policy development

In this issue of the Urban Agriculture Magazine the central theme is community involvement in urban food planning. Urban agriculture and food systems are gaining the attention of planners and policy makers across the global south and north. While this emerging planning and policy attention is laudable, it must build on decades of community-led efforts to rebuild urban agriculture and community food systems. Failure to build on these on-the ground practices run the risk of developing policy that is uninformed and disconnected from the lived experiences of people in communities. »

To implement the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, developing countries will have to increasingly rely on domestic finance for investment in agriculture. As public funding for agriculture decreases, the role of private investment and, in particular, smallholder farmers, needs to be scaled up to achieve sustainable food security. In this expert opinion published on The Broker, Danko elaborates on the changing landscape of investing in food security and agriculture. »

This report by the Michigan State University examines the potential of Sub-Saharan Africa’s agrifood systems to provide new jobs for unemployed, underemployed and disadvantaged youth, and identifies constraints affecting the capacity of youth to take up these economic opportunities. According to the report, Sub-Saharan Africa’s agricultural sector is rapidly changing and can be a key driver of youth employment and economic transformation. »

This book by UNU-WIDER comprehensively evaluates trends in living conditions in 16 major sub-Saharan African countries, corresponding to nearly 75% of the total population. An important message from ten of the countries they looked at is that there are potentially high returns to policies that take agriculture seriously. Countries that place a particular emphasis on upgrading the capabilities of small-scale farmers are more likely to achieve broad-based development objectives. »

This report was published jointly by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the Food Climate Research Network (FCRN) and evaluates government-issued food-based dietary guidelines from across the globe, looking in particular at whether they make links to environmental sustainability as well as personal health. The report highlights instances of forward thinking governments who are taking the lead in developing integrated guidance; examines what these guidelines say; identifies common messages; and considers whether and how their approaches could be replicated elsewhere. »

Youth and young people are becoming a hot topic among development donors and actors. But who exactly do these “labels” apply to, and are they too broad for effective policies? Or do they create too narrow a focus which is blind to larger structural issues? »