Knowledge Portal

This book by Robert biel brings an interdisciplinary approach to the role of the city in sustainable food systems, creating a dialogue between the physical and social sciences. Faced with a global threat to food security, it is perfectly possible that society will respond, not by a dystopian disintegration, but rather by reasserting co-operative traditions. This book, by a leading expert in urban agriculture, offers a genuine solution to today’s global food crisis »

This working paper by the Global Network for the right to food and nurition argues that we need to react against the urbanization of the development agenda, and the long-held dichotomy of rural and urban spaces. It addresses ongoing discussions in preparation of Habitat III, the UN Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development. The terms ‘rural-urban linkages’, ‘city-region food systems’, and ‘territorial food systems’ are often used interchangeably in international policy fora, academia, and other discussions on how rural and urban spaces relate to each other in food systems. »

On this webpage the Amsterdam Initiative against Malnutrition shares podcasts with its lessons learnt. AIM uses market-based solutions and develops new social business models to ensure projects are financially sustainable in the long-term. The goal of AIM is to create systemic change and address barriers to market entry for nutritious products. The four podcasts, AIM-tales, are part of the AIM Learning Agenda in which the organisations involved share experiences. »

This paper by the International Labour Organization (ILO), explores the opportunities that economic diversification offers to foster structural transformation in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) while absorbing the growing youth labour force and providing them with the requisite skills. The paper focuses on structural transformation and the identification of possible building blocks for boosting youth employment in SSA. »

This article tests whether new technologies and institutions have brought structural shifts in the relationship between economic development to diet-related disorders (the nutrition transition), food production and distribution (agricultural transformation) and governments’ agricultural price policies that alter the relative cost of food (the development paradox). It combines food availability and dietary intake data and asks how future dietary patterns might be steered toward healthier outcomes as national incomes grow. »

This article in the Agronomy for Sustainable Development Journal, reviews processes of adaptation in farm decision-making models. The authors review bio-economic and bio-decision models, in which strategic and tactical decisions are included in dynamic adaptive and expectation-based processes, in 40 literature articles. »