Abstract
South Africa is one of the most food-secured countries at the national level but is food insecure at the household level. The disconnect in the food security at the national and at household level in the economy is a result of high food prices that most households cannot afford. One of the strategies of ameliorating food insecurity at the household level is the practice of backyard food gardens. This study identifies farmland size, land tenure system, agriculture-related assistance to households, location of residence of the household, agricultural training offered to households, and monetary grants for households for agriculture purpose as the determinants of households’ backyard food gardens in South Africa. The study used descriptive (horizontal bar chart) and inferential (Pearson’s chi-square) analyses to evaluate the household-level impacts of farmland size, land tenure system, agriculture-related assistance, location of residence, agricultural training, and monetary grants for agriculture purposes of the backyard food gardens in South Africa. The data for the study were sourced from the Statistics South Africa’s General Household Survey for 2019. The findings revealed that farmland size, land tenure system, agriculture-related assistance to households, location of residence of the household, agricultural training offered to households, and monetary grants for households for agriculture purposes are significant to households’ backyard food gardens in South Africa. It is clear that agriculture-related assistance is welcomed by the households but the spread across all dwelling locations is limited; therefore, there is need to spread agriculture-related assistance to all dwelling areas in South Africa. This will increase the drive towards food production in South Africa.
Highlights
Accepted: 25 January 2022The endemic nature to which hunger, because of poverty, spread across global south countries gave rise to in-depth discourse on food security
The findings revealed that farmland size, land tenure system, agriculture-related assistance to households, location of residence of the household, agricultural training offered to households, and monetary grants for households for agriculture purposes are significant to households’ backyard food gardens in South Africa
The empirical results show that farmland size, land tenure system, agriculture-related assistance to households, location of residence of the household, agricultural training offered to households and monetary grants for households for agriculture purposes are statistically significant in relation to backyard food gardens at a 1% percent significance level in South Africa
Summary
The endemic nature to which hunger, because of poverty, spread across global south countries gave rise to in-depth discourse on food security. The increase in population is critical, especially if that increase is exposed to food shortages at the household level It is challenging for the citizens of most of the global south countries due to persistently high levels of poverty and income inequality. Some of the effects include loss of jobs due to company closures and increased demand for food over a limited supply, which, to some extent, triggered price hikes in some sectors All these effects further worsened food insecurity at the household level in South Africa. Household food gardens can be an alternative and sustainable panacea to address food insecurity aspects at household levels [10] With these identified gaps, the research questions for this study are: (i) What are the determinants of household food gardens in South Africa? This study addresses the aforementioned research questions by sectionalising this research work into the Sections 2–5
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