Forum global sur la sécurité alimentaire et la nutrition (Forum FSN)

In India the growing Urbanization and concomitant Infrastructure Development demanded for the same has put ample pressure on Agricultural Land and other commons that people depend upon for their livelihood. Commons like Grazing land, Wastelands which are in Government Khata i.e. (Government Record of Rights), Community Forest Lands and Forest per se are facing a lot of problems since their imminent transformation is called for due to Urbanization. The Land Acquisition Act (Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisation, Rehabilation and Resettlement Act 2013) has been in operation to smoothen the process Land Acquisition in order to facilitate the land use pattern for more productive use as per the requirement of people's welfare (Public Purpose).

Recently there is a move to come out with a legislation for Land Lease (In India) so that there will be no hurdles in bringing Land for a certain use without jeopardising the owner's interest.

NITI Ayoga(the new institution in lieu of the erstwhile Planning Commission of India) is busy for it's drafting.

Given the choice 40 percent of the Indian Farmer's are ready to leave Framing. This is for the fact that Agriculture is no more viable (as a livelihood option).

Food security not only demands the right quantity(per individual) but also a certain minimum level of nutrition. Taking this into consideration the optimum land (resource) use for deriving the food items in quantitative terms and ensuring nutrition security is himalyan task in our country. The food security act is a right step in this direction.

Even if a lot of new farming techniques along with high quality seeds(in terms of productivity) have come up in the Research Lab in our country, to face the above challenge in INDIA, it is yet to percolate to the field in a large extent(and scale) which can withstand the vagaries of Nature. Indian Farming is still dependent on Rain God.

Sustainable use of water, increasing productivity per drop of water have been the one of the major concern for the government.

Another dimension which has afflicted the urban areas in India is the large scale influx of Rural migration. Even if it may be seasonal or the circular migration, it has it's impart on Food availability and Food security.

Urbanisation changes the food habits due to several reasons.

When the dependence on traditional food items consumed by people undergoes severe changes, who are exposed to urbanization, Urban amenities, Fast food (mostly manufactured and packaged), it has a new spiral effect on the food basket requirement of a country calling for new equations for adjustment(both in terms of production & distribution).

For Example - Demand for more fruits, pulses, milk products, meat, egg, fish, leafy vegetables have given rise to change in land use pattern.

Diversion from cereal to other cash crops like cotton, chilly, corn(Maze), sugarcane, oilseeds(like sun flower) are few examples which are the direct offshoot of Urabanisation and concomitant spread of manufacturing sector in India. Alternative sources of energy like Jatropha for bio- fuel has it's consequences in INDIA also.

Even the two core manufacturing sectors like Alumina and Steel has called for more mining Activities and areas (for raw materials like lime stone, coal, Iron ore and Bauxite).

This have resulted in large scale people's protest not to allow multinational company to exploit these mining resources. The finest example was the rejection by the Gram Sabhas of 12 villages for Vedanta in NIYAMGARH Hills (for bauxite). This was again done at the behest of the Highest Judicial Authority i.e. the Supreme Court of India.

This dimension of Urbanisation leading to Industrialisation and challenge to food and nutrition Security when the diametrically opposite interest come face to face among the land resource user and land resource looser.

Uneven development let loose by government policies has not been accepted by the people at large who perceive serious loss to their livelihood and a challenge to their survival.

Pradip Kumar Nath,

Centre for Planning, Monitoring & Evaluation,

NIRDPR, INDIA

Within the global consultation on Habitat III - The third conference on sustainable habitat - french local governments have been consulted to express their priorities for the New Urban Agenda.

However, as territories, their impact and areas of action go beyond the mere urban area, and local governements have insisted on the connexion between cities, periurban area and rural area. Their role is also to ensure the governance of territories through the coordination of the different level of organiza

Therefore we wish to share this consultation as a contribution for the forum on "Urbanization and transformation and implication for food security", as thinking about the evolution of the interaction within a local territory, necessarely implies a reflexion on localized food system, and how the rural area has to be in tune with urban area to secure local food. 

To complete my previous contribution, here are a few references :

Robineau, O., 2013. Vivre de l’agriculture dans la ville africaine. Géographie des arrangements entre acteurs à Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso, Thèse de Doctorat, Université Montpellier 3, Montpellier.

Valette, E., Perrin, C., Soulard, C-T., 2012. Sustainable cities vs sustainable agricultures. A scientific project on agro-urban systems, North and South of the Mediterranean, in Conference Agriculture in an urbanizing society 2012, Wageningen.

