Event Date: Jan 26, 2017
Time: 12:00 PM to 01:00 PM America/New York
Location: United States
Online: Online Event
Information
As urbanization continues to skyrocket in cities across the globe, the role of rural agricultural production to feed urban populations becomes increasingly difficult.
Join this month’s Ask Ag online chat as our experts answer your questions about the strategies being used to adopt food systems to suit the changing dynamics that surround global food supply and demand.
Some guiding questions include:
- How can technology be adapted to develop agricultural capacity to ensure that smallholder farmers are meeting the needs of growing urban populations?
- What actions can urban residents take to ensure they are food secure?
- What linkages must be established to connect rural smallholders with supply chain actors in urban markets? How can these linkages be replicated or scaled in new markets?
- How can urban agriculture supplement food supply from rural areas? What policy constraints, legal issues, or environmental issues (i.e. pollution) prevent urban agriculture from being more productive?
To learn more about this topic, the 2017 Cracking the Nut conference will take an in-depth look at the transformation of food systems, the linkages between rural and urban markets, and how smallholder farmers are responding to changing food preferences and needs. For more information on the event, or to register, click here.
Ask Ag About... How Food Systems Need to Adapt as Populations Shift and Grow
Shannon Smith
Connexus
Shannon Smith is a Project Associate at Connexus where she provides logistical support for ongoing and potential projects. She started her work in development as a Peace Corps volunteer in Benin where she worked extensively with... more village savings and loans associations as well as women’s garden groups, helping develop their financial and organizational capacity. Most recently, she took her knowledge of savings and loans associations to the Dominican Republic where she worked for a small NGO to strengthen their existing groups and establish a strategy for expanding to additional communities. Shannon holds a Masters in International Studies from Oklahoma State University and is fluent in French with working proficiency in Spanish. less
Rob Henning
Chemonics International
Rob Henning has worked for over 20 years to promote investment and growth in developing countries. He works at all levels of emerging economies, creating prosperity through entrepreneurship, value chain development, frontier... more market investing and market research. At Chemonics, he currently serves as the director of the Agriculture and Food Security technical practice. He holds an MBA from Georgetown University and served as a small enterprise development volunteer with the Peace Corps in Benin. less
Geoffrey Chalmers
ACDI/VOCA
Geoffrey Chalmers is an international development professional with 18 years of management and technical experience in rural finance, agribusiness development, and private sector management. At ACDI/VOCA since 2009, he currently... more leads the company’s impact investment initiative, and provides technical guidance to structure financing mechanisms and corporate partnerships for small firms to participate in economic opportunities, creating employment and income opportunities for smallholder farmers and rural economies. He managed ACDI/VOCA’s Enterprise Development Division from 2013 to 2014, overseeing the company’s portfolio of lead firm-led projects supporting entrepreneurship, SMEs and inclusive supply chains. Previously, Chalmers served as an economic growth officer at the USAID Mission in Mexico City as well as an adviser and specialist in USAID’s Microenterprise Office. He is a graduate of the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins. less
Elizabeth Eckert
RTI International
Elizabeth Eckert is a Senior Food and Agriculture Specialist at RTI International. She is an international development specialist with 12 years of experience, with a primary focus on inclusive agricultural market systems. Ms.... more Eckert’s most recent field experience focuses on research and implementation in staple and horticultural value chains in Haiti, Kenya, Nigeria, the Philippines and Tanzania. Her agricultural implementation experience includes managing innovation and challenge funds; integrating youth into agricultural value chains; harnessing behavior change communications (BCC) and information communications technologies (ICT); and monitoring, evaluation and learning. She has led participatory livelihood and value chain analyses in multiple countries, as well as managed baseline and end-line assessments of agricultural programs. Ms. Eckert holds a graduate degree in Social Anthropology from the University of London. less
Comments
Marielle, Thank you for sharing these resources, we used them to research the topic. The event will not begin until January 26th, until then, take this discussion to our seeded discussion page that allows users to discuss urban agriculture leading up to the event! https://agrilinks.org/blog/discussion-how-can-urban-agriculture-supplement-food-supplies
