Глобальный форум по продовольственной безопасности и питанию (Форум FSN)

We would like to share a commentary that we published in our website recently. The  commentary reacts to a book published by Oxford on Nutrition, but fits perfectly into this discussion.

http://www.die-gdi.de/en/the-current-column/article/cherry-picking-the-reasons-for-hunger-1/

We should abstain from identifying only urbanization and an increasing population as root causes of food insecurity. Economic access to food plays a dominant role in explaining food insecurity. By overemphasizing nutritional and population aspects and downplaying or even ignoring income poverty and other factors affecting access, the food security perspective becomes economically and socially myopic and politically blind.

Food insecurity is a muddled and dynamic interplay of various elements, many of them heavily anchored to poverty. Poverty is a result of extremely low (or lack of) incomes in the majority of the population and/ or a lack of economic transfers, either based on social relations or by government transfer systems.

Without neglecting other reasons for low incomes in rural areas – such as low land and water endowments – incomes in rural areas are low because productivity in agriculture is low. In many poor countries smallholder yields are only 15-30% of their potential. This reduces the amount of production for subsistence and for selling on markets to purchase other much needed products and services, from food to education to health to communication. These are all required to improve basic living conditions including food security and nutrition.  Low agricultural sales and income also reduce local economic dynamics, do not create demand for labour and inputs, keep wages low and do not contribute to vibrant economic off-farm activities. The deeply needed social and cash transfers in poor countries are often lacking because a large part of the population is poor, lives off the informal sector  , has no resilience against shocks  such as droughts, floods and war, does not pay taxes and has only little political influence. This is poverty!

The engine for improving agricultural productivity and higher incomes for rural population often lies in a better integration into markets. To be integrated into the market, smallholders have to produce substantially higher yields through intensifying their production. This requires increased efforts of, for example, land, water, labour, biological resources and knowledge. If smallholders rely more on internal resources such as mulching, composting, manuring, multi-storey cropping, agro-forestry or irrigation, this usually requires more labour during critical periods which poor households do not have. They have to hire labour or invest in mechanization, which only is possible if additional capital is available.

Cash earnings from agricultural production require good and predictable marketing channels, as well as remunerative  and stable prices . Assuming that indeed, a marketable surplus is achieved, the hurdle of bringing the produce to the market and selling it at competitive prices still needs to be overcome. They compete with other providers, either locally or internationally. In the case of communities that live in peripheral areas with negligible market access, integrating them into the value chains is a barrier that is extremely challenging to overcome.

Again, the link to the site is: http://www.die-gdi.de/en/the-current-column/article/cherry-picking-the-reasons-for-hunger-1/

Great contributions so far. Let me add to my initial contribution which aimed to ensure continuity of and synergy between relevant processes. I am surprised that the title of the paper does not explicitly refer to nutrition.  Thanks to Eileen for emphasizing that urban–rural linkages are a major determinant of malnutrition in rural areas, I quote:

“In a bid to satisfy urban profitable markets, rural households are left with less nutritious food items or cannot afford food as the pricing is uniform for rural, urban and international buyers – check out available websites for on-line food marketing. Aggressive marketing of food markets in urban areas results in the cultivation of food items geared more towards the needs of the market than food and nutritional needs of people in rural areas.

The success of quinoa means that it has become a commercial food in the Andes and that local consumers cannot afford it any longer.

“Leads to marketing of “global” foods to rural people, especially over-processed food items with hard to comprehend food labels. The result is that rural households abandon familiar foods that previously provided for their nutritional security, for “modern” foods whose nutritional value they do not fully comprehend.” City foods are often perceived as more modern and have gained a status symbol. Since rice is now seen as the staple food in several Western Africa country, people are increasingly reluctant to eat millet or maize. And try petit mil or maize in Haiti… The role of often city-led food imports (like riz brisé in Sénégal) and food aid programmes  have resulted in diet distortion and increased vulnerability of both poor producers and consumers in rural and urban areas. 

It seems (again from the Andes) that increased use of cash vouchers (e.g. in conditional cash transfer programmes for nutrition) is leading beneficiary households to switch away from local products to buying from local supermarkets.  Which undermines the livelihood of local farmers and often results in unhealthy diets. On the other hand cities like New York condition the use of cash vouchers to purchasing fresh fruits and vegetables from farmers markets, benefitting  poor consumers health and providing a market to local farmers. 

An essential dimension of more sustainable food systems should therefore be locally appropriate nutrition education and communication (promotion of sustainable diets for for both urban and rural consumers). Professor Moya rightly emphasizes the importance of traditional/indigenous rural diets and related food practices. 