Robineau, O., 2015. Toward a systemic analysis of city-agriculture interactions in West Africa: a geography of arrangements between actors, Land Use Policy, 49, 322-331.

Greetings –

Here are a few thoughts on Draft 14.03.16 of Urbanization and Rural Transformation Implications for Food Security and Nutrition and the comments that have been made about it.

In the Draft the paragraph on human rights on p. 5 speaks about several ways in which people’s well-being might suffer, but the relationship of these things to human rights is not explained. There is no follow-up in the document on the human rights theme.

On p. 8 the Draft says, “achieving food security and nutrition will require solutions targeting both rural and urban poor.” The targeting perspective means outsiders will provide the answers, and there will be “interventions”. This top-down orientation to dealing with food security issues can be very disempowering to those who are supposed to benefit from this work.

There is a need for discussion about how the local people themselves might themselves be important agents of change. The Draft does discuss the engagement of people in local communities, on p. 16, for example. However, it tends to see local people as subordinates in projects that come from outside, rather than seeing them as formulating and implementing their own programs of action.

The leaders of local communities have more potential impact on local food and nutrition security than anyone in Rome or Geneva or in their country’s capital. The higher-level agencies should do more to facilitate local leaders in their work. Global and national people could work with local leaders to formulate guidelines for local management of community food systems. Working out those guidelines could be a wonderful learning process for all who are involved.

The discussion of data (p. 15) is oriented toward providing information to national governments and international agencies so that they can make better decisions. Attention should also be given to ways in which data collection and analysis could be used to empower local leaders. (I discuss this in the section on Nutrition Status Information in a chapter on “Building Nutritional Self Reliance,” available at http://www2.hawaii.edu/~kent/BuildingNutritionalSelfReliance.pdf)

I agree with Dr. Hampel-Milagrosa’s message on April 1 about the importance of poverty as a cause of food insecurity. However, it is important to recognize that food security is not only a matter of economics. Food security also depends on social relations. Some people exploit others, and some people routinely support their neighbors. In stable, strong communities, where people look after one another’s well-being, no one goes hungry. We should work with that insight. There are many communities in which there is little money but the people are well nourished. Unfortunately, the importance of social relationships is not recognized in analyses that come from the top. There is no hint of it in the annual reports on The State of Food Insecurity in the World.

Some of the contributors to this discussion want to preserve smallholder agriculture in rural areas. They suggest various technological innovations, but recognize that there are many impediments. It is important to also consider social innovations, different ways of organizing food production, processing, marketing, etc. To illustrate, many large farms are organized as industrial operations, with one owner and many poorly paid laborers, operating in ways that exploit both people and the environment. More attention should be given to alternatives, such as organizing farms as cooperatives, with all workers having a share in ownership and decision-making. These different organizational models will have different impacts on local food security.

On March 23, 2016 Dr. Eileen Omosa pointed out that with better technology and better links to urban markets, the food security of rural households could be harmed. The seemingly inefficient smallholders often are important providers of food for the local non-farming poor, and those poor people are likely to be bypassed when the local farmers find ways to sell to richer people. Florence Egal also highlighted this point on April 1.

Dr. Omosa and Florence Egal also discussed the huge problem of land-grabbing by the rich, often undermining local food security. Where I live, much of the agricultural land is now controlled by seed producers who export the seeds and contribute nothing to the local food supply. That is land grabbing, not different from the earlier land grabbing for pineapple and sugar plantations.

Several people spoke about novel ways of producing food such as urban agriculture, vertical agriculture, rooftop gardens, etc. Poor people might not have the resources needed to do such things. There should be some discussion of what would ensure that the food would go to people who need it but have little money.

On March 29 Florence Egal pointed out, “Overall the draft as it stands has by and large adopted a classical supply-driven value chain approach” and suggested it might be useful to focus more explicitly on food consumption and food systems.” I fully agree.

One way to get into that would be to set aside global and national perspectives, and instead explore the issue at the community level.

The Draft focuses on urban and rural areas. It tries to cover many different kinds of situations. Perhaps this Global Forum could launch a follow-up discussion in which the primary unit of analysis is the community, the settings in which people live and relate to one another face-to-face. In many places this is the lowest level of governance. It is the setting in which local people can have the greatest influence.