To further zoom in on the role of private sector in urban food systems: we questioned in our study what private sector is and could be involved. We identified private sector traditionally engaged in different parts of the food systems (from input supply to retail and marketing), but also "new" urban private sector such as technology companies (Philips, Sharp, Panasonic), utility companies, real estate and social housing and financing organisations. We found the importance of defining what type of urban food system we want in order to be able to discuss private sector behaviour that would contribute to specific food system outcomes. We make a very preliminary conclusion that larger private sector may have large impacts in terms of scale of operations, but may not necessarily contribute to specific sustainability and social inclusion criteria. Smaller and medium size private sector and family business located in the urban areas and serving the urban area may contribute to a larger extent to such sustainability concerns. Support to the entire food value chain is likely to have larger trickle-down effects. Questions are how private sector can build on and strengthen existing food systems (especially when these are still largely based on informal economy), on how larger processing and retail can still connect to a larger regional supplier base of smallholders and SMEs and on how corporate social and environmental responsibility concerns can also take local employment creation and food access for poor urban populations into account. We also need to know more about internal private sector cost-benefit accounting to engage in urban food systems. Private sector cannot do this alone and sustainable urban food systems need government intervention and support and consumer demand. Marielle Dubbeling, Director RUAF Foundation
Hello Nataly, Thank you for your interest in the upcoming Ask Ag online chat, scheduled for January 26th. Participation is easy! On January 26th, log in to Agrilinks, naviagate to this same landing page and at noon you will see Agrilinks and the experts posting and answering questions. You participate in the chat, right here on the same landing page, by commenting just like you did now.
Until then, participate in our Seeded Discussion on the same urban agriculture issues here: https://agrilinks.org/blog/discussion-how-can-urban-agriculture-supplement-food-supplies
What role do the experts think the land tenure/land rights has on establishing and sustainaning urban farms? A recent case in the U.S. has highlighted that racial disparities exist for minority farmers to purchase land within their own cities: https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-03-30/black-farmers-detroit-are-growing-their-own-food-theyre-having-trouble-owning. Do similar situations occur elsewhere in the world? What are solutions to these problems - microfinancing to purchase land, etc.? How and should government be pressured to create diverse (race, ethnicity, gender, class) urban farming communities? Thank you.
Together with the city government of Cagayan de Oro, Southern Philippines, we established 10 allotment (community) gardens for urban poor families in the city since 2003 (see also http://ruaf-asia.iwmi.org/Data/Sites/6/PDFs/Philippine_Allotment_Garden_Manual.pdf). Open spaces were privately owned and leased through a memorandum of agreement, which was co-signed by the local government units. The gardens worked well and provided a lot of socio-economic benefits for the gardening families. However, over the years, the leasing agreements expired and the landowners used the lots to construct buildings etc. Due to the high urbanization rate, there's a lot of pressure on open spaces and only few are government owned. Hence security of land tenure is a major issue for sustainability of urban farms/gardens. In Germany, land tenure for allotment gardens is legally secured by a special law (Bundeskleingartengesetz). Hence, there are allotment gardens, which are in existence for more than 100 years already in the same spot.
Thanks Robert. Secure access to and tenure of land is crucial for urban and peri-urban farmers. There are several new innovations we can learn from, like Urban Land Trusts for urban agriculture; combining temporal user right agreements with tax exemptions for property owners, zoning arrangements amongst others. India has been discussing a zero loss of land regulation where companies wanting to build on peri-urban agriculture land would have to compensate for loss of land by supporting or intensifying urban agriculture elsewhere (compensation mechanisms). Lima (Peru) has been looking how to preserve their peri-urban land and has been discussing an arrangement in which building companies would pay private land owners a specific amount of money (which would compensate them for not being able to sell their agriculture land for urbanisation). In return for such payment the building company would get a licence to build in non-agricultural areas or in the inner city. Amman (Jordan) and Rosario (Argentina) have established a municipal land bank for urban agriculture as a management tool.
