Foodsheds and City Region Food Systems in Two West African Cities

In the context of growing urbanisation, urban poverty, and climate change impacts, the importance of urban food security and urban food systems is increasingly recognised by both local and national governments, as well as international actors. There is also a growing understanding that urban development and food systems cannot be decoupled from rural development given the multiple impacts that urban areas have on their surroundings. In recent years the concept of City Region Food Systems (CRFS) has emerged as a promising approach to support local governments, policy makers, and multi-stakeholder bodies in making informed decisions to improve urban and regional food system sustainability and resilience, while taking into account a more integrated approach to territorial development across urban and rural areas. This paper is based on an ongoing FAO and RUAF programme of assessing and planning City Region Food Systems, currently implemented in eight city regions in Canada, Colombia, Ecuador, Senegal, Sri Lanka, The Netherlands, and Zambia. The paper analyses the content, definition and delimitations of the concept of City Region Food Systems by presenting two case studies from Latin America (Quito and Medellín), and discusses first advances in policy uptake and territorial food planning.

Urban food strategies aim at planning and developing more sustainable, just and resilient urban and city-region food systems, both with the implementation of institutionally driven strategic plans and with the engagement of food activists and actors of the food system. Urban productive landscape is often a key field of action of such policies, that often support and foster short food supply chains and environmentally and socially sustainable urban agriculture. This contribution explores the role of landscape and urban agriculture in the debate about urban food planning and in the practice of a number of existing urban food strategies, mostly in European and Northern American cities. The core idea is that productive landscape can represent at the same time a field for actions aiming at developing a more sustainable urban food system and a useful conceptual framework for the involvement of the actors of the food system in its co-production and co-management.

Food systems are vulnerable to the impacts of resource scarcity, climate change, and population growth, as well as the issues associated with unsustainable social, environmental and economic practices. These challenges have encouraged local food systems as an alternative to global supply chains. This thesis studies this trend at the urban level in order to explore issues and opportunities for change. It argues that urban food systems need to embrace both sustainability and resilience. A sustainable urban food system has an economy that serves social needs while safely operating within ecological limits. Resilience, on the other hand, includes the ability to recover from shocks such as extreme weather events, as well as the capacity to adapt and ultimately transform in response to the ongoing impacts of climate change. The main research question that this thesis investigates is “How can alternative food networks help to foster sustainable and resilient urban food systems considering climate change and increased urbanisation?” A comparative case study approach was used involving local initiatives in the Brisbane and greater Melbourne metropolitan regions (Australia). Both Australian urban areas have similar economic development; however, differences can be found in terms of institutional interest and the existence of food policies. The gathering of a diverse picture of alternative food networks was the strategy adopted for selecting the initiatives that participated in this research. The criteria that alternative food networks should attend were the existence of goals related to access to healthy food, fairer conditions for food workers, and reduction of environmental impacts. The thesis used multiple sources of data including primary (semi-structured interviews with founders or members of initiatives and field observation) and secondary data (publicly available documents such as annual reports). The findings of this research contribute to the conceptualisation and planning of sustainable and resilient urban food systems, as well as, to the knowledge on the role and limitations of alternative food networks in achieving this. The case study conducted in this thesis revealed how alternative food networks can contribute to the creation of food provision systems that are aligned with environmental sustainability and social justice. The thesis exposed the particularities of initiatives that, among other aspects, have minimal food loss and waste, supports agroecology, provides farmers with fair payment and makes organic food affordable. Alternative food networks demonstrated to have resilience building capacity, something that is not confined to its borders and can impact on the whole urban food system. Alternative food networks’ values travel and allow the replication and creation of new models, however, not in the pace necessary for a wider urban food system transformation. The main challenge exposed by this thesis for alternative food networks is the need for scaling up by influencing institutions and policies more broadly.

Cities and agriculture are fundamentally linked, yet often coevolve in a contradicting manner. On the one hand, many scholars in science and urban planning argue in favor of satisfying urban food demands through local and regional agricultural production. On the other hand, as the process of urbanization occurs, competition between agricultural and non-agricultural land use is intensifying, more often than not to the disadvantage of agriculture in urban and peri-urban areas. In order to be part of sustainable land use in an urbanizing society, studies suggest that agriculture needs to become increasingly multifunctional. However, the interplay of multifunctional agriculture (MFA), food supply systems, and urban areas is not fully understood and requires more attention. Against this background, this chapter explores the potential of MFA within short food supply chains in peri-urban areas. In particular, MFA is seen as a resource for strengthening urban agriculture and city region food systems as a sustainable development. Based on a local case study in Berlin (CSA SpeiseGut), this chapter examines innovative practices and strategies at farm level that foster multifunctionality in community-supported agriculture (CSA). The case study illustrates how multiple functions such as producing local food (production goal), delivering amenities for urban lifestyles (consumption goal), and protecting ecosystem benefits (protection goal) emerged and how they contribute to a city region food system. The chapter reveals that peri-urban farming can indeed become an integrative land-use option when developing synergies between MFA and short food supply chains. In particular, MFA can stimulate the creation of new food networks, which strengthen urban agriculture and city region food systems.

