For Week eight’s topic, the Issues in International Development class was presented with the case study of Food Security in Southern African Cities by Bruce Frayne, examining the past, present and future outcomes of research and surveys in this area. Bruce Frayne is the Program Director of International Development here at the University of Waterloo. As an Urban Planner and Geographer, his research is on the relationship between migration, urbanization and food security with a region focus on creating sustainable cities in Sub-Saharan Africa and China.
Food Security has many implied and implicit definitions and its official concept is greatly debated. An official definition provided in The State of Food Insecurity 2001 is: “a situation that exists when all people at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.” With that concept defined as such, no emphasis is placed on sustainable food production to ensure food security for everyone worldwide. Current facts and figures presented by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), a specialized agency of the United Nations, estimates there are 925 million hungry people around the world and around 1.4 billion people live on less than 1.25USD a day. Another startling figure is that food production will need to nearly double by 2050 in developing countries to keep up with the demand of world population growth. The world’s population is expected to reach 9.1 billion by 2050. Thus, the case study focused on the important role that urban food security will play in the years to come.
Why focus on urban food security? The first reason is that the world of humans is becoming increasingly urban. In the past 65 years urbanization has been occurring at an ever faster rate worldwide. According to the World Bank, the percentage of the world population living in urban areas in 1960 was 33.56%, compared the 2015 rate of 53.87%. That is a jump of over 20%. This trend will continue since urbanization is inevitable; more people will migrate to urban centres in search of new prospects and natural population growth continues within cities. Next, health is dependent on food and nutrition security. The FAO reports that rural to urban migrants may find they must adopt new methods of acquiring, preparing, and eating food and the urban poor may find it difficult to feed themselves or their families. Finally, the current agro-industrial model is unsustainable. Current farming practices often rely on the degradation of the environment and as the world’s population increases, more strain will be placed on these systems. Some root causes outlined by the FAO’s Agriculture and Consumer Protection report include policy failure, rural inequalities, resource imbalances, unsustainable technologies, and trade relations. Rising urban incomes are also associated with increases in the demand for animal food products, which places significant demands on the planet’s ecological systems.
The African Food Security Urban Network (AFSUN), aims to shed light on the issue of food security in Africa’s growing cities. A survey done
Although evidence has shown food insecurity in these South African countries, little is being done to lessen the problem. The Hungry Cities Partnership, a sister program of AFSUN is currently operating in cities within seven different countries (China, India, Jamaica, Kenya, Mexico, Mozambique and South Africa), finding links between three of the Sustainable Development Goals: 1. No Poverty 2. Zero Hungry and 3. Sustainable Cities and Communities. They are focused on the challenge of food systems under conditions of rapid urbanization and aim to provide policy-orientated solutions to make a positive impact. The program discovered that despite its highly dense population, food insecurity is almost non-existent in the city of Nanjing, largely due to its diversity in food outlets, food sources and price controls. This finding could be potentially applied to explain the absence of food insecurity in many Chinese cities, but this alone can not be implemented to solve the problem for the poor in developing nations as their daily purchasing is necessitated by unpredictable daily income and a lack of accumulated funds.
One might ask how we are to prepare for a food secure future when we are currently unable to provide food for everyone. Professor Frayne discussed with us the importance of proper food allocation, the use of small-scale farming, and the proper policies to help support those who do not have sufficient access to food. As demonstrated by the Nobel Prize winner, Amartya Sen, most famine disasters are not the result of only a lack of food, but rather of the inability of people to access food due to civil unrest, pricing that takes advantage of consumers, or poor financial status. Small scale farming can be used in cities to help provide food to those who are unable to afford the food being delivered to the city from rural regions and has great potential for future food security. Policies, like the Zero Hunger Policy in Brazil, can also be used to help increase food security in urban areas. The Zero Hunger Policy was put in place to ensure that everyone had access to food, regardless of their financial conditions. This policy showed some positive results, providing vital nutrition to those who could otherwise not afford it. The tools required to provide everyone with adequate nutrition do exist, but unless this goal is made a priority, food security will continue to be a major development challenge, both in the Global South and here at home in Canada.
References:
Chapter 2. Food security: concepts and measurement[21]. (2017, January 23). Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. Retrieved from FAO Corporate Document Repository
Dimensions of need - The challenge of sustainability. Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. Retrieved from FAO Corporate Document Repository
Food security facts and figures. International Fund for Agricultural Development. Retrieved from International Fund for Agricultural Development
Food security, nutrition and livelihoods. Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. Retrieved from Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations
Frayne, Bruce. (2017, January 23). BRUCE FRAYNE. University of Waterloo: School of Environment, Enterprise and Development (SEED). Retrieved from SEED
Frayne, B. (2017, March 9.). Urban Development Cities in the Global South [1-107]. Lecture notes from INDEV 101, Faculty of Environment, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada. Retrieved from https://learn.uwaterloo.ca
The Partnership. Hungry Cities Partnership. Retrieved from Hungry Cities Partnership
Top 20 Largest Cities And Towns In South Africa. (2017, January 02). Buzz South Africa.Retrieved from Buzz South Africa
Urban population (% of total).The World Bank. Retrieved from The World Bank