Marielle Dubbeling, RUAF Foundation
I really appreciate both Robert and Marielle's responses. I am reading through and digesting many of RUAG Foundation's publications, including the PDF that Robert shared. I am studying UPA in midwestern U.S. cities using geospatial and survey techniques and including undergraduate and graduate students at Miami University in this work. In the future I hope to reach out to RUAF Foundation with our results. Thank you again for your responses.
Hi Agrilinks Community, I am very excited about participating in this chat! Recently, at Connexus, I have been helping to prepare for our upcoming conference, Cracking the Nut: Reinforcing Food Systems to Meet Urban Demand. Therefore, I have been spending much of my time thinking about the many approaches to changing rural-urban food systems. I am looking forward to this chat, where I can share some interesting insights I've gained, as well as learn from participants in this chat! See you tomorrow!
Hello, everyone, looking forward to the online chat tomorrow. To introduce myself, my name is Geoffrey Chalmers, I am Managing Director at ACDI/VOCA where I have been since 2009, working on market systems and value chain development, rural/ag finance, and most recently agribusiness SME impact investing. I was with USAID first in the Microenterprise Office in DC, then at the Mission in Mexico) from 2001 to 2009. Look forward to sharing experiences and hearing from participants in this learning forum. Thanks to Agrilinks for organizing!
Looking forward to join the chat today and thanks to Katie for sharing the info on Ag2Nut. I would suggest you consider an additional question along the lines "How can urban consumers contribute to reorienting food systems? (with specific attention to urban-rural linkages for jobs, health and sustainable environmental management)". We should go beyond the classical supply-driven approach (which of course can be improved) and adopt a demand-driven systems approach.
Florence
Hi everyone, this is Rob Henning, the Agriculture and Food Security Practice Director at Chemonics. Great to see so many people already engaged in this chat! Looking forward to hearing about what the group sees as the key differences in rural vs. urban food security and systems and how we adapt program design and business models to feed the worlds cities.
Hi Florence, fully agree with the need to integrate the two (rural and urban) as our ultimate objective. My previous comment was aimed at making sure we understand some of the key differences across the four food security dimensions (access, availabilty, utilization, and stability) and then articulate solutions that enhance food security for all. Looking forward to the conversation!
Actually I have major problems with the 4 pillars of food security (being in FAO from 1990 to 2013, I actually followed very closely their development) and would be most happy to discuss this further via Skype or other verbal (and free) mechanism :-). We would be better off starting from diets and understanding why urban consumers cannot access healthy diets.
Hi Florence, starting with healthy diets and then the specific (and different) challenges rural and urban consumers have in actually consuming these foods is the goal. I find the four pillars of food security is a good way to structure these challenges, but definitely not the only way to do this. Happy to chat further in this forum, but can also take it offline.
I agree that going from fork to field is a very interesting approach. We also need to look at healthy diets in rural areas, again talking about the close connectedness and at the same time the huge disparity between rural and urban areas. Milton García, who recently worked on a research project for FAO in Ecuador, shared with me that Quinoa producers would not consume Quinoa at all because for them it was like eating money (Of course this was at the time Quinoa price was high but also due other sociocultural aspects, see cases of Peru and Bolivia as well). Fortunately they discovered that eating Quinoa leaves at a certain point could be a possibility to increase nutritious protein in their diet. Results are still not reported. Many people in and outside cities continue to eat badly, that’s the point, so addressing the whole spectrum would be very interesting.
Hi Florence, I agree with you that starting from diets is one important entry point. What we eat eventually determines what kind of food is grown, marketed and sold. I've worked with school feeding/school lunch programs which can be powerful if they are linked with gardening activities (in school, to learn about the diversity of food that can be eaten) and with communities (through parents that are involved in the lunch preparation since it offers a venue to exchange knowledge about nutrition, food safety, etc and possibly by establishing of home gardens.
All urbanites are one another ol days ruralites. when the situations, climates and environmnt changes , migrated to urban. saying this all these urban population is habituated for rural foods in the developing countries. However when money chnges in the hands, one accumustance for change of foods.
