Pereira Laura M, Hawkes Corinna
Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden.
Centre for Food Policy, City University of London, London, United Kingdom.
Front Sustain Food Syst. 2022 May 20;6:786151. doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2022.786151.
An erosion of indigenous and traditional foods in the Global South has dramatically changed the global food system in the last 50 years. Reinvigorating these crops and the agro-biodiversity that they represent could provide benefits for healthier and more sustainable food systems. In South Africa, it has been proposed that studying indigenous plants more extensively and focussing on innovation to include them as mainstream foods on people's plates could improve food and nutrition security. With this background, this paper aims to contribute to addressing this challenge by researching sorghum () to identify the opportunities for innovating around sorghum as a healthy food and resilient crop. The paper traces sorghum through various encounters across the South African food system. The results point at clear areas where policy interventions could bolster the sorghum value chain. These include zero-rating VAT on sorghum products, investing more extensively in research and marketing across diverse stakeholders, raising awareness about the health benefits of sorghum and using public procurement as a way of instigating a market for novel sorghum products. The outcomes of a successful sorghum innovation programme could improve smallholder farmers' livelihoods, make a healthy food more accessible to South Africans and develop a local market for innovative products that utilize a crop that is resilient to projected climatic changes.
在过去50年里，全球南方本土和传统食物的减少极大地改变了全球粮食系统。重振这些作物及其所代表的农业生物多样性，可为更健康、更可持续的粮食系统带来益处。在南非，有人提议更广泛地研究本土植物，并专注于创新，将它们纳入人们日常饮食的主流食物，这可能会改善粮食和营养安全状况。在此背景下，本文旨在通过研究高粱来应对这一挑战，以确定围绕高粱进行创新的机会，将其作为一种健康食品和适应性强的作物。本文通过南非粮食系统中的各种接触来追溯高粱。结果指出了政策干预可以加强高粱价值链的明确领域。这些措施包括对高粱产品免征增值税，更广泛地投资于不同利益相关者之间的研究和营销，提高人们对高粱健康益处的认识，以及利用公共采购来推动新型高粱产品的市场发展。一个成功的高粱创新项目的成果可以改善小农户的生计，让南非人更容易获得健康食品，并为利用一种能适应预计气候变化的作物开发创新产品的本地市场。
