Abstract
Global food supply is dominated by transnational corporations, which have great power and are widely critiqued for the negative environmental and social impacts of their operations. Many argue that this industrial food system is unsustainable, yet its expansion seems inevitable and alternatives are seen as incapable of feeding the world’s growing and increasingly urban population. Since much of the world’s future population growth is going to happen in the cities of the developing world, they have become the frontline for the expansion of the industrial food system, raising the serious challenge of ensuring food security for residents. This paper, based on a qualitative study of patterns of egg provisioning in Dar es Salaam, explores whether existing patterns of food supply in this rapidly growing city, of over four million people, provide workable alternatives. Eggs are an important source of nutrition and patterns of egg supply offer a lens through which to explore the sustainability of different modes of provisioning. A range of non-corporate provisioning patterns, based on small-scale enterprises, are found to have social, economic and environmental advantages, challenging assumptions that corporate food chains are necessary, or desirable, to feed cities sustainably.
Highlights
The main question this paper contributes to addressing is whether there are sustainable alternatives to the industrial food system, which is increasingly dominated by transnational corporations and widely critiqued for its negative environmental and social impacts
The eggs were bought for TSh6000 ($3.87) from a man who hires a truck to bring them to Dar es Salaam from Kibaha village about 50 kilometers away
The case of egg provisioning in Dar es Salaam demonstrates a fundamental sustainability in diverse patterns of egg supplies that, in price and accessibility, dramatically outperform the corporate modes of supply represented by the supermarkets and their supply chains
Summary
The main question this paper contributes to addressing is whether there are sustainable alternatives to the industrial food system, which is increasingly dominated by transnational corporations and widely critiqued for its negative environmental and social impacts Many argue that this industrial food system is unsustainable, noting that, among other things this system involves an increasing concentration of power and profit in fewer and fewer hands; depends on fossil fuels; emits enormous amounts of carbon and methane that are driving climate change; destroys biodiversity and sucks up scarce fresh water resources; contributes to breaking down the social fabric of communities; leaves close to 900 million people hungry; and delivers highly processed foods that are contributing to the plague of obesity [1,2,3,4]. I emphasize how the system is meeting the needs of people who live in poverty for whom the struggle to sustain access to adequate food and nutrition is greater
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