The concept of resilience within urban food systems has gained significant academic and policy focus in recent years. This aligns with the increased global awareness of the problem of urban food insecurity, and increased focus on sub-national policies for sustainable development. COVID-19 demonstrated a series of vulnerabilities in the food system and the urban system. Academic work on urban food system resilience is wide ranging, however particular areas of focus dominate, focusing on urban agriculture, localized food systems, resilient city region food systems and the water-energy-food nexus. Renewed interest in resilience policy at the local government level has been amplified by global networks, whose framing of urban food systems resilience is embedded within the SDGs and the New Urban Agenda. Using findings from cities in five African countries, we argue for a re-framing of urban food system resilience that is inclusive of a wider set of factors shaping the form and function of the food system; that the urban system, specifically infrastructure, shapes the functioning of the food system and the ability of consumers to use the food system; and that the agency of urban food system users needs inclusion in understandings of, and efforts to increase, food systems resilience.

The world’s food systems are rapidly changing due to socioeconomic, environmental, and demographic changes, globalization, and urbanization. Urban regions connect urban food consumption with rural food production and are associated with rapid dietary transitions in developing counties. Despite urbanization being a key driver of city-regional and global food system transformations, city-regional food systems (particularly in developing countries) are under-researched. Although the importance of dynamic urban and peri-urban food systems has led to new frameworks and approaches for mapping food flows within urban regions, our study highlights both opportunities and limitations to food mapping in high-growth city regions in the Global South. We review existing approaches to food mapping using three contrasting city-regional food systems as case studies, namely, Bahir Dar (Ethiopia), Hanoi (Vietnam), and Cali (Colombia), and identify priorities for future progress. These include temporal dimensions of food access; nutritional outcomes of food flows; economic, cultural, and ethnic factors affecting consumer behavior; and how consumption of healthier foods could be enabled by decision-making throughout food supply chains. In addition, the roles of food loss and waste could also be more specifically considered. We conclude that providing a more comprehensive and nutrition-sensitive understanding of city-regional food systems can guide evidence-based interventions and activities to enable transitions to healthier, equitable, and more sustainable urban food systems.

Urban food systems consist of many stakeholders with different perspectives, different interests and different governance tools. This study aimed at developing potential future scenarios for the food system of Cologne by analysing the system with a Delphi approach. In our research-design, the suitability of the Delphi-method was evaluated not only as a tool for future modelling and scenario design, but also as a communication tool among the group of participants on a multi-stakeholder-platform. As a case study, the Food Policy Council of Cologne, Germany was used. Cologne can be seen as a forerunner among German cities in the development of a new urban food policy. Some of the successful steps to re-envisioning food as an urban system include joining the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, the decision of the City Council to become an edible city and the establishment of a Food Policy Council. For the study it was important to capture participants’ visions of a common goal regarding the governance of the urban food system and also to identify mental ‘silos’. It was obvious that the municipality of Cologne together with the Food Policy Council made great efforts towards participatory processes to build a vision for a sustainable and regional food supply. However, many stakeholder-groups in the process still work exclusively among themselves and do not actively practice the confrontation with the viewpoints of other relevant groups. This supports the maintenance of ‘silos’ and leaves little room for face-to-face discussions. Therefore, the primary aim of this study is to explore key components of food provisioning in the future for Cologne while confronting all stakeholders (municipal administration and politicians, farmers and food activists) with the perspectives of all group members. We used a multi-stakeholder Delphi approach with 19 panellists to find out essential components of the municipal regional food provisioning system in Cologne. Unique in this Delphi study is the bringing together of municipal administration, regional urban farmers and food activists. The research is still on-going, but preliminary results show that more communication among all relevant actors, especially horizontally among different city departments, in the urban food system is needed.