The question of poor urbanites systems remains fragile and % of chnges are limited one ay with obstructions 1. due to migration continue to urban, 2. growing population, 3. resources crunch. At stretch the plan and governance is very poor by the local government , since it attaches of polity systems and always impress of short term benefits than long range deals. At this circumustances what is ur experiences to module and index such environment.?
How relevant is the carb and protein content in food, compared to the usual yield tonnage goals?
Demand for additional energy intake (richer diets), as communities develop, could be the first food security concern issue; not the population increases.
The current strategy is to increase technologically the agricultural production, with minimum and no watershed management vison; at the expanse of the nonrenewable water resources.
Are we perpetuating poverty and food insecurity? Isn’t time to rethink the global food security strategy?
it is indeed high time to rethink the global food security strategy :-), see Food systems and diets: Facing the challenges of the 21st century (september 2016) <https://www.glopan.org/foresight>, and in particular the aticulation between local food systems and global food system. see <http://regions-france.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Declaration-de-Quebec-ENG_final.pdf>
Hi, I was having trouble accessing the links, but it worked when I took of the <>, and used the following:
https://www.glopan.org/foresight
http://regions-france.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Declaration-de-Quebec-ENG_final.pdf
Thanks, Florence, for the resources!
I respectfullydisagree with you; we already have expended 75 years insisting in the same agricultural development model using palliative solutions for long-term issues. I disagree with the approach of helping farmers to gain small yields gains, considered unacceptable under developing countries standards.
A key issue is whether we know how to provide a truly long-lasting food security to urban and rural/farming communities. Farming is a science ad and art being forgotten among our societies. The international developers lack creativity to promote efficient agriculture systems because the decision makers have no technical background. The decision makers, with no science base knowledge and no hands-on experience, is making transcendental decisions, and defining what is good or bad for people.
I certainly agree with you we need technical assistance and science. But the limitations of intensive agriculture practices are increasingly visible. I am sure you are aware of the interesting developments in the area of conservation agriculture or agro-ecology.
I wish I have better way to put my thought. Unfortunately, the time and space limitation made me go directly to the issues, and make my statements brief…., and thank you for taking the time to exchange ideas.
What are the limitations of intensive agriculture practices? I returned from Iceland assisting a group of private small farms using what I call old intensive innovative agriculture. Their immediate gains from this exchange, and without using all the available technology, the newest led technology and water balance model will increase their yield output by 1.8 times, while reducing their cost by an estimated 28%. During the brief cool season, they will grow silage corn as well to feed their milk cows. If we have ways to improve agriculture under this harsh conditions, what should stop the rest of the word? Perceptions based on n science? It was an excellent pro-bonus experience where I learned new ways.
I have a simple principle that follows my technical and business decisions: What is good for the environment, is good for agriculture, and good for profits.
What is not no good are the wild statements made about the environmental impact and the food security. The biggest environmental impact is made every time someone misplace the human needs in the equation; done when no creativity is used to find safe solutions. Amiable answers care found by people who has taken the time to understand crops as a living body in relation to the complexity of a living soils, and to learn how to mitigate the unexpected water and climatological conditions. A simple example: How often have you seen a filed crop being irrigated based on what the plan need to achieve targeted yields, and infiltration, evotranspiration; too complicated? No. It is simple and easy to use principles that save water, minimize contamination of subsurface water, lowe operational cost, and maximize returns. The same way, we have several other well-known science base relations easy to manage. Why is not being use by the small farmer? Is because many decision makers do not have the holistic view of agriculture production.
This statements are based on 35 years of international and USA experience in agriculture working for the private and the public sector…., and from 14 years of college education (9 in USA).
Mmm... it seems there is actually a lot we would agree on but I do miss some of the socio-cultural dimensions. It's not only soils and water. And I miss political economy: the prevailing development model is driven by major players. Their priority is not small holders or environmental sustainability but access to reliable, cheap and standardized ag products on the one hand, and to markets (agriculture inputs and consumers).
