Tim Abaa organised a food festival that showcased the enterprises and activities being developed by residents of Orange Farm. This was a very important event that showed us in a very concrete way how communities can establish, develop and expand a locally-focused food system.
Tim Abaa has been a regular participant in the iZindaba Zokudla Farmers’ Labs, and has in many ways pioneered the narrative and practice of establishing a locally-focussed food system. A locally-focused food system does not have to be self-sufficient in feeding its people, nor is it necessary to have it totally “organic”. However, the production of food in local areas, building on local resources, and the local trade in food that has been produced locally is not something we see every day. We only have “default” examples of such self-sufficient food systems, like Kinshasa, where there is a real dearth and lack of commercial farms. We as academics would love to theorise and discuss such food systems, but it is really incumbent on others to develop them, and we follow these leads. As an academic who often works outside the place where I live, I am reminded by the words of Ivan Illich, that suggests only local and intimate activities to improve the human condition are legit… I should focus on my own local area….
There has perhaps never been a move to develop a local self-sufficient food system. Politicians and academics will not easily promote this, in case such an programme fails. Local people need to engage and start developing such a system whilst they are also relying on the current linear food system. This is the only legitimate or defendable approach to take, as we need to at all times secure our food supply. However, the impacts of a local food system will be felt not necessarily in lower prices, but primarily in the synergies that will result amongst the various and different traders and producers in a local food system.
We have to think of a local food system as an ecosystem of differentiated enterprises. Sure, all of them will produce food in some way, but not all will produce the same food, and some will deliver services for those who do produce, and it is in this interaction where the benefits of a local food system lie. This will then make possible the local circulation of capital, and the addition of value on top of this. This all starts with the production of food and the production of a service for the farmers. When the ”payments” between these actors become cashless and move to the exchange of value, will we see deep impacts, as a community will then produce something by exchanging value amongst themselves, and in this sense create a virtuous circle of value creation.
This idea can be illustrated by the old story of the visiting businessman who goes to the local hotel to book a room for the night. He inquires about prices and is told the room will go for R 1000 a night and a R 200 deposit is needed to secure the room.
The businessman pays the R 200 deposit and adds that he is unsure if he would need to stay, but he will in any case come back to the Hotel in the afternoon to either pay for the night or have his R 200 deposit returned.
The Hotel owner accepts the R 200 and immediately calls the electrician. He says to the electrician that he might have a guest for the night, but the light is broken in the room. The electrician says he will fix it for R 200.The Hotel owner pays the Electrician with the R 200 the businessman paid for the deposit. The electrician, in turn, goes to the butcher whom he owes R 200 and pays this dept. The butcher takes the R 200 and goes to the Hotel as he owes the Hotel R 200 as change for meat delivered the previous day.
The very next moment the businessman enters the hotel and announces that he is unable to stay for the night. The hotel owner promptly pays the R 200 back. No exchange of value took place between the businessman and the hotel, but the and the circulation of the R 200 enabled the electrician and the butcher to settle their debts, and enabled the hotel to have the light fixed. This ended up with the Hotel getting hold of a “new” R 200 that they could use to settle their dept with the businessman.
In this simple and possibly inaccurate example we see the benefits of the circulation of capital in a closed community. This is often referred to as the “Cleveland” principle, from Cleveland in the United States where mostly African-American people aimed at building tight local communities by encouraging trade with each other. This circulation of capital amongst those in a bounded community is the basis of the creation of wealth and value amongst and inside a community. This is why a locally-focused food system is so important. Such a bounded (but not closed) system will enable the production of food at lowest possible cost, as monetary values can be exchanged for social capital values, and the delinking from the current system will allow the local system to find the right and true price or food that reflects the production system used. If this production system uses locally available (and discarded) resources – as is common with the way we deal with biological resources as we think of these as waste whilst they hold significant potential – we could see food being produced that reflects local resources and the synergies that may emanate from interaction amongst many actors.
This is what we may be seeing emerge in Orange Farm. Of course, this development was a long time coming, from the early beginnings of the iZindaba Zokudla Farmers’ Lab, to Tim taking up some of the suggestions and learnings, to others taking these up and to many developing emergent enterprises in this emergent ecosystem.
This movement to creating a local self-sufficient “place” should be the basis of our efforts at building the food system. Substituting local production with store-bought and distantly produced food is in fact what creates food insecurity. This is less to do with the prices of such food, and more to do with the inability of humans to participate in the food system. It is when we participate in the food system that we can make the small and strategic adjustments to lower food costs. Food costs an only be lowered by the sequencing of activities and enterprises in the chains that we need to achieve a sustainable food system. These chains could be long or short, but the way they use resources will depend on the interaction amongst actors in the supply chain. What we saw in Orange farm was the sequencing of enterprises so those who do produce can produce much better. Hence, we saw, at the bottom, the emergence of a tool and seed library (as enterprises). We saw the production of inputs and at least two very different kinds of fertiliser being on sale. Farmers will depend on and benefit from this. We also saw the sale of livestock (Rabbits and chickens) and the sale of these indicate that there are more than two producing food in this way, hinting at a nascent industry. We also saw seedlings, trees and other plants being sold, and this is a key input into production. Then we saw the beneficiation of local production in the form of vegetable juice makers, recipes and dishes and also the emergence of restaurants. We also saw dried and preserved foods. We also saw the sale of high value manufactured products, in the form of leather work. This is suggestive of a comprehensive strategy to industrialise the township…
This is how we need to think about poverty relief, food production and local economic development. It is quite glaring how different these actions on the ground are to what many policy-makers and academics say about “development” and it is important that we get this right. The forces that would mitigate against this way of changing our societies are formidable, but nothing beats local choice and decisions in this regard.
Please do note the photographs below, and please forgive me for not being able to indicate who appears on these photographs. These are a testament to the innovation of the good people of Orange Farm.
Phambili uOrange Farm!
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