Creating a new menu for food security policy: Linking urbanisation and rural development
This report (PDF) from the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) elaborates on the changing patterns of food consumption and production and its impacts on food security. In the past, rural areas produced food primarily for cities. Urban residents often consumed more than they needed, while the poorest rural smallholders often went hungry. Today, rural areas still produce, but they are also consumers, and poor city dwellers now also suffer from hunger. In Kenyan cities, for example, 80 per cent of the low-income populations suffer food insecurity. Given these long-term changes, policymakers must look at food security issues through the lenses of consumption and inclusion, and recognize the crucial interdependence between urbanization and rural development. Unless food policy reflects this shifting terrain, the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals and the New Urban Agenda will be put at risk.
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