Statement in response to the HLPE-FSN Report on Strengthening urban and peri-urban food systems to achieve food security and nutrition, in the context of urbanization and rural transformation", 02 July 2 2024. Corinna Hawkes, Director, Agrifood Systems and Food Safety Division Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
Urban and peri‑urban agriculture in Caracas, Venezuela, 2003. The demands and initiatives of urban residents are a powerful entry point for transforming food systems. Urban residents can be important partners in developing and implementing urban food policies and community‑based approaches, such as urban gardens and surplus food redistribution.
©FAO/Giuseppe Bizzarri
Statement by Corinna Hawkes, Director, Agrifood Systems and Food Safety Division Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) during the launch of the HLPE-SN report on "Strengthening Urban and Peri-Urban Food Systems to Achieve Food Security and Nutrition, in the Context of Urbanization and Rural Transformation", on 2 July 2024.
FAO warmly welcomes the HLPE-FSN report.
The FAO Strategic Framework 2022-31 recognizes the critical need for action in urban and peri-urban areas to address food insecurity and malnutrition, through a specific Programme Priority Area (Achieving Sustainable Urban Food Systems).
This new HLPE-FSN report offers important insights into the relationship between urbanization, food systems and food security and nutrition, along with specific policy recommendations. By recognizing that cities are essentially “systems of systems” in which agrifood systems interact closely with inter-related systems of land‑use, housing, water, energy, transport and waste management, the report guides us towards new ways of working to address what could be described as a desperate state of food insecurity in cities. Among the many figures presented in the publication, the fact that 1.7 billion of the 2.2 billion people experiencing severe or moderate food insecurity live in urban and peri-urban areas– 77 percent of the total - is particularly striking.
That the largest proportion of the world food insecure people live in urban and peri-urban areas demands greater focus on urban agrifood systems, underscoring the importance of working at the municipal level to combat food insecurity and malnutrition for now and for future generations, calling attention to the environmental challenges and economic and gender inequalities that undermine the resilience of city populations to food insecurity.
We support the report's conclusion that tackling urban and peri-urban food insecurity will take portfolios of actions across all aspects of agrifood systems in conjunction with actions in inter-related systems. The evidence indicates that this systems approach to action, which recognizes the interactions between the different components and outcomes of agrifood systems and inter-related systems, is necessary for transformation not just in cities, but more broadly at the national and global scale.
Aligned with our vision and mandate, FAO is committed to making our contribution by focusing on agrifood systems and collaborating with partners who work on other aspects of urban systems. To that end we have identified five priorities for collaboration with potential to reap multiple benefits across agrifood systems in cities and beyond: Food loss and waste, Public Procurement, Urban and Peri-Urban Food Markets, Green Infrastructure and Urban and Peri-urban Agriculture. In September, we will also be hosting with ICLEI the first ever Urban Agrifood Systems Global Workshop to bring partners together to develop a roadmap for collective action over the next five years. Achieving concrete results will require action from all of us, including support from higher levels of government.
The HLPE-FSN can count on the support of the FAO Programme Priority Area on Urban Agrifood Systems during the next phase of taking this report forward towards the CFS in 2025 and beyond. We have much to learn from this report and will be working to integrate it into our work.
📘 Report and executive summary
🖥️ Presentation delivered by Jane Battersby, HLPE-FSN drafting team leader
▶️ Presentation video⤵️
📖 Learn more about the publication process of the HLPE-FSN reports