This paper is dedicated to the topic of food resilience in the context of urban environments and aims at developing a qualitative tool for measuring it. The emphasis is laid on urban food security with a significant global relevance due to the interconnectedness of our urban and global food systems. We argue that food and agriculture have to be understood as integral components of contemporary urban and peri-urban landscapes as urban agriculture supports in many cases also ecosystems, biodiversity, urban ecology and urban landscape architecture. The topic is introduced through contemporary urban food system models and definitions followed by characteristics of a resilient urban food system, including consumer, producer, food processing, distribution and market resilience. Based on the review of food system models and assessment tools, a new food system model for resilience analysis has been developed. This is then applied to worked examples and further developed on the Christchurch case study, where the tool is applied to existing intra-urban and peri-urban landscape components of Christchurch, New Zealand.

The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically challenged urban food systems, has hurt the resilience and fundamental function of urban food systems and also accelerated the trends of digitization and changing preferences of consumers in cities. This research conducted a qualitative analysis of the discourses, actions and interactions of different actors in the urban food systems in China during COVID-19 using an actor-oriented approach and discourse analysis. This research finds that stricter regulations and policies have been implemented by governments to regulate the food supply chain and ensure human health. Local community service personnel, volunteers, stakeholders along the food supply chain and consumers formulated collective actions during the pandemic yet chaos and discourse distortions also emerged at different stages. The pandemic is a preamble to changes in consumers’ preferences and food supply chains in urban communities. There were significant structural changes and a dual structure of urban and rural food systems, where unbalanced supply and demand existed. Collective actions with community governance and an innovative food business model to digitize flows and easily adapt to shocks in food systems are required.

What can US urban agriculture (UA) planners and scholars learn from the Global South? For many urban growers in low and middle income countries, UA is a lifeline – a vital source of their family’s food and income security – in a way not often experienced in the US. UA also plays an important role in enhancing the environmental sustainability of some city regions. In the name of “modernization” and development, however, many Global South governments actively resist UA, while others are encouraging the rapid growth of supermarkets and the restriction of informal food markets, potentially undoing any positive impacts of UA on urban food security and poverty. Food policy initiatives that have emerged to intervene in urban food systems holistically, however, could help to ensure that urban food systems are simultaneously equitable, health-promoting and sustainable. Despite the more extreme circumstances in which UA is often practiced in the Global South, urban planning scholars and practitioners in the US can draw a number of lessons about the benefits of intentionally scaling up UA, the wider lens that could be applied to address urban food system inequities, and further research that could enhance understanding about the process and impact of UA expansion.

The urban food system addressed here centers on urban food processing, distribution and consumption (including food packaging and waste disposal) and as such addresses how food moves from processing and distribution centers to points of consumption and ultimately waste disposal within cities. The Food‐Energy‐Water Systems (FEWS) Nexus extends to and through urban boundaries. Energy and water resource use are vital along these routes and are interdependent with one another and with food processing in ways that differ from those in agricultural production systems outside urban boundaries. This paper addresses how the urban food system affects the intensity of energy and water resource use and how these interdependencies can be altered by abrupt changes or extreme events. The urban food system is significantly affected by resource disruptions such as power outages, water contamination or disruption due to droughts or distribution line breakages. The system must be able to be resilient to these changes to be sustainable. FEWS flows and usage concepts presented in this paper are based on system characteristics analogous to one of the largest food distribution centers in the U.S. and the largest city, the Hunts Point Distribution Center in New York City. The Center handles a large share of the perishable food supply, involves numerous utilities that support one another, and a wide range of products, and thus provides a framework for evaluating urban FEWS relationships. In addition to direct energy for refrigeration, lighting, heating and cooling, indirect energy resources consumed by transportation systems that deliver food to Hunts Point exemplify interdependencies. Network models are used to describe scenarios for the interrelationships in the urban food system, including changes in the mix of resources due to conservation and other resource decisions as well as disruption of those resources in an extreme event. Selected food consumption and production practices are also considered. The modeling framework provides a generalizable network model that captures extreme weather event effects and enables the quantitative static and resilience analysis and planning. The extreme weather event component uses both static and dynamic formulations for resilience to portray changes in network topology and network changes over time respectively. The nodes of the network capture urban FEWS resources and the linkages between the nodes capture network characteristics. The network models that correspond to different scenarios are integrated to understand the interdependencies from processing through resource consumption as a basis to identify the patterns of interdependencies that lead to cascading failures, pinpoint nodes and links that are the weakest components of the network, and support resilience planning for the disruptive events. The analysis and design of the network will inform the planning and recovery policies to enhance the resiliency of the FEW critical infrastructures of New York City and potentially transferrable to other large urban areas and prepare them for future anticipated and unanticipated extreme events. The modeling used for the scenarios is considered generalizable to other areas and scalable to urban food systems of different sizes and configurations. © 2017 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 37: 122–131, 2018

