EcoFoodSystems Research Project

New HLPE-FSN report indicates that 1.7 billion city residents are food-insecure  

Yared Tessema, Ciara Varley, Anna Lorente Sebastian, Charles Spillane

High-Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE-FSN) report finds that over three quarters of food-insecure people live in urban or peri-urban regions, totalling 1.7 billion people 

EcoFoodSystems researcher Yared Tessema recently attended the online launch of the HLPE-FSN report on “Strengthening Urban and Peri-Urban Food Systems to Achieve Food Security and Nutrition in the Context of Urbanization and Rural Transformation”. The webinar provided insights into the High-Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition’s most recent report on the future of food security for urban and peri-urban regions.   

The HLPE-FSN report considers the challenges and opportunities for achieving sustainable, affordable, and accessible healthy diets for all groups in urban areas, particularly poor and vulnerable populations. The report emphasises the roles played by different sectors (e.g. traditional, modern, formal, informal) in urban and peri-urban food systems.  

During the Q&A session, lead author and report presenter Jane Battersby (University of Cape Town) highlighted the relevance of traditional and informal sectors in providing affordable food to vulnerable urban residents in lower and middle-income countries (LMICs). However, as supermarkets expand in LMICs, the role of traditional markets is diminishing for some consumers, while the consumption of some processed foods associated with non-communicable diseases is increasing.  

The HLPE-FSN report outlines the need to integrate actors across informal and traditional sectors into the food system rather than excluding them. Issues faced by these sectors, such as food safety and hygiene, can be addressed while maintaining the benefits they bring to different communities. The report pointed out the importance of collaboration among all urban food system actors, as well as different levels of public bodies such as municipalities, and regional, and central government bodies to achieve food security.  

The report further stressed the strong food security and nutrition connection with living conditions, noting that food insecurity is more prevalent in slums and informal settlements. Such urban areas are characterized by a lack of essential resources such as water, energy, sanitation, and transportation, which negatively impact on health and access to healthy food. Poor infrastructure and land use planning, that cannot keep pace with urban expansion, further impacts on food prices, affordability, and accessibility. According to the report, urban living conditions can contribute to higher consumption of food prepared outside the home, particularly among high-income individuals and working women. All of these factors in urban and peri-urban regions can contribute to impacts on food security and nutrition, including unhealthy dietary transitions.   

The impacts of climate shocks, the COVID-19 pandemic, and global conflicts on urban and peri-urban food systems were also highlighted in the online launch. The report notes that these crises have had particularly severe impacts on supply chains and trade in low and middle-income countries in Africa, the Middle East and Small Island Developing States (SIDS). As indicated in the report, 77 of the 106 studied countries found in these regions are net food importers (i.e. import more food than they export).   

Other food security challenges highlighted in the report included technology, finance, land, food safety, gender equality, and public health. The report emphasised the role of non-market mechanisms such as food remittance, community kitchens, and food banks for addressing food security needs of urban and peri-urban residents. While these non-market mechanisms hold potential to improve food security in in food-insecure regions, the report emphasises that the challenges of food loss, waste, safety, and hygiene must also be addressed.  

Key policy instruments highlighted in the report and takeaways for EcoFoodSystem’s city regional stakeholders include:  

  • Need for multistakeholder engagement: Multi-level, multi-scale, and multi-actor governance processes are essential for strengthening the urban and peri-urban food system and improving food security and nutrition. 
  • Need to recognise the right to food: It is important to recognise and seek means to integrate the right to food and related concepts (e.g. right to the city) in policy processes targeting food security in city regions  
  • Maintain food system diversity: Maintaining diversity within urban and peri-urban food systems is crucial for ensuring food security and nutrition for residents and building resilience to shocks.  
  • Prioritise local food systems: Trade policy should focus on increasing access to healthy diets for urban and peri-urban residents, while discouraging policies that undermine the local food system. This implies the need for localizing most food production near or in peripheral areas of the city region.  
  • Protect small-scale and informal actors: Supporting local and territorial aspects of urban and peri-urban food systems, particularly small-scale and informal actors, is important for food security and nutrition.  
  • Tailored solutions needed for each city region: There is a need for tailored solutions that should be addressed by inter-disciplinary research, collaborations and actions in the fields of mobility, water, energy, and health.  

The report’s authors write that enhanced data systems, “local context” interventions, combined with multilevel and multi-actor partnerships can all act as key entry points to improve urban and peri-urban food security and nutrition. To achieve food security and transition transitions to diets that are more sustainable, healthy and affordable, the report highlights six policy instruments for the urban and peri-urban areas food system transition, which include regulatory policy, fiscal tools, transfer instruments, market policies, investments, and behaviour-change instruments.  

You can read the full report Strengthening urban and peri-urban food systems to achieve food security and nutrition, in the context of urbanization and rural transformation on the FAO’s website, and learn more about the work completed by the EcoFoodSystems research and innovation project to enable sustainable dietary transitions on the EcoFoodSystems website.