Feed The Soil - 25 May 2023
“The world is hungrier than ever”

For the last few days, I’ve been reading several articles around hunger, food relief and poverty and the statistics presented are staggering. Across the globe, millions of people are fighting to survive in calamitous hunger and many are one step away from famine.

That is a scary thought as even in South Africa, the number of people facing hunger and malnutrition daily is ever-increasing. While staring reality in the face, the number of people experiencing acute hunger is rising faster than we can raise adequate funds to feed them. The cost of delivering food is at an all time high because both food and fuel prices have increased.

Would you believe it if I told you that even the price of fertilizer has climbed faster than food prices. With higher natural gas prices, the global fertilizer production and exports have been disrupted, reducing supplies, raising prices and threatening to reduce harvests.

That can only mean one thing. With farmers unable to replenish the soil with nutrients found in fertilizers enabling them to grow crops, the current food affordability crisis could soon turn into a food availability crisis.

When the demand is greater than the supply, you have no choice but to take from the hungry to feed the starving.

We encourage our kitchens to maintain their food gardens to help supplement meals provided to communities who needs help to access food, our ECD’s who have children coming to the centres hungry. It’s easier said than done when you barely have enough to sustain yourself, and the cost of seeds and compost are above your means.

For this reason, we implore you to come alongside us so we can continue our drive to provide these urban farmers with seasonal seeds to plant so they can harvest fresh produce to supplement their meals. We ask you to collect your food waste so we can turn it into compost to give to them freely.

These two simple actions can have such a huge impact on more people than you ever thought you’d be able to impact. These words seem light compared to what you’re actually achieving. By doing this, you are helping us shift people from acute hunger to fed, from malnourished to nourished, from dependent to empowered. That is the power of taking action in a world that’s hungrier than ever.