Food security

Food security is key for poor people, and subsistence an important means to access food. But in the Namibian context, cash income has an important role to play in securing food even for smallholder farm households. In addition, aside from compensating food deficits from subsistence agriculture, cash is needed for school fees, clothes, clinic bills, daily necessities such as soap and oil, bus fares and one-off events (funerals, weddings and emergencies).

The National Programme for Food Security (NPFS, 2007, p. 7) summarizes:

[A]lthough Namibia has a per capita income of about US$2 900; it has severe food insecurity at the household level. The percentage of the population suffering from under-nourishment in Namibia decreased from 34 percent in 1990-92 to 23 percent in 2002-03. The percentage of people that are food insecure is likely to be significantly higher. According to World Food Programme, the number of people receiving food aid over the last 15 years varied between 200 000 (1995) and 600 000 (2003).

Households that earn between N$250 and N$350 a month, experience serious food deficit and resort to coping strategies such as own production and bartering and exchange of labour. The people disproportionately affected by food insecurity include smallholder farm communities, the rural landless, communities whose livelihoods depend on herding, fishing or forest resources, and poverty stricken urban dwellers.

Poverty is aggravated in Namibia by frequent droughts and floods that cause a large part of the population to require regular governmental food

aid. In 2003, a drought year, one third of the Namibian population needed humanitarian food assistance (NPC, 2008).

Land degradation from soil erosion, bush encroachment and soil salination have been identified as the principle causes of food insecurity by decreasing agricultural productivity (NPC, 2004). These trends are for their part attributed to overgrazing, excessive land clearing and poor policies and regulations that encourage such inappropriate land-management practices.

Despite progress in production (see Chapter 3.1.4), the national demand for cereals must be strongly supplemented through imports. Between 1995 and 2005, total annual cereal production averaged only 98,800 tonnes, just 36 per cent of national cereal consumption, so that an average of 174,000 tonnes had to be imported each year (Mendelsohn, 2006). In the 2007–

08 season, national agricultural production covered 43 and 11 per cent of the domestic demand for maize and wheat, respectively. Dependence on agricultural imports is even greater in the fruits and vegetables sector:

in 2007 Namibia imported 77.5 per cent of its domestically consumed produce (Namibian Agronomic Board [NAB], 2009). However, the amount of maize (mostly imported from the RSA) decreased from 95 per cent of total consumption in 1995 to 61 in 2004 as a result of price and trade policies (Bank of Namibia [BON], 2006; see below). Fruit and vegetable self-sufficiency slightly improved as a result of being included in the trade policy scheme. Demand for beef, mutton and pearl millet was almost completely satisfied by domestic production (BoN, 2006). Between domestic production and food imports, food availability in Namibia does not seem to be a national problem.

In contrast, many households have problems accessing food. The 2003–04 NHIES revealed that food accounted for more than 60 per cent (the official

‘poverty’ level) of total expenditures in 42.3 per cent of rural households and more than 80 per cent (the ‘severe poverty’ level) of expenditures in 6 per cent of households (NPC, 2006, compare Table 4).

Table 4: Households (by food consumption ratio, region and urban/

rural areas)

Food consumption ratio (%) Households

80-100 60-79 40-59 0-39 Number

Caprivi 7.1 36.6 28.8 27.5 18,607

Kavango 8.0 42.4 29.1 20.4 32,354

Namibia 3.9 24.0 27.3 44.9 371,668

Urban 0.6 6.0 18.3 75.0 150,533

Rural 6.1 36.2 33.4 24.3 221,136

Source: NPC (2006)

Namibia’s policy on food security remains embedded in its agricultural policy of 1995, in which the Namibian government stated its aim “to maintain or increase levels of agricultural productivity and to increase real farm incomes and national and household food security” (Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Rural Development [MAWRD], 1995, p. ii). But Vision 2030 states that “food self-sufficiency objectives” are only aims “to the extent that it is financially rewarding and economically viable to do so. … Food availability will be improved through increasing agricultural productivity and overall production, providing local storage capacity, and by developing competitive import and domestic markets” (MAWRD, 1995, p. 42). The focus seems to be less on maintaining subsistence farming and more on increasing marketable agricultural productivity (without specifically mentioning staple food crops) as a way of expanding employment in rural areas by focusing on comparative advantages.

Examples include the Green Scheme Initiative and efforts to commercialize the livestock sector (Chapter 3.1.4).

NDP 2 (NPC, 2002) covering the years 2002 to 2006 sought to assure food security through raising the productivity of subsistence agriculture, which involves most of the population. But this was unsuccessful. NDP 3 states:

“[T]he lesson is that subsistence agriculture is not an appropriate means to reduce poverty in Namibia” (NPC, 2008, p. 21).

Vision 2030 (NPC, 2004) more clearly distinguishes between food self-sufficiency and food security and recommends focusing on the latter instead of the former – meaning that each Namibian should have enough to eat

whether or not they produce their own food crops or whether their food was produced in Namibia. It places special emphasis on the need to save scarce resources such as water and stresses the trade-off between increased agricultural production and environmental protection. It acknowledges that the country’s agricultural base is too low and its agro-climatic conditions do not allow Namibia to become entirely food self-sufficient; crops that use vast amounts of scarce resources (particularly water) should be imported.

But it also advises against producing cash crops that do not enhance food security. NDP 3 recommends expanding the livelihoods of rural communities and assuring food security by diversifying and improving agricultural production. Recent government initiatives such as the Green Scheme Initiative have focused on larger commercial farms rather than on subsistence and communal farmers.

In order to create a market for local grain products and storage for food aid, the Namibian government built several silos in the North (AZ online, 2008). Recently, white maize, wheat and (recently) mahangu (a form of pearl millet) were gazetted as ‘controlled crops’, meaning that import and export barriers as well as floor prices have been established for these crops, and mahangu has a guaranteed market (NAB, 2009). However, most of Namibia’s poor are net food buyers who do not necessarily benefit from these measures; in the worst case, they suffer from higher prices.

A new strategic plan of the Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Forestry (MAWF, forthcoming) reiterates the importance of market integration (“creating and expanding markets”, “increasing product development”,

“value addition and diversification”) for smallholder farmers, and improving households’ access to food.

In summary, the linkage between food security and agriculture in Namibia is not clearly defined. Key documents argue for separating food security and food self-sufficiency. Yet those and other authors find that subsistence agriculture contributes to food security. More significant, however, is the emphasis on achieving food security through broad-based income growth.