Poor struggle to afford basic foods

Selection of canned fish. (Image: Wiki Images)

The agency's report on food price increases noted that a basket of 32 food products‚ which formed the basic foods in the shopping trolleys of poor and working-class households in Pietermaritzburg‚ increased 8.75 percentage points year-on-year to R1‚509.34 in September.

Pacsa estimated that poor and working-class households spent 47% of their total household income on the basic basket of food.

The inflation on the 2013 PACSA food basket was higher than the consumer price index (CPI) of 6.4% and CPI-food of 7.1% and indicated that poorer households carried a greater inflation burden because most of their income was spent on food.

Core staples of maize meal‚ rice‚ flour‚ bread‚ potatoes‚ sugar and oil were becoming more expensive and increasingly unaffordable. Spending more money on these items means poor households have less money available for meat‚ dairy‚ fats and oils‚ and vegetables‚ according to the Pacsa report.

"This has a significant impact on dietary diversity and has serious implications for people's health‚" Pacsa said.

High levels of food inflation

The report noted that households in KwaZulu-Natal continued to face high levels of hunger and food insecurity. According to Census 2011‚ 60% of Pietermaritzburg households earned less than R3‚200 a month.

The food price inflation for some of the basic foods in the 2013 Pacsa food basket are (price increase in brackets): Potatoes, (51.40%); Cheese, (35.56%); Canned fish, (20.67%; Rice (20.25%); Brown sugar, (16.63%); Fresh milk, (12.42%); Brown bread, (11.47%).

The index showed that some prices had fallen such as: Sugar beans, (-0.84%); Eggs, (-0.98%); Margarine, (-4.28%); Chicken, (-8.03%); Tomatoes, (-10.97%); Beef, (-13.66%); Salt (-18.61%).

The report said many families experienced a very limited diet for the last seven to 10 days of the month and typically only had maize meal‚ rice‚ cake flour‚ brown sugar‚ cooking oil and salt in their homes. High food prices were influencing what people bought and ate and how they prepared their meals.

As prices of basic food increased households were buying less and cheaper food. Women expressed concern that the cheap foods they were forced to buy was making them sick.

High electricity prices were also changing what households ate and the way food was prepared in an attempt to save on electricity costs.

The Pacsa 2013 Food Barometer Report recommended that government focused on five public policy areas: ensuring that staple foods were affordable; overcoming income poverty through greater employment; linking annual wage and social grant increases to CPI-food and raising the CPI-food component in CPI to better reflect the high proportional food expenditures of poor households; increasing support for small-scale farmers to increase agricultural production that provided nutritious and healthy food that was affordable and grown close to the table; and facilitating immediate interventions for households that sometimes or always went hungry.