My statements are based on 35 years experience of international experience (NGOs and public sector) dealing with the outcomes of misdevelopment . Working on the causes of malnutrition meant I was dealing with households and communities marginalized by the economic development model. And I have to confess I only have 13 years of higher education, Europe:-).
I think this is a really interesting question. How much do we need to rethink the way that we eat? We are focused on simply ramping up production, rather than considering more innovative approaches. Especially with protein, increasing animal production rapidly can create a huge strain on water resources. Should we be focusing on more sustainable (non-animal) forms of protein? Can this outlook be applied in other nutritious areas, essentially focusing on packing more nutrition in food, rather than simply increasing the overall food production. I think looking for more innovative approaches can help us better addressing the growing urban population's need for nutrition.
I agree with you. Planners and technical people have difficulty to work among interdisciplinary team looking the same issue with different eyes to propose alternatives. The commercial growers expand where profits prevail regardless of the right of future generations to enjoy life without fear. The international developers lack creativity and percistancy to promote efficient agriculture systems requiring minimum inputs because they are well adaptable to the ecosystems. The consumers sin is not being willing to understand the diet requirement to be healthy. The worse and main capital sin is made everyday by decision makers with no science base knowledge and no hands-on experience making transcendental decision. The arrogants.
Five initial proposal solutions to tackle food systems need to manage populations shift and demand for protein and energy.
1. Agriculture development must be first recognized as a national and international security issue. People will do whatever is necessary to feed their love one; people already kills for water.
2. International development and food security must be managed by interdisciplinary teams where technical decision must be made by agricultural professionals.
3. Agriculture systems must well adapt to the focused ecosystems to minimize the use of external inputs, and must be regulated internationally to avoid dangerous residues in food. Urban and rural.
4. Technical and market information must be available for free; play exclusivity with basic technologies and practices should be considered criminal attempts against human survival.
5. Live a simple rule: What is good for the environment is good for agriculture and for business.
6. Regain a simple survival principle: Defien how and where to produce food, and identify where clear ware is located.
You know, food security depend of arable land and tecnology use. In the World 60% of arable land are in Africa and 40% are distribute in Asia, America, in Europe and Australia. But in Africa Agriculture technics are traditionnel. Urban zones need new technologies to improve urban productivity like rural zones.Trainings are needed foa all. Arable land in rural zones also become a problem with buildings occupation.So now, smallholders from rural area save urban needs in nutrition and promote urban markets, so rural zones need good road and good technology for agriculture modernisation as urban population is growing everyday. But some time, products are too much in the urban zone with the price come down and affect environment resiliency. Municipality has a role to play to secrure urban area in pollution. Hygiene services are also their contribution, NGOs and Associations also can contribute to the Urban market resiliency.
See also a Dutch City Food Agenda that has been signed today!
New Food POlicy should INCLUDE VOICES OF CITIES: DUTCH CITIES TAKE THE LEAD
Cities have an important role to play in the food system. A majority of the population lives in cities. Food production, processing, retail and marketing is still one of the larger employment generating sectors in both rural and urban areas. Food links directly with other urban sectors such as transport and health. Cities also impact a much larger area because of their food-print. If cities want to play a role in sustainable development they need to include food in their policies and strategies. There are already many cities working on an integral food policies and agendas that link welfare, economy, sustainability and a healthy living environment. For any national food strategy to be successful, cities need to be engaged as a partner.
Today a Dutch food coalition signed a City Deal ‘Food on the Urban Agenda’. 12 counselors and Mayors, the deputy of the Province of Gelderland and 3 Ministers will start collaborating to build together an integrated food strategy for the Netherlands. Please read below the official press announcement (in Dutch).
http://agendastad.nl/film-city-deal-voedsel-op-stedelijke-agenda/
Hi everyone, this is Elizabeth Eckert with RTI International. My background is in anthropology; I've been engaged in value chain development across East Africa over the past 11 years. Most recently, my work has focused on innovation and youth. I'm really looking forward to our discussion today, particularly in discussing the role of technology and youth in linking urban and rural supply chains.