Dr. Omosa also rightly mentions increase purchase of land (and differences in bargaining power) in rural areas for business purposes. One should also mention recreational purposes (e.g. Cap Skirring in Casamance). And what about national parks?

Dr. Cramer bring up the urgent need to document  “non-market oriented, community food production practices in urban and peri-urban areas meant to prevent or avoid food insecurity. Knowledge management to generate practice-based evidence will be key in the development of policy guidance.

Dr. Vethaiya Balasubramanian raises the issue of rural employment. It is indeed essential that we ensure the protection and promotion of jobs and decent employment in rural areas and many of these jobs are related to food and agriculture in the broad sense. Food processing for local markets and commercialisation of niche products, environmental services and ecotourism should be considered alongside smallscale agriculture production.

So much for now. Have a nice day everybody.

I am qouting Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, 

speaking at the 64th session of the UN General Assembly as upscaling of community seed banks, upholding ‘Farmers' Rights’ is even more relevant today with the serious effects of climate change being faced by our planet

“All States should: Support and scale-up local seed exchange systems such as community seed banks and seed fairs, community registers of peasant varieties, and use them as a tool to improve the situation of the most vulnerable groups,..”

BANKING FOR THE FUTURE: SAVINGS, SECURITY AND SEEDS

A short study of community seed banks in Bangladesh, Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Honduras, India, Nepal, Thailand, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The Development Fund/ Utviklingsfondet

http://www.planttreaty.org/sites/default/files/banking_future.pdf

CHAPTER V: UP-SCALING COMMUNITY SEED BANKS TO IMPLEMENT FARMERS’ RIGHTS AND TOWARDS A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE FOR AGRICULTURE

To fully reap the benefits of community seed banks in enhancing farmers’ access and control of seeds, as well as their contribution to the conservation and sustainable use of crop genetic diversity, we will end this report with a set of policy recommendations.

Governments should:

• Establish and/or support community seed banks as part of their obligations to implement Farmers’ Rights and other provisions of the Plant Treaty, such as sustainable use and conservation of crop genetic diversity. Parties should support the up-scaling of community seed banks in order to reach as many farmers as possible, especially in marginalised areas.
• Integrate community seed banks in broader programmes on agricultural biodiversity, where the local seed banks should serve as a storing place for results of participatory plant breeding and participatory variety selection, and make such results accessible to farmers. Seed banks should also be venues for seed fairs for farmers to exchange and display their seed diversity.
• Include community seed banks in governments’ agricultural development strategies as a vehicle for adaptation to climate variability. Agricultural extension services would provide the best institutional infrastructure to embark on a scaling up of local seed bank experiences to a national level.
• Revise seed regulations and provisions on intellectual property rights to seeds to ensure Farmers’ Rights to save, use, exchange and sell farm-saved seeds.
• Redirect public subsidies from promoting modern varieties to fund the above mentioned activities.

Agricultural Research Institutions should:

• Ensure that farmers are given an informed choice between traditional and modern varieties. Extension services and government agricultural policies should be reviewed as to ensure this balance. There is a need to democratise agricultural extension systems so that it provides all kinds of information (e.g. about the role of formal and informal seed systems) in a transparent way without putting farmers’ varieties to a disadvantage.
• Extend their expertise and services for free to assist and support communities and NGOs in setting up and maintaining community seed banks. Their assistance and support should be based on the actual needs and capacities of the communities and local organisations seeking their expertise.
• Facilitate the access of communities and NGOs setting up community seed banks to other in situ as well as ex situ sources of seeds, if necessary and when required. They should help provide linkages among communities engaged in community seed banking and relevant institutions and organisations that may be able to support such efforts. Community seed banks are the bridge between in situ and ex situ conservation. Through them, national gene banks should make their acquisitions available to farmers.

Commercial seed sector should:

• Contribute to the Benefit Sharing Fund of the Plant Treaty, which in its turn should make sure that sufficient funds for supporting community seed banks are in place. The cost of conserving crop genetic diversity should not be borne by resource poor farmers in the Global South, but be shared by all who benefit from the commercialisation of this diversity.
• Multiply and produce farmers’ varieties for increased availability of locally adapted seeds.

NGOs should:

• Adopt a mechanism to share their skills and knowledge in establishing and maintaining community seed banks to interested communities, farmers’ organisations and other NGOs in and around the countries where they are based. The main role of NGOs is to promote community seed banks until governments have incorporated such banks in their formal systems like agricultural extension services.
• Strengthen community based management of agricultural biodiversity and avoid using community seed banks for promoting only modern varieties.