Imagine that we are on the planning committee for designing a brand new community on a designated bit of land. That committee would have to talk about many things: the physical arrangements of houses and roads, the placement of farms and gardens, where shops would be placed, energy supply, waste disposal, recreation facilities, and so on. As part of that work the committee would have to plan the community’s food system, taking account of the geophysical character of the space and also the types of residents expected to live there. What would we propose? How could our favorite ideas be applied in this very specific place?

The planning committee could advise the community to create a Food Policy Council that would set up and oversee the local food system. What advice and guidelines would you include in its charter? This thought-experiment would be a difficult design challenge, but it would be easier to understand and easier to implement than trying to fix established large-scale food systems.

My question is, how should community food systems be designed? That should be the starting point for our thinking about how national, regional and global food systems should be designed.

George Kent

Many thanks for the opportunity to comment on the draft document.

The draft captures some of the key principles concerning governance issues with increasing rural-urban linkages, such as the need for context-specific interventions, the importance of participation by marginalised actors who will be most affected by policy, vertical and horizontal governance gaps, and the role of non-state actors.

However a political economy approach would enable a more refined appreciation of the configuration of different actors and sectors involved in food policy at the local and regional levels and how the weight afforded to them differs between places. There are two paragraphs where the role of non local government actors in the policy making process is not fully acknowledged.

Firstly, under 'Evidence for Context Specific Interventions' the draft states that solutions need to be context specific 'in order to account for the local political structure, the relationship between rural and urban areas, and the local food security situation and food system structure, with the associated challenges and opportunities' (page 15). A political economy approach enables us to acknowledge that it is not only political or local government structures that can affect the applicability of solutions, but also the interactions and channels of influences between the state, society, and markets.

Secondly, the paragraph on 'Non-state Actors' states that 'coordination and collaboration extends beyond government, particularly as non-state actors are playing important roles in addressing challenges and opportunities associated with urbanization and rural transformation. For example, the private sector plays an integral role in housing provision and upgrading in rural and urban areas. While many civil society organizations are playing key roles in upskilling and facilitating access to information for smallholders to access markets in rural and urban areas.' (Page 17).

I agree that it is crucial to recognise the roles of civil society and the private sector but suggest that the examples do not sufficiently capture their involvement in policy development and implementation. In many cases the role of civil society groups goes considerably beyond information provision; civil society often plays a crucial advocacy role to gain support for policies and can hold local governments to account. In some places private sector standards, particularly over food safety issues, serve as benchmarks for more stringent public standards.

Please be advised that the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) is currently preparing a report on the role of cities in building sustainable food systems that takes a political economy approach. Due for completion in September, this report would be a useful resource for future drafts of the background document.

Dear colleagues,

The CFS draft paper Urbanization and Rural Transformation: Implications for food security and nutrition seeks to build upon the February CFS technical workshop on this topic, and sets out a framework for further debate on complex interrelationships between urban and rural communities concerning food and nutrition security.  Unfortunately the paper presents the complex challenges and opportunities in a sectoral and thematic approach that tends to reinforce the siloed, sectoral thinking that has led to many of the problems that plague rural to urban relations around the world today.

Integrated territorial development to strengthen rural urban linkages must address intersecting systems of supply and distribution, marketing systems, ecosystem services, social protection, food production and land tenure systems from rights based and holistic, multi-disciplinary, multi-sector and multi-actor approach. These intersecting systems have complementary functions but inequitable distribution of resources across the urban rural continuum. The CFS is the intergovernmental body that can and should address these intersecting systems and approaches.

In general, there is a non-committal treatment of whether certain policy and market forces, for example trade policy, land conversion/grabbing and climate change (just to name a few of the more contentious issues) impact the rural and urban poor and especially smallholders, positively or negatively.  This projected neutrality may appease fundamentally divergent views on controversial topics that arose during the technical session, but it can also lead to a false complacency with the status quo.

Respectfuy,

Thomas Forster

In my view (as one participant in the February technical session) these divergent views are important to pursue in relation to the points of entry for particular disciplinary and sectoral positions (backing these positions with evidence and data where available) but that is only the first step to an intelligent approach to joined up systems thinking. For example entry points may through efforts to fortify global supply chains to feed cities in an uncertain world, or through efforts to empower smallholders or social movements in rural and urban settings to become active participants in strengthening the economic, social and environmental dimensions of food systems, or as city planners, managers, or place-based food movements.

