There are a number of reasons why deagrarianisation (the move away from agricultural activities) is happening in the rural Eastern Cape. One is the flight of human capital to the urban centres leaving the old aged and the sick in rural areas. This flight of human capital is due to the lack of employment opportunities and income generation-related activities in rural areas.
Permaculture should be considered as a sustainable food production system - a completely new way to plan ‘food production’. Cuba is a good example of where they use permaculture to produce food in a low carbon manner with almost no input (fertilisers and pesticides) nor transport and heavy equipment (all of which depend on oil and are sourced externally). Employment was created, and the principle of working with nature was applied by rehabilitating and using the many environmental services (nutrient and inputs recycling).
South Africa (SA) still lags behind in the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals of food security and poverty eradication. The current trends of education in SA affect the agriculture sector. Agriculture information is not integrated with other development programmes to address the numerous related problems faced by small-scale and emerging farmers. Information is an essential ingredient in agricultural development programmes.
Participation of households in food security immensely contributes towards addressing the poverty, unemployment, under-nutrition, and other socio-economic challenges faced by South Africans and can assist in reducing the current burden on the government in terms of payment of grants.
On Saturday, I attended a workshop at Constitutions Hill organised by Congo Renaissance (CoRe), a platform of Congolese living in South Africa in commemoration of the World Press Freedom happening the following day, Sunday 3rd of May.
Worldwide the World Press Freedom day is considered as a day of action to encourage and develop initiatives in favor of the freedom of the press; a day to remind governments to respect their commitments to press freedom; and a day to alert the public and to increase awareness of the importance of freedom of the press.