This is a very welcome document that will establish current global thinking on food and nutrition security in relation to urbanization. The discussion of definitions is correct in nailing the ongoing transformations in rural and urban facts on the ground and how meanings are evolving.

I have one major comment on the material treated in the paper -- an omission - and one point of emphasis that needs to be made.

Regarding the omission, under "Natural Resource Use and Flows" there needs to be a paragraph on the urban nutrient surplus in the form of NPK locked up in solid and liquid wastes and which is a potential input to food production, both urban and rural. This has been much studied in recent years and there are quite a few references from International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and the WHO/FAO guidelines on waste water re-use in agriculture (2006). See also your reference lxvii Thebo, Drechsel and Lambin (2014), also Prain, Karanja and Lee-Smith (2010) www.idrc.ca/EN/Resources/Publications/openebooks/492-5/index.html

I also attach a couple of my own articles that refer to this.

I want to suggest also that the section on "Food loss and waste" be broadened in its concept to encompass wider issues of waste and waste re-use in an ecosystemic way. (The way it is written currently is about "getting rid" of food waste).

The point of emphasis that I would like to see addressed concerns the discussion of and final conclusions on the production of perishables with high micro-nutrient value in urban and peri-urban areas. At present the text emphasises the income potential for farmers. It should also address the nutritional value for farmers, their children and the urban population in general. This point should be included in the Points emerging from the Lietrature and the Potential Roles for CFS.

For reference on this see the article by me and Davinder Lamba in Right to Food and Nutrition Watch Issue 7 2015

Thanks for this major paper and the opportunity to comment

The interest of CFS is most welcome since linkages between SDGs 2 and 11 are key to the Sustainable Development Agenda. But it would be good to acknowledge and build upon the work carried out in this area, by FAO and other organisations, since at least the late 80s (e.g. FAO’s Committee on Agriculture 1989 Urbanization, food consumption patterns, and nutrition ftp://ftp.fao.org/es/esn/nutrition/urban/delisle_paper.pdf). A bibliography of FAO work in this area can be found on http://www.fao.org/fcit/fcit-publications/en/

The CFS secretariat may want to check the final draft of the SOFA Special Chapter on Urbanization - Linking Development across the Changing Landscape http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/FCIT/PDF/sofa.pdf (Drescher and Iaquinta 2002) which was prepared within the Priority Area for Interdisciplinary Action Food for Cities; and the 2003 report to CoAg of the Interdepartmental Working Group on Food for the Cities and in particular the strategic recommendations for MTP 2004-2009 http://www.fao.org/docrep/MEETING/006/Y8500e.HTM.

In 2011, the FAO Food for the Cities multi-disciplinary initiative published a position paper entitled Food, Agriculture and Cities - Challenges of food and nutrition security, agriculture and ecosystem management in an urbanizing world http://www.fao.org/3/a-au725e.pdf  - signed by Alexander Mueller, then Assistant |Director General, sustainable Development - as background document for a CFS side-event http://www.fao.org/fcit/meetingevents/37th-cfs-food-for-cities-side-event/en/. This document could be seen as a good basis for an updated version five years later and the Secretariat may want to reconsider the initial decision to focus on post-2012 publications.

FAO’s Food and Nutrition Division (now Nutrition and Food Systems Division) has worked extensively on these issues, within its programme on Globalisation, Urbanisation and Nutrition Transition, see in particular FAO Nutrition Paper 83, Globalization of food systems in developing countries: impact on food security and nutrition http://www.fao.org/3/a-y5736e.pdf (2004). Given the present concern with obesity and diet-related diseases and the association of urbanisation, globalisation and changing lifestyles, it is recommended that the CFS paper be explicitly linked to the follow-up of ICN2.

Overall the draft as it stands has by and large adopted a classical supply-driven value chain approach. The Secretariat may want to focus more explicitly on food consumption and food systems, following on and linking to the work carried out by SOFA 2013 Food Systems for Better Nutrition; Word Food Day 2013 Healthy people depend on healthy food systems - Sustainable Food Systems for Food Security and Nutrition and the 2015 WFD event in Milan http://www.fao.org/world-food-day/wfd-at-milan-expo/en/; the Sustainable Food systems programme http://www.fao.org/ag/ags/sustainable-food-consumption-and-production/en/ and the 10 Year Programme on Sustainable Food Consumption and Production http://www.unep.org/10yfp/

And last but not least, specific attention should be given to indigenous people and their food systems.