There is an attempt to build from existing literature on urban rural linkages and territorial development in the draft paper. But there are some important contributions that are missing from past and current expert and practitioner deliberations.  The 2012 cutoff to include literature in citations used for the technical session is not held to in the draft paper which mentions studies on the topic that go back two to three decades. A 2011 study for the FAO Food for Cities Interdisciplinary Initiative took a comprehensive approach that prefigured many of the insights of this paper, but treated the need for geographic specificity, horizontal and vertical integration of food system governance differently, and in ways that informed a number of subsequent studies that are cited in the paper.  The 2011 paper, called Food, Agriculture and Cities: Challenges of food and nutrition security, agriculture and ecosystem management in an urbanizing world can be found here.

While there are likely issues that others will argue are missing, what I wish to call out is the urgent need to understand how the sectoral and thematic issues can be considered together and systemically at different levels of governance. The CFS draft paper acknowledges the many calls for “multi-actor, multi-level” integration of rural and urban, and points to a lack of detailed, concrete food system related cases of such integration.  In fact there are current cases that should be incorporated from the FAO/RUAF City Region Food Systems Assessment and the Milan Urban Food Pact, among others. I would argue that this is one of the most important and valuable areas for the CFS to concentrate, though there will certainly themes such as land tenure, right to food, access to markets, social protection and other CFS work streams that need to be linked directly to the dynamics of urbanization and rural transformation.

The challenge of implementation for new goals and targets in the 2030 agenda including urbanization and rural transformation is in the CFS agenda. Thus the New Urban Agenda related to SDG 11 on sustainable urbanization as it addresses rural transformation will also be important to this workstream. It is noticeable how little the paper takes up the current framing debates about integrated territorial development and urban rural linkages in the context of Habitat III (which will produce the New Urban Agenda). Similarly there is little treatment of the integration of goals and targets related to SDG2 and other goals CFS will have the most engagement with as an intergovernmental body reporting annually to the ECOSOC High Level Political.  If the CFS is to be concerned with the question of how rural urban linkages can be strengthened in inclusive, balanced and equitable ways, as part of the post 2013 and New Urban Agendas, then the framing for integrating goals such as 2 and 11, needs to be incorporated into the paper in later drafts. Indeed, some influential actors in the SDG implementation process are saying there will be “no 2 without 11”.

Importance of CFS as a space that champions rural values, communities and spaces cannot be underestimated, especially as in other intergovernmental spaces the urban predominates and the rural tends to disappear or even becomes invisible. With all the references to rural urban linkages and integrated territorial development, there are always going to be differences and qualities uniquely rural, where the natural environment and its careful stewardship is more pronounced and smaller towns and intermediate cities are closer to the populations of producers and caretakers of those natural resources.  The balance of urban and rural interests at the territorial level will require the inclusion of subnational urban and rural authorities, and for this coming CFS43, it would be good to balance the planned Mayors Summit on 14 October (Milan Urban Food Pact cities) with rural and territorial authorities attending the CFS.

Importance of building sustainable livelihoods in cities

Contribution

My contribution focuses upon ‘infrastructure & services’; and generally promotes the role of the private sector in establishing the viability of urban communities. Herein is the importance of developing sustainable livelihoods that people in cities are able to live within the prevailing economic models. This links – broadly – with section #14 of the background paper – ‘infrastructure & services’. Priorities for ‘nutrition’ are down-graded.

First some background and a rhetorical question or two.

Narrow debate

With such a wide selection of subject choice – urban development in all its complexity – what is surprising with the current debate are the few contributions incoming; this is a great subject - the future for people worldwide in a few words. Perhaps those making up the food nutrition network may have been intimidated given the dominance of many other issues within the urban-rural dynamics – and particularly the secondary or tertiary nature of nutrition within the viability of the urban model, the provision of infrastructure and services, the invisibility of agriculture/food production to people in cities and, implicitly, the dominance of the supermarket as a provider of foods in most city neighbourhoods.

As a rule modern cities are unable to feed themselves from their own resources – people, land, etc. and depend upon an extensive catchment area away from the city in which to secure supplies of foods (and everything else) and then to transport, store and distribute it. Thus the importance of infrastructure & services to food security.

Sure, the fresh food markets remain available whilst there are large sectors of poor urban people but, eventually, neighbourhood trading centres in cities everywhere from Brisbane to Brussels are anchored by supermarkets. And, if that example is too OECD, then consider ‘Dar es Salaam to Delhi’. Not for nothing has the Shoprite supermarket raced up the African continent since majority rule in South Africa, or Westfield spread its model shopping malls from Australia to the world.

