“There is food we deserve, and there is food we do not deserve” Food injustice, place and power in urban agriculture in Cape Town and Maputo

ABSTRACT

Urban agriculture (UA) is perceived to foster the self-determination of localised food systems and feed growing urban populations. We apply a food justice lens with a focus on place and power to explore UA's contributions to livelihoods and food availability in Cape Town, South Africa and Maputo, Mozambique and to understand the power dynamics between actors. We conducted household surveys, focus group discussions, key informant interviews, participant observations, and farmer-led co-research from 2017 to 2019. In Cape Town, UA is an NGO-led, subsidised initiative regulating production decisions and market access, instead of enhancing self-determination. Food is produced in highly confined spaces in informal settlements, almost exclusively for a niche market of wealthy consumers in the city centre. Farmers are disconnected from consumers and from their own produce, with only 15% of farmers eating the vegetables they grow. In Maputo, UA emerged from farming traditions in the peri-urban green belt, producing leafy green vegetables for both the urban population and 99% of the farmers themselves, thereby contributing to local food availability. However, farmers depend on prices determined by intermediaries with farm association members of higher status and privilege holding leading positions and determining access to agricultural inputs and services. In both contexts, we revealed stark structural inequalities and highly uneven power dynamics. As one outcome of co-research in Cape Town, farmers established their own market channels and advocated for food councils that would enable them to have a voice in shaping urban agriculture and local food systems.

KEYWORDS:

• Food justice
• urban agriculture
• alternative food systems
• Cape Town
• Maputo
• farmer-led co-research

Acknowledgement

Deepest thank you to all farmers in Cape Town and Maputo for contributing to this research, particularly the urban research farmer group in Cape Town for participating in this research over a period of almost three years and for largely driving it in the later stages. Thanks to Zayaan Khan for the continuous support and insights provided to this work, and Sonia Mountford for her support and a much-needed critical voice. The authors further thank all colleagues who were involved at various stages and provided critical reflections, at the Centre for Rural Development (SLE) at Humboldt University Berlin, University of Hohenheim, and the Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience, Coventry University. Thank you to the UFISAMO project and the larger team for their support, and the Federal Office for Agriculture and Food, BLE, through the German Ministry for Food and Agriculture (BMEL) for funding this study from 2016 to 2019. Special thanks go to Jennifer Koppelin from Humboldt-Universityin Berlin for her extraordinary support with the data analysis, and Prof Dr Inês Raimundo from the Universidade Eduardo Mondlane in Maputo for the support and knowledge provided on the work in Mozambique. We further thank Dr Chiara Tornaghi, Coventry University, for her valuable critique and comments on an earlier draft, which has significantly helped to shape this paper, and Carmen Aspinall for proofreading this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, NP, upon reasonable request.

Notes

1 The UFISAMO project (Urban Agriculture for Food Security and Income Generation in South Africa and Mozambique) was led by the Centre for Rural Development (SLE) at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

2 The ethnic terms “Black”, “Coloured”, “White” and “Indian”, intended by the apartheid laws for “racial classification”, are still widely being used in post-apartheid South Africa, although these terms are highly contested (Durrheim, Mtose, and Brown 2011; Erasmus 2008; Posel 2010; Seekings and Nattrass 2005). Moreover, we use the term “people of colour” as an umbrella term for Black, Coloured, and Indian South Africans, as is used in the broader South African context.

3 In the following, we refer to “urban farmers” when using the term “farmers”, most of whom are people of colour.

4 The baseline survey was conducted within the UFISAMO project in 2017 in Maputo by the first author, together with Luisa Chicamisse, Ivo Cumbana, and Anja Schelchen and in Cape Town by the first author and Abdulrazack Karriem.

5 Currency conversion, November 2020, oanda.com.

6 #vegwithimpact is a hashtage regularly used in Umthunzi social media campaigns.

7 Informal or convenience stores in townships run from a person's home to sell food and other groceries.

8 Currency conversion rate, November 2020, oanda.com.

Additional information

Funding

This work was financially supported by the German Federal Institute for Agriculture and Food (BLE) through the German Ministry for Food and Agriculture (BMEL) between 2016 and 2019 under Grant [number 2813FSNU13]. Bundesanstalt für Landwirtschaft und Ernahrung (BLE )