So much for now. :-)

"Malnutrition Matters (www.malnutrition.org) is a small meta-social business (registered non-profit), that has made a contribution to increased food security, using sustainable micro-enterprise to benefit not only BoP consumers / beneficiaries, but also rural women entrepreneurs and smallholder farmers. In 2005 Malnutrition Matters (MM) had 13 small-scale soymilk systems in 8 countries, with the help of a US-based partner, Africare. MM now has over 300 small-scale systems deployed in 31 countries, 19 of them in sub-Saharan Africa, with the help of dozens of partners. The other 12 countries are: Belize, Brazil, Canada,  Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Myanmar, North Korea, St. Lucia, Thailand, USA. There are now over 130,000 daily beneficiaries / customers getting additional protein and micro-nutrient-rich food, thanks to these 300 installations.

The problem we are addressing, chronic moderate malnutrition in developing countries, especially lack of protein and micro-nutrients, is a significant and fundamental problem for almost all developing countries. The approach of MM, to help incubate soy-food micro-enterprises in rural and urban settings, enables this problem to be tackled in a sustainable way, that creates self-funding employment for women and youth, in their own locale rather than far afield. The MM approach also creates economic benefit for local farmers who can grow and sell soybeans for higher profit than other crops. It ensures a virtuous economic cycle where there is no profit leakage to outside companies, allowing the revenues and profits to remain in the local community, for maximum local economic benefit. The MM approach of direct human consumption of soy foods, is also far superior to the animal protein cycle from an environmental perspective, which requires 10 - 20 times as much land, energy and water to provide animal protein for human consumption. The soy foods are also typically 1/4 to 1/3 the cost of the equivalent animal protein, which enables the BoP pool to benefit."

regards,

Hart

La campagne et la ville sont deux facettes d’une même réalité spatiale et socio-temporelle mue par l’accroissement de la population. Elles ne s’opposent donc pas. Autant la campagne est indispensable, autant la ville l’est. Dans le processus, tout se passe comme si « la ville chasse la campagne ». Au départ, l’homme a toujours souhaité vivre dans un milieu qui lui procure à la fois habitat et vivres. La campagne, espace à faible densité de population, constitue de ce fait le cadre propice à ce mode de vie pour la population. Elle est l’espace cultivé, de production de vivres et de matières premières pour les villes, le siège de la demande de produits manufacturés et d’équipements agricoles et artisanaux produits en ville. Mais, à mesure que la population augmente, les besoins sociocommunautaires augmentent et obligent à repousser la campagne pour que prenne place la ville, espace habité, urbanisé. Car, avec l’élévation de la densité de la population, il faut plus d’habitations et d’infrastructures sociocommunautaires (écoles, centres de santé, police, justice, adduction d’eau, éclairage public, …). Cette évolution ou transformation de la campagne en ville par l’urbanisation se fait selon le degré d’organisation des pays.

Pour les pays bien organisés, tout est planifié en sorte que, malgré l’urbanisation, certaines fonctions rurales ne disparaissent pas totalement, et donc les activités agricoles et forestières continuent de se faire dans la ville avec une ampleur plus ou moins modeste. Ce sont des pays qui disposent d’un bon plan d’aménagement de l’espace, des pays qui anticipent bien. En réalité, l’urbanisation n’exige pas systématiquement la disparition de la production agricole ; surtout que les besoins alimentaires demeurent et sont même plus grands du fait de la forte population. Si l’urbanisation suit un tel schéma, la sécurité alimentaire est améliorée dans les villes qui se créent ainsi. C’est le cas des villes comme Abidjan en Côte d’Ivoire et Ibadan au Nigeria où se développent, en plus des activités maraîchères, des spéculations agricoles de grand champ comme le manioc et la banane plantain. Ce n’est en revanche pas le cas dans toutes les villes africaines, notamment Cotonou au Bénin et Ouagadougou au Burkina Faso. Dans la Commune d’Abomey-Calavi au sud-Bénin, des espaces anciennement réservés pour l’agriculture et la conservation de l’environnement (zone de cultures annuelles, …) sont morcelés et transformés presque totalement aujourd’hui en habitations.

Pour plus d'informations, un article publié dans la revue AGRIDAPE est joint à ce texte.

