Municipal Food Strategies and Integrated Approaches to Urban Agriculture: Exploring Three Cases from the Global North

Abstract

At a time when the majority of world's population live in urban areas, the role of cities in addressing food system vulnerabilities is vital. One response has been a renewed focus by local governments in the global north on a host of individual food system issues. Still lacking are comprehensive municipal food strategies that take a coordinated approach to the food system as a whole. A municipal food strategy is an official plan or road map that helps city governments integrate a full spectrum of urban food system issues within a single policy framework including food production (typically referred to as urban agriculture (UA)), food processing, food distribution, food access and food waste management. This exploratory article examines factors that may affect the capacity of local governments in three global north cities to develop and implement their respective food strategies. It goes on to ask whether food strategies may enable UA, as the part of the food system that to date has garnered the most attention in both research and practice.