One other easy-to-make comment may be the limited number of people sharing the debate who are not nutritionists or pro-nutrition – the urban planners, engineers, city managers, economists and others. The reality of life for most people in cities is security of income – and this depends upon the education of those people and the ability of city managers to attract sufficient investment from the private sector – in employment creating ventures (including provision of urban services). In a word this means ‘livelihoods’. There is a sense in the debate that government is all powerful and that government will/should provide. This is rarely the case.

People are required to make good choices

The words that make up the title of this particular debate say it all – urbanization is the future for the majority people worldwide; with food production and most other issues of food security likely to be relegated to the rural (i.e. non-urban) environment wherein there will be smallholder and/or high value commercial production adjacent to cities (as there always has been) and, increasingly, distant production of the main staples most of which will be mechanized. Recognition of value chains and how to exploit them for profit is essential.

I appreciate that behind forecasts of this kind are a whole battery of assumptions that are easy to challenge. But you only have to look back to the recent past – to 1950, for example, when the world population was <2.5 billion through today’s population (estimated 7.5 billion) to projections that suggest 10 billion, and possible stability, for 2050. The world is slowly shifting to a workforce that will match the levels of agricultural employment typical of the OECD countries. Mechanized production is a competitive pull factor and, that key push factor, the majority people do not want to be farmers (or, at least, they make every effort to discourage their children into farming).

Key issues behind the need for higher and more efficient production (all crops/livestock for food, industries & energy) are those concerned with access to sufficient land/soils in which to produce the materials required. This will mean guarding/allocating existing resources required for national and, for best, regional production. The countries of the East African Community are a case in point wherein high population growth in and adjacent to the main cities is as damaging to agricultural production as the desertification of the northern lands and the destructive lattice network of timber/charcoal production that is clearing the trees and eroding the quality of soils alongside roads adjacent to major cities across the region (and ‘adjacent’ in this context means >200 km radius – typical of commercial trucking/haulage distances).

Importance of livelihoods

Implicit to discussions of this kind are the practicalities of providing security of food and employment today and, long-term, the need to invest in education and livelihoods. Security of the community follows when the young in particular are provided with the resources that will enable them to develop their own families. But resources are requirement for all people – not just the young.

Take this example from Senegal. Some time back I was part of a mission responsible for evaluating a food for work programme in a handful of towns and cities across the country. The agency had distributed foods in exchange for the work available from mainly young people who were employed in different WASH activities. This was all labour-intensive – people working mainly with hand-tools and wheelbarrows. Activities included clearing informal (but tenacious) rubbish dumps in the city – on waste lands, creek banks, open areas and similar – constructing more latrines and stand-pipes and rehabilitating previously defunct grey water/sewage disposal systems. Infrastructure was my responsibility.

In one elegant ex-colonial neighbourhood of Dakar there were young men and women working in what had previously been enclosed channels below the road paving in the streets – but which were completed blocked from floor to roof - literally mining the hard-packed organic deposits to re-open the channels to water flow. This was hard and dirty work. It turned out that the majority workers in the subterranean tunnels were university students working out-of-term-time; a scheme designed mainly for unemployed city youth had attracted that most privileged of national resources – the highly educated young.

Such was the lack of informal employment available in the city at that time that university students were prepared to undertake this most menial and physically demanding work in exchange for some basic foodstuffs. Whatever their training/education, these students had done the best they could in a strictly limited market when searching for jobs. The cost to local society with under-used resources of this kind has remained with me for many years.

It also puts into context the inability of city management to undertake work of this kind within routine maintenance systems. How many years had this neighbourhood been without this waste water system? Why dependence upon the small-scale social investment of an international agency? Where was oversight and supervision of city waste systems?

Food at cost plus

It may be – as described in his thoughtful analysis of rural-urban migration with all the contradictions involved with migrants exchanging rural poverty for urban poverty – that Lala Manavado of the University of Oslo is correct in his ascertain that ‘agriculture’ requires greater prestige in society (and there may well have been others making similar comment), but his conclusion to provide free and/or subsidised foods cannot be supported. Neither national nor city governments have the resources to support systems that provide basic goods and services long-term; and those programmes that do begin – for all the best of reasons (but usually for political expediency and/or natural disaster) – are difficult to stop once started.

