Towards an African Food system of the Future

What does a post-capitalist indigenous and ecological world look like?

Imagine that the year is 2200, you are sitting outside your favourite restaurant in Braamfontein. You just ordered a meal of your liking. Through an inclusive, healthy and sustainably informed dietary choice, based on your meal, briefly engage the following questions;

What food are we eating in 2200?
How is the food produced, packaged, transported and prepared?
Is there meat on your plate?
Where does it come from?
How did it arrive here?
Who farms and raises the livestock that provides the meat on your plate (if there is)?

As a sustainability scientist, these are all questions I contend with, through my work on using indigenous African food knowledge, as a transformative pathway towards a sustainable food system of the future.

“We have reached the end of the growth driven agenda” – Richard Heinberg

(Image by Sikelela Matendela)

How do we continue to produce and consume, without hampering our future ability to do so, in a world with finite natural resources and a growing consumerist culture?

While the world gores over the current anthropogenic induced ecological crisis, there has never been a better time to consider alternative consumption patterns and iterations on possible realities. The current mode of human-nature relations, linked with growth driven economies of  extraction have led us here. Our consumption-led economies of scale have, up to so  far led to the 6th mass extinction. It is increasingly evident that continuous extraction in a world with finite resources and a growing palate for consumption will not work in the long term.  The world will be a different place in the next 100 to 200 years. What, when and how we consume will be largely impacted by the very consumption patterns of today. Part of my work and scholarship looks at responding to these future needs, through present day activities. It is important for us to consider alternative ways of co-existing with and alongside nature in a manner that allows future generations to do so, as well.

One of the leading causes of our current ecological and biodiversity crises, is our food system. An ever increasing cost of living, global warming, acute food insecurity and increasing global income inequality continue to plague our current models of food production. Added to this, is a capital and natural resource intensive global food industrial complex, ever growing, in every patent and pesticide product. While producing enough metric tonnage to feed all 8 billion of us, annual UN-FAO reports indicate growing famine and hunger levels globally, with Sub-Saharan Africa being the most highly impacted. With continued anthropogenic-led global climatic changes, Sub-Saharan Africa will also bear the brunt of the worst with climate change ramifications, such as decreased rainfall, increased and prolonged drought conditions.

 

Image by George Steinmetz for New York Times

 

Agriculture, a fundamental aspect of the Anthropocene, has advanced in the past century to feed more people alive than ever before. Intensification and scaling-up in the sector has allowed the industry to grow beyond subsistence-led family and household-networks, to computer controlled acreage of farmlands and feedlot based livestock enterprises. On the bright side, today  we have the leverage of consuming foods that; maybe out of season in our part of the world, maybe exported from other regions in the world and/or are not even from our own cultural backgrounds. We couldn’t be more connected as humanity. It however, remains important to ask questions surrounding the socio-ecological implications of our current food system, its’ resilience capability to system shocks and growth led trajectories despite inability to feed all 8 billion of us.

Our pastoral ancestors navigated multiple challenges ranging from predators, to avoiding conflict stricken regions and complex weather systems. Livestock farming has been a crucial part of the human experience for far longer than crop farming has. While over time, our palate for meat and livestock related products has grown, as we have in numbers and through globalisation, we currently find ourselves with a 21st century global food system in crises. More-especially, given the ecologically intensive manner in which our meat and livestock products are produced. Nowhere, in our food producing capacity, has there even been an even better time and need, to review our current relationship with meat consumption and livestock management practices.

Rock paintings by Patrick Gruban

 

How is our relationship with livestock impacting the planet?

One of the most ecologically destructive anthropogenic activities is in how we produce the food that we eat. This is of course noting, commercial food value chains, from seed patenting and genetic modification (through a few multinational conglomerates), chemically intensive production practices of scale, massive energy consumption through transportation, processing, and refrigeration.

We need alternative ways of co-existing with and alongside nature. Of importance in this re-configuration of our relationship with nature, is the role of global South nations and knowledges in transformative discourse and imagination. The region is home to some of the largest repositories of ecological and biodiversity knowledges in the world. Instances of these large volume of knowldges, is through their kincentric value systems. My research looks at incorporating some of these knowledge systems in response to the broader system transformation questions.

Image by Tesfaye Getachew Mengistu, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Through my doctoral research project, I am looking at indigenous pastoral practices as a pathway towards food system transformation. With this, I ask valuable questions on indigenous consumption and kin-centric ethics on food, people and ecology. How does consumption, rangeland management, ceremonial and traditional practices surrounding livestock management, meat production and practices look like in these indigenous contexts? I further ask, what can we learn from these ancient old practices that have not only sustained the very people using them, but have been beneficial to the biosphere within which they reside?

The project focuses on two African countries. The first study site is South-western Kenya, in the conservancies of Olkirimatian and Shampole. The second site is Shangani holistic, located in North-Eastern Zimbabwe. In these two locations, I intend on speaking to community leaders, indigenous knowledge practitioners, such as: rangeland managers, livestock headers, and community members through an indigenous knowledge led ethnographic research. From these discussions and interviews, I will be, working together with the abovementioned stakeholders, through a scheduled futuring workshop, to determine an African indigenous food system of the future, imagined through pastoralism.

Conclusion

By collaborating with communities and leaders, my project seeks to document and archive important indigenous knowldges on livestock, rangeland and biosphere stewardship management. Indigenous knowldges on food and agricultural practices are in many regions of the global South dying-out due to factors such as globalisation, urbanisation and westernisation. Through the project, I also hope to be able to influence regional and national policy frameworks pertaining to livestock farming, the centring of centuries old sustainable food practices and the insertion of an indigenous-led African agenda into current dominant sustainability and transformations discourse. These are discourses that often happen with the deliberate exclusion of our continent.  My hopes are that, when we imagine what a plate of food would look like in 2200, the various included processes, producers, value-chain stakeholders, and farmers are all using indigenous-led, climate smart and sustainable practices so as to enable future generations to do so as well.


Author Bio

Batlhalifi Nkgothoe is a Doctoral Candidate at Global Change Institute, Wits University. Batlhalifi is a trained Sociologist with a background in Food systems and indigenous knowldges.  His research interests are in African Indigenous Knowledge Systems & Stewardship, Indigenous pluriversal futures & imagination(s), epistemologies of the South and Food systems transformation. Batlhalifi current work through the FEFA program, studies Pastoralism(s) as a transformative pathway towards a sustainable food system, looking at two African countries by operationalising the Natures Future Framework.

 

Social Media
Batlhalifi Nkgothoe
Doctoral Student, Global Change Institute
Email: 1145008@students.wits.ac.za
Twitter: @B_Julius100
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/batlhalifi-nkgothoe-65aa9887

Author Bio

Batlhalifi Nkgothoe is a Doctoral Candidate at Global Change Institute, Wits University. Batlhalifi is a trained Sociologist with a background in Food systems and indigenous knowldges.  His research interests are in African Indigenous Knowledge Systems & Stewardship, Indigenous pluriversal futures & imagination(s), epistemologies of the South and Food systems transformation. Batlhalifi current work through the FEFA program, studies Pastoralism(s) as a transformative pathway towards a sustainable food system, looking at two African countries by operationalising the Natures Future Framework.

Social Media
Batlhalifi Nkgothoe
Doctoral Student, Global Change Institute
Email: 1145008@students.wits.ac.za
X: @B_Julius100
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/batlhalifi-nkgothoe-65aa9887

Future Ecosystems For Africa

A unique opportunity for an Africa-led, Africa-centred program, which can influence thinking and action in novel, as yet unexplored ways