Food and nutrition systems are linked to all Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which makes their transition toward social-ecological behavior patterns crucial for an overarching sustainability transformation. The perspective of (urban) logistics is of special interest. It couples the production and consumption physically and virtually. In this context, we shed light on the design of the turnover point of food in urban areas from the supply chain toward consumers and contribute to an overarching systemic perspective toward establishing a sustainable multilevel food system. We describe current patterns in urban food systems and propose several principles for sustainable design of (urban) food systems based on concepts such as (regional) collaboration and food literacy. Using these principles, we provide four design scenarios that concretely imagine future urban food consumption and production patterns titled “slow stock supply service, ” “deliver into the daily walk, ” “central district food depot, ” “super food action place.” With this work we provide a starting for reflecting whether certain combinations of principles actually lead to patterns of daily life that are feasible, acceptable, or desirable. Moreover, we provide an initial qualitative assessment to stimulate further research that explores scenario pathways and incorporates additional indicators regarding the impact on social-ecological. We open up various research questions with regard to the overarching question of how urban food logistics should be designed to be consistent with the SDGs.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the fragility of current food systems to feed populations around the world. Particularly in urban centers, consumers have been confronted with this vulnerability, highlighting reliance on just-in-time logistics, imports and distant primary production. Urban food demand, regional food supply, land use change, and transport strategies are considered key factors for reestablishing resilient landscapes as part of a sustainable food system. Improving the sustainability of food systems in such circumstances entails working on the interrelations between food supply and demand, rural and urban food commodity production sites, and groups of involved actors and consumers. Of special significance is the agricultural land in close proximity to urban centers. Calling for more holistic approaches in the sense of inclusiveness, food security, citizen involvement and ecological principles, this article describes the use of a new decision support tool, the Metropolitan Foodscape Planner (MFP). The MFP features up-to-date European datasets to assess the potential of current agricultural land use to provide food resources (with special attention to both plant- and animal-based products) and meet the demand of city dwellers, and help to empower citizens, innovators, companies, public authorities and other stakeholders of regional food systems to build a more regionalized food supply network. The tool was tested in the context of the food system of the Copenhagen City Region in two collaborative workshops, namely one workshop with stakeholders of the Copenhagen City Region representing food consultancies, local planning authorities and researchers, and one in-person workshop masterclass with MSc students from the University of Copenhagen. Workshop participants used the tool to learn about the impacts of the current food system at the regional and international level with regard to the demand-supply paradigm of city-regions. The ultimate goal was to develop a participatory mapping exercise and test three food system scenarios for a more regionalized and sustainable food system and, therefore, with increased resilience to crises. Results from this implementation also demonstrated the potential of the tool to identify food production sites at local level that are potentially able to feed the city region in a more sustainable, nutritious and way.

This paper investigates food system resilience—conceptualized through the four dimensions of agency, buffering, connectivity, and diversification—from the perspective of rural–urban relations. We consider three cases that capture distinct actor and policy foci in the wider literature on urban–rural interactions. These are secondary cities and their development potential as central nodes in urban–rural food systems, the role of digital infrastructure in shaping food systems resilience, and finally, street food vendors as a particularly vulnerable yet crucial group of actors linking rural food supply with urban demand. We review existing literature within these themes, with a particular focus on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the food systems in middle- and low-income countries. This allows us to examine the relationship between rural–urban connectivity and food system resilience and to identify possible trade-offs. We formulate recommendations for research and policy around the notions of new localities (i.e., considering the interconnectedness of rural and urban food systems across administrative boundaries), smart development (i.e., context-specific approaches building on local strengths), and network governance (i.e., inclusive decision making engaging with diverse stakeholders across multiple scales).

New ways to ensure sustainable food systems in the future are part of the strategic research program knowledge base (KB) programme ‘Food Security and Valuing Water’.The project ‘Feeding Cities and migration settlements’ aims to gain a better understanding of, and therefore a better grip on, urban food systems while paying particular attention to the impact migration has on food security to create sustainable, resilient urban food systems.This report brings together the main outcomes of two webinars that were organized together with stakeholders in Uganda. The aim of these sessions was to share findings from the KBresearch-including the case-based learnings on Uganda, as well as that of others working on urban food systems. Together starting tounravel the challenges of the (urban)food systems in Ugandafrom different perspectives andentrypoints,and to set the scenefor future strategiesand (supportive) actionstogether with stakeholders