For example, check the performance of the Egyptian government with food and energy programmes introduced since 1970; reforms remains in the pipeline, but are traditionally held in check by violent street demonstrations. Meanwhile, subsidies for bread alone cost the economy an estimated US$3.5 billion annually. Egypt is caught in that all-too-common situation of limited FDI inflow that has followed from the turmoil of the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ of 2010, and thus few choices with which to make a difference. Meanwhile, an estimated 750,000 new university graduates enter the job market each year.

Government clearly cannot provide; employment and livelihoods come from private investors exploiting market economies that offer stability and reliable returns.

Nutrition is personal

And, whilst sensible nutrition is good for people everywhere, this is not something that can easily be imposed – high quality recommendations (propaganda even) and access to suitable foods is essential but, ultimately, it is the people themselves that make choices – and particularly the people in cities who are not constrained by the traditions and/or isolation of rural communities. You only have to explore issues of eating for pleasure to realise that people are fickle where choice is available – eating what they like and in excessive quantities. Why should 63% of people in Australia – one of the world’s richest and best informed countries - be overweight and/or obese? And, if that sounds like a disaster in the happening, this thing about larger people also affects 73% women and 69% men in Egypt. Rich country – poor country, the models are much the same.

More food for thought then. 

Peter Steele

Agricultural Engineer

Melbourne Australia

09 April 2016

Thank you for the useful and provocative document. I hope that the comments made will be useful. I write from the perspective of the work we have conducted with the African Food Security Urban Network (AFSUN) in 11 cities in 9 southern African countries and our Consuming Urban Poverty project, which focuses on secondary cities in Africa.

My comments do not speak directly to all four of your questions. I support the various interventions that have been made, particularly those that speak of the need to more closely align the work to nutrition concerns.

1. Many of the key issues are addressed. My fundamental concern with the document is the assumption of the strength of ongoing rural-urban linkages. As urban growth is increasingly the result of natural growth, and as the food system becomes ever more globalized, it is likely that these connections are just one kind of connection that cities have. Initial work from one of our projects tracking where fish sold by traders in a Copperbelt town in Zambia has found that although some fish is regionally procured, much of it originates in Namibia or even China. Likewise, at the Market in Kisumu, Kenya, the eggs had come from Uganda, and the chickens in a market in Maputo, Mozambique, from Brazil. If we are tracing food from field to fork we will see strong rural-urban linkages, but perhaps if we look from fork to field, a different set of linkages become evident. Both local and distance linkages are important for the resilience of the food system, and for rural livelihoods.

My concern about the focus on the city-region food system is that it encourages neglect of the global players shaping the food system and the ways in which powerful actors are ignored. Many of the policy responses that emerge as a result of this kind of framing are about supporting small scale farmers and perhaps traders, without considering the need to regulate and govern that large actors driving food system and consumption change.

The work on climate change could be elaborated to consider the impact of climate change along all points of the food system from production to consumption, and to consider the vulnerability of different types of food flow at different points (for example, in what ways is the supply chain (and storage component) of chicken vulnerable to climate change if you consider a supermarket supply chain that may cross continents and if you consider a chicken reared by a local small holder sold live in a local market?).

3. Governance: The point about decentralization is an important one, however, we have a concern that decentralization without an extension of the better understanding of food security issues in cities on the part of national and local governments will mean that policy and governance responses will merely reflect the “urbanization” of food security programming conceived in the rural realm (namely the promotion of urban agriculture). Without a clear understanding of the spatial and structural drivers of food insecurity in urban areas, policy and programmes will be poorly aligned, with local government merely implementing programmes from higher levels of government rather than “speaking up” to help formulate appropriate responses.

A second point within the governance discussions in the role of non-state actors. There are a number of authors who have been critical of the promotion of public-private partnerships in development, particularly within the realm of food security where large private sector players are viewed as having an important role in accelerating the nutrition transition. I would welcome a more nuanced representation of the role of non-state actors, and a broadening of the scope of who “non-state actors” are (for example, to what extent are small-scale traders and their associations viewed as non-state actors?).

Finally, the document is correct in highlighting the importance of secondary cities. It is important however, to note that these secondary cities have particular economic vulnerabilities, such as dependence on one industry (as in the case of cities in the Copperbelt Region of Zambia). If that industry should fail, the impact on food security and rural urban linkages is profound. A more important point is that these secondary cities may also have governance challenges, associated with limited capacity within government and a lack of supporting institutions.

