Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition (FSN Forum)

Re: Strengthening urban and peri-urban food systems to achieve food security and nutrition in the context of urbanization and rural transformation

Dear FSN Moderator and the HLPE team, thank-you for the opportunity to provide inputs during this scoping phase. My notes can be found below. Looking forward to the report.

Best Dr. A Trevenen-Jones

The outline scope of the report indicates a much-needed attention to the widening inequalities in urban food systems driven by the unique food environment, insufficient understanding and intervention around the informal food sector, aspects of gender and dietary challenges alongside multiplier Anthropocene impacts. It also highlights the urban-peri-urban and rural food system connectivity, but perhaps more could be developed with respect to referencing a sustainable food systems framework. While best practices regarding what city governments and partners are doing to transform their food systems are being shared by cities across the world, through for example, platforms like the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact (awards) and Food Action Cities accessible databases, less appears to be shared about learnings and monitoring and evaluation – about what worked and what didn’t, what and how just food transformation was monitored and how communities moved forward. This is of value given the context specific character of food systems and governance and that everyone is learning and course correcting along the way.

Coverage of the UNFSS Coalitions, as interlinked in an ‘’ecosystem’’ of support to regional, national, sub-national including local governments with special mention of the Coalition on Inclusive and Sustainable Urban Food Systems and updates (if possible) as per the UNFSS Stocktaking in mid-2023 would be meaningful and can provide a dynamic resource within the report.  Cross referencing with key reports like SOFI (2022) and the more recent Asia-Pacific SOFI as well as the Global Nutrition report provides further depth and a national and global perspective.

Cities/urban communities’ key role in invigorating urban-rural and regional connectivity and accelerated FS transformation is recognised in the scoping. It is worth mentioning that this is not only through the usual staple and fresh food demand but also by providing strong consumption-production signals for a diversity of sustainable and resilient food relationships through circular (‘’zero-waste’’) food systems, regenerative rural landscapes and social and technological innovations. In this respect, these dimensions should be further explored,

  • indigenous knowledge,
  • cultural practices,
  • food as social relationships,
  • intermediary cities as hubs connecting smaller towns, rural communities and larger cities,
  • small farmers and variety of multiple food systems linked SMEs,
  • storage and cool room value additions,
  • food handling and safety knowledge and practices,
  • diversified food system livelihoods especially in the informal sector,
  • better leveraging of how food is distributed through informal and formal channels including reaching those living in poverty and vulnerable to all forms of malnutrition, and the value of vendor/farmer and consumer fresh food markets as places where food knowledge and practices are shared and reinforced,
  • formal governance e.g. city governments/municipalities vs informal governance e.g. urban ‘’traditional’’ fresh food market committees as well as multi-level governance and multi-stakeholder mechanisms as mandated and as per practices, further noting the extent of effective local agency to reshape food environments/systems,
  • alignment around ‘’One city, one food system’’ type principles whether through formal or informal/voluntary partnerships,
  • positive implications of supermarket growth and aspirational low-middle income communities e.g. food safety, diversity and price of food, shifting consumer preferences,
  • social and ecological resilience,
  • access to sub-national food systems data – quantitative and qualitative, as well as
  • gender mainstreaming and youth engagement - as designed and practiced.

Moreover, as cities expand and more people reside in cities issues of ‘’food deserts’’ and urban creep into the peri-urban surrounds arise as such what constitutes urban vs peri-urban food system, agency and inclusion, nexus relationships e.g. food, municipal water, renewable energy, as well as impact on affordability and physical access to safe, nutritious and diverse foods should be clarified – with referencing of Dietary Quality.

A final note on context, while this matters, practices and learnings from other cities/cases offer invaluable tools, learnings and approaches which can be copied and or adapted. In this respect while there are disparities between developed and developing countries and cities exemplars offered by the cities of Baltimore, Bristol, Nairobi, Dhaka, Quelimane, New York and many others should be considered – and selected based on inspiration and criteria like city ‘’size and administrative mandate’’ and address of equity, urban planning innovation or best practice, ‘’one city’’ partnerships, farmers markets etc.

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