A key difference in urban and rural food systems is that value / supply chains are much longer in the former case. This introduces a whole host of challenges in terms of getting good quality, unspoiled food to urban consumers. Appropriate technologies related to post-harvest handling, cold chain, and logistics will be required to address these longer and more complicated food systems.
For me, this is probably the most exciting question, as the possibilities are quite endless. Technologies that can share data more efficiently, mechanize farming, add value to crops, reduce spoilage, lower cost, etc. In order to be useful to farmers, however, we must make sure all of it is accessible and sustainable. Many of the technologies listed above require energy to function, however, rural farmers may have little reliable energy. Technology must be adapted to work in these situations, such as lowering energy needs of equipment, or using renewable energy, such as solar power. Do you think there are other ways to adapt technology to make sure the energy requirements are suitable to smallholder farmers?
- I feel like before launching too far down the road on this question, it is important to reiterate a few things that have already surfaced in the pre-event comments. One is the importance of recognizing the fluidity of the rural/urban spectrum and of the wide range of profiles along that spectrum and not treating “rural households” or individuals as a monolith; this is not just semantic it has real impact on how we design policies and support programs. This is supported by some recent research under USAID’s LEO learning agenda, about moving away from a rigid rural/urban divide, the connections between rural households and urban residents, especially in secondary cities where rural farming household members may be domestic servants, taxi drivers, etc. permanently or to supplement farming income during times of seasonal downtime. Not only is the rural/urban divide not “clean”, but their incomes / well-being are closely linked.
I also would like to cuation a too strong focus on only technology. The pressure for the processing and retail companies to be efficient, to offer standardised products and to reduce costs presents challenges and obstacles to small-scale farmers, small enterprises and artisanal entrepreneurs. Those groups particularly struggle with the requirement for regular supply, larger volumes, specific products, hygiene and quality standards, cold storage and transport infrastructure.
For reasons of efficiency and scale, new strategies may need to be found where small-scale producers coordinate production and supply and link up with medium-scale intermediaries that can afford the transaction costs to deal directly with supermarkets. The inclusion of city regional provenance criteria in procurement and local guarantee schemes (concerned with the regulation and price barriers around product certification) will also help ensure participation of small-scale producers and SMEs in the city region food system.
Marielle, RUAF
Thanks Marielle. I agree that a hyper-focus on technology, in particular the latest trends in ICT, can be a distraction from some other higher-impact approaches. One way to get around this is -- but still harness the latest technologies for the greater good, is to focus more on the local businesses that can employ such technologies, rather than on the technology itself. In Ghana, we have been developing an outgrower business model (called "nucleus farmers", basically lead farmers with 50-200 outgrowers to whom they provide a series of servies as well as aggregating supply), in which technology-enabled services are embedded into the outgrower businesses to ensure sustainability. These tools become part of how the outgrower businesses create a viable business model that will continue to ensure that SHFs meet demands for food. Tablet based extension services app, for example - being piloted through 170 agents of 159 OBs, to allow them expand at minimal costs and in a more organized and customized way the provision of extension services to the outgrowers. They also utilize marketing intelligence reports, showing the global, regional and national maize, rice and soybean market trends, in terms of demand, supply, prices and key macroeconomic data (exchange rates, interest rates, etc.)
Urban food systems development requires involvement of different stakeholders. For examples of city (region) involvement please check our publication with 13 city case studies: http://www.ruaf.org/projects/city-region-food-systems-and-food-waste-management-linking-urban-and-rural-areas
For an exploration of the role of private sector in building more sustainable urban food systems please read: http://www.ruaf.org/projects/role-private-sector-city-region-food-systems
As the private sector study has an exploratory character we would be interested in deepening understandong on types, roles, drivers and support needs. Exchange between private sector could be promoted and more impact studies implemented. Also multi-stakeholder and integrated development of urban food systems in specifically medium-sized cities in Africa and Asia should receive further attention. We are interested in collaborations.
Marielle Dubbeling, Director RUAF Foundation