Ending hunger: A call for legislative action on food waste in South Africa

Daily Maverick

08-05-2025

To be successful in addressing food insecurity and malnutrition in South Africa, the broadest possible consultation will be required across the food system, including with farmers and agri-business food manufacturers, retailers, the non-profit organisation (NPO) sector and, crucially, the government.
The commitment by Gauteng Department of Agriculture MEC Vuyiswa Ramakgopa to ending hunger in Gauteng — and in South Africa as a whole — is most encouraging. Her 'Ending Hunger Symposium' held in early April 2025 was a powerful show of her genuine interest in collaboration among all the many civil society and government organisations that are fighting the hunger crisis in South Africa.
The Union Against Hunger (UAH), a recently launched movement that aims to pull together the efforts of the myriad organisations and individuals fighting to end hunger, along with FoodForward South Africa and SA Harvest, are committed to working closely with Ramakgopa and her department to build this collaborative effort.
FoodForward SA, South Africa's largest food redistribution organisation, understands that, since food insecurity and malnutrition affects millions of vulnerable households each month, addressing these challenges requires the combination of systemic intervention involving the government, the private sector, and civil society.
The right to food
The foundation of the right to food in South Africa is the enshrinement of that right in the South African Constitution. Broadly speaking, section 27(1) (b) of the Bill of Rights states that everyone living in South Africa has the right to enough food and water, while Section 28(1)(c) states that every child has the right to basic nutrition.
It is abundantly clear that the government has failed in its responsibility to honour its obligations in relation to the right to food. It is unacceptable that in our country, which produces more than enough food to feed all its people, more than 29% of our children up to the age of five are stunted as a result of severe acute malnutrition; up to 20 million South Africans are on a spectrum of severe food vulnerability ranging from running out of money to feed their families at some point during the month, to millions of children going to sleep hungry every night. Up to 65% of South African women and about 40% of men are overweight or obese because of the general unaffordability of nutritious foods.
The government must urgently set in motion the realisation of its constitutional obligations with respect to sections 27 and 28. This demand is also expressed constitutionally: Section 7(2) of the Constitution imposes an obligation on the state to 'respect, protect, promote and fulfil' all rights in the Bill of Rights, which obviously includes the right to food.
Make dumping edible food illegal — a low-hanging solution
It is globally accepted that legislation concerning various aspects of the food ecosystem would make a massive — and relatively quick — difference to ending hunger in South Africa, and the place to begin is by making the dumping of edible food illegal, a measure that has precedent, and has achieved great success in countries such as Italy and France.
One-third of food produced in South Africa — ten million tons — goes to waste each year. This is equivalent of 40 billion meals, in a context where 20 billion meals are needed to feed all of South Africa's hungry people three meals a day for a year.
It is difficult to estimate the quantum of food that is currently being saved from the food chain but, suffice it to say that if legislation increased the food saved from going to landfill by just 5% per annum, two billion additional nutritious meals per annum would become available.
Legislation and incentive schemes to reduce food waste have made a palpable difference globally. One well known example is France's 2016 'Garot Law' , which mandates, inter alia, that unsold food products from retail stores that are still safe for consumption must be donated rather than discarded. This includes measures such as that supermarkets larger than 400 square metres are required to sign agreements with food redistribution organisations to donate unsold food, and that supermarkets are obliged to keep records of their food donations and provide annual reports on the amount of food wasted and donated (tax incentives or penalties apply).
If a similar law were legislated in South Africa, farmers, manufacturers and retailers would be obliged (by the Department of Forestry, Fisheries, and the Environment, which is responsible for drafting the current food waste reduction policy) to make agreements with food redistribution organisations (e.g. SA Harvest and Food Forward SA). This would ensure that the cost of handling and transporting donated food was not a barrier for redistribution organisations, and that tax incentives were provided for farmers, manufacturers and retailers. These incentives would include reductions in their income tax based on the value of the food donations they have made.
In South Africa, in addition to the mandates such as those included in the Garot Law, two key actions that we believe are required. First, a Food Donations Bill that, inter alia, relaxes the often over-strict safety liability of food donors and redistribution organisations and clarifies date marking ('sell by' dates), which can be misleading, as they often suggest a much shorter 'safety' window for a product), which severely hampers the quantum of food that can be donated by food producers. Second, a Food Donations Bill should revise the front-of-pack labelling guidelines issued by the health department, encouraging the donation of food that has passed its 'best before' date. (Editor's note: draft new front-of-pack labelling guidelines have been under review for more than two years.)
Rescued food
Since the Garot Law was passed in 2016, according to independent research carried out for SA Harvest, the law has been effective in increasing the amount of food rescued by nearly 28% (from 36-million to 46-million kilogrammes) in its first two years.
Ultimately, to be successful in addressing food insecurity and malnutrition in South Africa, the broadest possible consultation will be required across the food system, including with farmers and agri-business food manufacturers, retailers, the non-profit organisation sector and, crucially, the government.
Critical to this process is that the government creates a Food and Nutrition Security Council (which has been promised since 2018) in order to (1) onboard strategic partners (2) strategically carve out an approach to solutions, and (3) develop key performance indicators and metrics, as well as define who will be responsible for measuring success, and for reporting on the council's actions and progress.
As Dr Tracy Ledger, who leads the Just Transition programme at the Public Affairs Research Institute and is one of South Africa's leading food activists, asks: 'Why is it that food prices are so high that millions of South African families go hungry, while the prices paid to farmers for the same food are so low that many cannot stay in business? Why are the people who produce our food — farmworkers — among the most insecure of all? Why do high levels of rural poverty persist while corporate profits in the food sector keep rising? How did a country with enough food for all and a constitutional right to food become a place where more than one in four children is malnourished and classified as stunted?'
Obtaining the answers to these questions is what Ramakgopa has set in motion.
'We will find the answers through a collaborative effort, and we will ensure that, based on these answers, we will implement the appropriate actions,' she said. 'After all, quality research and market intelligence are worth nothing without action, and I am dedicated to showing that genuine care, in the case of our people, is a 'doing' word.' DM