Stepping out of SA for a moment to see what other countries are up to is always eye-opening. On September 18, I attended a session on Famine to Food Security as part of the Future of Farming Dialogue 2018, hosted by Bayer at their crop science headquarters in Germany — a global enterprise with core competencies in the life science fields of healthcare and agriculture. While food security is less of an issue in the Western world relative to Southern Africa and parts of Asia, scientists in the West are not taking a break or slacking off. They are researching ways to improve agricultural output in the context of declining land per capita, climate change and changing consumer preferences, among other things. Such conversations have been few and far between in SA, at least on a national scale. Part of the reason could be because SA is at relatively comfortable levels in terms of food security compared to the rest of the continent. SA is ranked as the most food-secure country in Africa an...

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