
The State of Food and Agriculture 2017
The new report looks at how population growth, increasing urbanization, technologies, and climate change are transforming rural and urban areas, and how the world’s food systems are evolving. The report concludes that fulfilling the 2030 Agenda depends crucially on progress in rural areas, which is...
Rural-urban linkages and food systems in sub-Saharan Africa
This paper examines the role of rural-urban linkages in fostering inclusive and sustainable food systems and how these contribute to rural transformation and, more broadly, to sustainable and inclusive development. Focusing on sub-Saharan Africa, the paper analyses the interdependencies between...
City Region Food Systems and Food Waste Management
This book describes the results of 13 case studies on city region food systems and food waste management. It provides lessons learned on the institutionalisation of city region food policies and programmes; provisioning of national and legal frameworks embedding city region food systems in broader...
Food remittances: Migration and food security in Africa
Cash remittances have grown rapidly over the past two decades and are now at an all-time high. The World Bank estimates that international remittances reached USD436 billion in 2014, and predicts that they will increase to USD601 billion in 2016. Studies of remitting practices and impacts often...
Contributing to food security in urban areas: differences between urban agriculture and peri-urban agriculture in the Global North
Food security is becoming an increasingly relevant topic in the Global North, especially in urban areas. Because such areas do not always have good access to nutritionally adequate food, the question of how to supply them is an urgent priority in order to maintain a healthy population. Urban and...
Nourishing the city: the rise of the urban food question in the Global North
The urban food question is forcing itself up the political agenda in the Global North because of a new food equation that spells the end of the ‘cheap food’ era, fuelling nutritional poverty in the cities of Europe and North America. This article explores the rise of the urban food question in the...
Food consumption, urbanisation and rural transformations in Southeast Asia
By 2050, nearly 63 per cent of the total population of Southeast Asia is expected to live in urban areas. Not only is urbanisation profoundly changing urban-rural relations, it is also shifting patterns of food consumption. Governments in the region are modernising food systems, in part to meet the...
Urbanisation, changing tastes and rural transformation in West Africa
Between 1950 and 2000, the total population of West Africa increased fourfold, with almost one third now living in urban centres. Alongside growing urbanisation, many countries in the region increasingly rely on food imports for certain staples. These imports mix with local and regional foods to...
Food consumption, urbanisation and rural transformation: the trade dimensions
Growing urban demand for food – which now constitutes about 60–70 per cent of food consumption in Asia and more than half in Africa – is met largely by trade. This paper reviews evidence for what this trade means for rural areas, and for successful rural economic transformation. It also reviews...
Hungry Cities Partnership Discussion Paper No. 1: Hungry Cities of the Global South
The recent inclusion of an urban Sustainable Development Goal in the Post-2015 UN Development Agenda represents an important acknowledgement of the reality of global urbanization and the many social, economic, infrastructural and political challenges posed by the human transition to a predomi-...