Food is a necessity in society to achieve well-being. Nourishing food is not however sufficiently available to everyone all the time. Therefore in ToBe project’s case study that relates to understanding processes of sustainability change in the Global North and Global South, one of our cases focuses on agrifood systems in South Africa as a path towards a Sustainable Wellbeing Economy.

In April 2024, we visited two agrifood processing sites, one relying on aquaponics and the other on hydroponics that represent novel approaches to improving food security in the South African context. Both approaches aim to not only regenerate agricultural practices to save water, use organic matter but also to promote home growing, urban farming, and micro- and small-scale farms to achieve wider societal transformation flavoured by ‘ubuntu’.

The South African food system is highly contested, with the Apartheid legacy underpinning a dualistic agrarian system, high levels of poverty, and socio-economic inequality[1]. South Africa has a high per capita income for a developing country and is food secure nationally[2]. However, the country faces a higher burden of malnutrition than countries of comparable income levels and is undergoing a nutrition and epidemiological transition.

To address the different agroecological zones and urban versus rural contexts, we study an aquaponics site of Jwale Cooperation in the rural area of the Limpopo Province in the Semaneng Ga-Matlala district, about an hour’s drive from Mokopane. The other, urban case is the Freshlife Produce project in Cape Town in the Western Cape Province of South Africa.

Jwale Corporation’s founder, Onicca Mapula Sibanyoni, welcomed us with more than 30 community members on the site in Limpopo. Her motivation to start the aquaponics farm well from the fact that she is a special needs mom who’s witnessed firsthand the benefits of eating organic foods. She studied different options and found aquaponics which is a sustainable farming technique combining aquaculture and hydroponics to create a closed-loop system where fish waste is used as fertilizer for plant growth. This environmentally friendly system can produce a high yield of fresh vegetables and fish in a small space.

Onicca’s state-of-the-art aquaponics facility produces food everything from leafy greens and herbs to tomatoes, peppers, and even strawberries for the community and her services also include supporting local farmers and businesses and training home gardeners looking to start their own aquaponics system or restaurant owners looking for a reliable source of fresh produce. The project has received support from the local chief and the different government levels (district, provincial and national) under the Department of Agriculture Land Reform and Rural Development (DALRRD). This department provided the fish at the provincial level and regarded this project as an excellent example of grassroots innovation in South Africa.

We met numerous representatives and stakeholders supporting this project: the community members supporting the project, government officials from the DALRRD, the Jwale team led by Onicca, a business partner in Polokwane assisting her with technical advice, and MLab representatives (an Innovation Lab that supports digital solution development, especially those with a social impact focus) who provided her with aquaponics training. We witnessed that despite the barriers, like theft or short-sightedness of the young, how powerful community-driven green transformation can be if the right support and advice are available at the right time.

the Jwale Cooperation (https://www.jwale.co.za)

The second case study in Cape Town, Fresh Life Produce, involves multiple alternative growing systems. Fresh Life Produce pooled the knowledge and experience of all the different sustainable growing technologies and developed a unique Africanized hydroponics system in 2018. The design has been registered and is called the African Grower and the manufacturing and distribution allows them to disrupt the fresh food production market. Fresh Life Produce is the implementation agent of Mr Price Foundation through their handpicked project, where ‘agri-preneurs ‘(agriculture students who finished their studies and need practical experience) are trained and receive theoretical and practical expertise in controlled environments that focus on conservation agriculture.

African Growers’ guiding principles are that you can grow your food no matter where you are, your knowledge level, or your financial circumstances. Therefore, this solution had to bein a compact kit form that is easily transportable, simple to put together and use, and affordable with high yields. It needs no running water, and no effort (bending down to feed). It saves space, time (grows quicker in a controlled environment), money (re-usable), and the environment as it is eco-friendly, uses coconut coir and is pest resilient because it is suspended in the air.

Distribution and sales are handled through the App ‘Touch Africa’ in which the home and community growers get a weekly message to indicate what fresh produce they have and then Fresh Life Produce gets these from the growers and sells them to restaurants and food stores. In this way, they add to the socio-economic and enterprise development of the youth, trained over six months to use the system, feed themselves, and make a profit by selling their produce.

So far, 1596 African Growers have been used in projects based in underprivileged communities where they constructed 39 pop-up greenhouses at nine community hubs nationwide. We visited one of these communities, Langa, a township in Cape Town where we met community farmers and representatives of an NGO called South African Urban Food and Farming Trust which support farmers in vulnerable urban communities.  

the Freshlife Produce project (https://freshlifeproduce.co.za/)

We learned that cultural factors play a big role in the success and sustainability of these projects as many cultures for example do not allow women to have their own businesses, resulting in gender disparity. Also, small-scale farmers do not know how to enter the market and what level of quality their produce should be to support the expectations of large food stores. Challenges are often systemic, e.g. securing urban land that belongs to the municipality is difficult to obtain as most of this land is earmarked for building houses and not to support small-scale farmers, or funders usually only fund the seedlings, not the equipment. In these low-income areas, these projects typically use volunteers who they cannot always employ, and it is challenging to keep people engaged if they are hungry now.

For a successful sustainability transition in the agrifood systems, change agents who want to see change are needed. They need an advanced skill set and an entrepreneurial drive, be passionate, and know how to navigate or network with those around them and bring or share their vision with others to get buy-in and ownership.

In South Africa, this transition is influenced by ‘ubuntu’  which perceives one’s position in society depending on others, not individuality as neoliberal ideology promotes. Community values serve as the foundation for socialisation, and social bonds are created to benefit the whole. Many discussions in our field trip emphasized community values and helping others, even though you don’t have much yourself – cultivation is perceived as a way to work together.

[1] Kushitor, S. B., Drimie, S., Davids, R., Delport, C., Hawkes, C., Mabhaudhi, T.,…Pereira, L. M. (2022). The complex challenge of governing food systems: The case of South African food policy. Food security, 14(4), 883-896. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1007/s12571-022-01258-z   

[2] van Huyssteen, T., Nonhebel, S., & Thiam, D. (2023). The Sustainability of Agri-Food Trade in South Africa. Available at SSRN 4524899. https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4524899