Dear colleagues,

Territorial approaches and city-region approaches are really relevant to understand links between urbanization, rural transformation and food security. I would like to mention the approach by the “agri-urban system” (concept develop by the French research program DAUME) to understand the complexity of city-agriculture interactions at a regional scale. I used this approach in a research in the area of Bobo-Dioulasso, in Burkina Faso and it appeared to be really adapted to think in a holistic way of city-agriculture and urban-rural linkages. My focus was first urban agriculture but then, this framework brought me to the analysis urban-rural relationships of many different types. Indeed, the analysis was based on a systemic approach based on the intersection of three groups of interactions: i) spatial and historical interactions between nature, agriculture and the city, ii) the interactions between the urban system and agriculture, and iii) the interactions within the urban agricultural system (within the urban area and between urban and rural area). This is to identify how a variety of relationships between city and agriculture are developed and what is at stake in the existence and permanence of the agri-urban system (which is a component of the urban food system).

Based on this, I would like to mention 2 aspects that seem important and that I did not see clearly in the document:

• -Linkages between rural and urban agriculture: urban agriculture depends on many resources brought by rural farming activities. Indeed, agro-industries (often localized in urban areas) process rural produces such as cotton, wheat… and generate by-products that are used for the feeding of urban livestock. Also, urban livestock provides manure highly demanded by urban and rural market gardeners. Thus, the city drives the development of urban agriculture but so do rural agriculture by providing inputs to urban farming activities (and vice-versa). This kind of interactions are often forgotten/invisible but engender many linkages between urban and rural inhabitants and sustain different form of agriculture and employment both in urban and rural areas.
• -Space-time analysis are relevant to understand the mechanism of urbanization and rural transformation in the urban fringe (issue of Land Use): land planning policies impact seriously not only the transformation of farming activities, but also the type of actors who develop it. Tacit governance systems influence who and how people can have access to land or protect their land from urbanization processes. In these processes, many families, often the poorest and the ones with less political influence, loose their land and have to leave farming activities, as well explained in the document. But wealthy families with political influence sometimes benefits from urban planning policies by having access to protected agricultural land of high value (where they invest in new farming activities). This has to be taken into account when taking about governance: informal forms of governance can have a great impact on the outputs of official planning policies.

Also, when talking about urban policies it is also important to take into the account the ones that put constraints on farming activities and have impacts on periurban agriculture. For example, in Argentina, raising preoccupations toward the use of pesticides/herbicides led to the adoption of municipal orders in many cities that prohibit the use of these inputs in a certain radius around urban settlements. Many issues raised then: the quality of the produces, the delocalization of farms farther from the city (for farmers who prefer to leave rather than changing their farming practices) which raises issues on local food systems, changes in the organizations of the markets, distrust of consumers… It is also the opportunity to develop new circuits, new forms of productions and new links between producers and consumers. Hence, another question that has to be asked is the model of production/commercialization existing in the territories, how they coexist and how they impact rural transformation and rural-urban linkages.

Dear All,

It is nice to sharing knowledge, experience and interest to a pressing topic in developing countries. I just have 3 suggested points

1. Should planning, design to integrate multi-purposes of sub-areas inside and outside of cities including landscapes (meadow, ponds. lakes, ect), parks. entertainment places, ect for food production. 

This could strengthen awareness and action of society to food issues;

Agriculture production in inner city could help to solve social issues in developing countries such as conserve culture, villages, pollutions, ect

2. Estimate food needs to develop plan of food production or delivers;

3. architect and planners  should integrate green, economic, social, cleaning recycle solutions in their thinkings including food security. This will save resources and environment cost 

Best regards,

KIEN

Mr. Nguyen Van Kien

Plant Genebank Management Division

About the fact that there is "evidence indicating that attempting to reduce rural to urban migration can lead to a number of negative consequences for food security and nutrition and that conversely there are both challenges and opportunities presented by the dynamic rural-urban linkages": It is not clear to me which evidence is referred to here. On my fieldwork in China, I could aknowledge on the opposite that governments sometimes force rural to urban migration without taking into account the fact that people staying in the countryside might not be able to take care of the land left uncultivated by migrants (too old/imperfections of the land tenure system/lack of access to financial services/lack of access to social security for migrants, etc.). This raises questions for the middle and long terme food security. I believe that middle and long term scenarios should be conducted to assess more precisely the risks associated with large scale rural-urban migration (not only in terms of food security but also in terms of the capacity of non-agricultural sectors to absorb all the labour surplus, in a context where the world economic growth does not drive industrialization anymore).

I believe that a strong focus should be put on the necessity to ensure stability (of jobs, revenues, food, etc.) in urban and rural areas. Whether formal or informal markets, temporary or permanent jobs, one of the key points is the human need for stability (and this could be brought also by alternative systems such as welfare systems, or better connection to consumers, or enabling law environment, etc....). Running middle and long term scenarios might be useful for that as well.

Finally, I think that territorial approaches and participatory approaches are necessary and this point is well underlined in the report.