a shortage of water due to prolonged lack of rainfall, it results in crop losses and livestock death, which reduces the food available in an area. Floods is too much running water, it cause extensive damage in a short period of time and decrease the amount of farmland to grow crops, it also leads to soil erosion ( ) which will be discussed later in the assignment. Poor farming practices Monoculture is the growing of one type of crop over a large areas of land year after year. Monoculture depletes nutrients and water supplies and therefore impacts negatively on the quality of the topsoil. Soil erosion is the removal of topsoil which is organic and nutrient-rich, it may be caused by the action of water, wing or the gravity, as well as weathering process. It leaves the soil useless for agricultural purposes, this is because the valuable nutrients such as Nitrogen, Potassium, Phosphorus and Calcium would be lost that are needed to support the crop growth, reducing the crop yield. ( ), argues that soil erosion makes the soil to lose its productivity for all natural ecosystem including agriculture as it expose the soil to water, wind and prone to weathering…show more content…
Fertilizers are expensive, contributing to the high cost of food, thus reducing access to poor consumers. Many crop types in south are being affected by the pests which feeds and destroy the crops before maturing, and farmers tend to use the pesticides in order to kill pests that compete with humans for food. Pesticides may kill or get into the tissue of healthy plants. This may reduce crop production and, since pesticides are expensive, increases the cost of food and thus reducing access to poor consumers. Many in South Africa now use biological control or parasites to get rid of pests instead of using expensive pesticides, they do this for the sake of the whole country to have access to affordable food. Water and food

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