4. In terms of value add, I think it would be important for the CFS to provide connections between the multiple large-scale research and policy projects working on city region food systems and urban food systems. Further, the issue of urban food insecurity is largely off national and local policy agendas. In order for it to become a part of national and local debates, it will be necessary for global agencies to raise its profile in international discussions. This is a key role for the CFS.

Other comments:

There appear to be some inconsistencies within the document. This is most likely the result of the authors managing such wide ranging and often conflicting literature. However, I think that some of these inconsistencies need to be recognized and addressed.

For example, much of the document suggests that urbanization is largely the result of migration from rural to urban, and that this sets up new and deeper forms of rural-urban linkages. However, on p. 7 it is noted that from 2000-2010 less than half the world’s urban population growth was the result of migration. If cities’ population growth in increasingly the result of natural growth, this would seem to be a challenge to the notion of increased rural-urban linkages.

While I fundamentally agree with the material in the first paragraph of p.8 that talks about how current dominant measures of poverty may under-estimate urban poverty (Satterthwaite’s perspective), the point is a little lost in the narrative. This could be strengthened, as it really gets to the heart of why the urban has not been an area of focus by agencies working on food security, and also why the urban is different and requires different responses.

At the start of the consumption patterns section changing diets are attributed to rising incomes. However, the second and third line of p. 9 contradict this. I would support the fact that increasingly consumption of ultra processed foods is an indicator of poverty as much as one of wealth. This suggests that there are some fundamental issues within the food system that require addressing.

I found the final section of the first paragraph of p. 10 hard to follow. Is it possible to make this clearer?

Grasshoppers are the most widely eaten insect in the world, considered a delicacy in Africa, Asia, Central America and the Middle East. Providing superior nutrient content to almost any other animal source protein and is much more sustainable than any other alternative.

But today grasshoppers are mostly being collected in the wild.

The development of climate controlled industrial scale grasshopper farms may provide the lacking protein in large populations diet at a much lower cost for both people and environment.

Thanks for promote the discussion on this important topic. At least in Latin America and the Caribbean many process are ongoing looking to introduce a territorial approach for rural development, strengthening of local food systems and the improvement of food security and nutrition.

The main key challenges and opportunities related to food security and nutrition in the context of changing urban-rural dynamics are developed in the draft document.

Just a few comments:

1. The information from LAC is scarce, especially on items as consumption patterns/diets/nutrition, employment/labor, trade/markets/value chains, climate change where data could be available. Some documents of reference would be:  http://www.fao.org/3/a-i4454s.pdf ; http://www.fao.org/3/a-i4072e.pdf ; http://www.fao.org/3/a-i3069s.pdf; http://www.fao.org/americas/recursos/panorama/2015/en/
2. On “land use” issue some questions came to my mind, for instance, ¿what about cities located in very valuable agriculture lands, is there any mechanism to protect those agriculture areas from urban sprawl? ¿what about food security implications of land use change in periurban areas?.  The answers could be found in the planning process of metropolitan areas, whatever it seems that FSN is non-priority topic when planning policies are discussed.
3. Food loss and waste, as is formulated, sounds more as an indicator of a distortion of the food system, than a dynamic per se. For that reason this topic should be more related to “efficiency”, where the development of food systems under a more integrated way is required.
4. The perception from the fisheries and aquaculture sector of urbanization and rural transformation could be more explained, especially for LAC, where this sector has claim for more attention and understanding. There are good platforms as the America’s Aquaculture Network conformed by 21 countries. http://www.fao.org/docrep/019/as224s/as224s.pdf
5. Who are the “local rural authorities”? Who has the responsibility to design the rural areas? The paper should include some guidelines or criteria on territorial governance.
6. Landscape management and local food systems could be good strategies to integrate urbanization and rural transformation  with positive implications on food security.

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• Where/how do you think CFS can add the most value to current initiatives aimed at addressing food security and nutrition in the context of urbanization and rural transformation?

1. Facilitating the intersectorial dialogue for the formulation and implementation of public policies, especially on those regarding not only urban and rural, but territorial development.
2. Analyzing and promoting mechanisms and incentives to local governments for more integrated food systems.
3. An example of current initiative where these challenges will be addressed is: FAO Regional Initiative “Family Farming and Inclusive Food Systems for Sustainable Rural Development” for Latin America and the Caribbean (2016 – 2017) http://www.fao.org/3/a-i5414e.pdf

 Best regards,

Sara Granados