The document discusses policies for achieving urban food security. It explains the four pillars of food security: availability, access, utilization, and stability. For each pillar, it describes challenges cities face and recommends policy measures to address them, such as promoting urban agriculture to increase availability, poverty alleviation programs to improve access, and nutrition education to enhance utilization. Overall, it argues food security policies should be consultative and involve the private sector, promote competition, and strengthen the ability of local governments and the poor to work together to address food insecurity issues in cities.

1. Achieving Urban Food Security:
Policy issues
Boipelo Freude
Economic Governance Program
Tshwane Hunger Summit
Kutlwanong Conference Center
Pretoria
14-15 July 2009
idasa

2. Achieving Urban Food
Security: Policy issues
• explain the need for policies aimed at
improving urban food security.
• describe the main features of urban food
security policies- in relation to the four
main pillars of food security.
idasa

3. Introduction
Concern for eliminating food insecurity stems from
both humanitarian and economic development
reasons.
• Chronic undernutrition results in devastating losses of
human life and also drains a country's productive
capacity, thus limiting its chances for economic growth.
• A lack of access to food results in individuals or families
having low energy reserves and poor health, reducing
their capacity for work and income generation.
• In children, undernourishment contributes to a slowing of
physical and mental development, thus jeopardizing the
productive capacities of future generations.
idasa

4. Urban Food Security
Issues:
• Reduced breastfeeding leading to kwashiorkor and diarrheal
diseases
• Increased consumption of white bread and polished rice
leading to reduced vitamin B intake and problems of
beriberi.
• Shifts in consumer tastes towards wheat, rice, and maize,
and away from more traditional staples such as sorghum and
millet.
• Increased preference for more highly milled, but less-
nutritious grain.
• More food eaten outside of the household (e.g. roadside
stands).
• Greater preference for foods which are easy and quick to
prepare.
idasa

5. Typical approaches to designing Food Security Policies:
• Incorporating FSP issues
Food Security into other urban /national
Policies development policies and
strategies.
Food Security Policy
• Preparing a special Food
Security Policy document.
idasa

6. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR FOOD SECURITY POLICIES
Physical AVAILABILITY of food
Economic and physical ACCESS to food
Food Security
Food UTILIZATION
STABILITY of the other three dimensions over time
Food insecurity exists if even one of
Food Insecurity these conditions is not met.
idasa

7. Policy Implementation
Types of Policy measures:
1. Regulatory type - Rules, regulations and
procedures to be set by public authorities and applied
in policy implementation.
2. Programme type - Policy measures which are
implemented through programme and project type
approaches by government or non-governmental
actors.
Sometimes there is a combination of the regulatory
and programme types of policy measures
idasa

8. Policies to increase food supplies
(availability)
Sources of food supplies:
• Urban and Peri-urban food production; and
• Food trade with areas surrounding urban
centers
Food availability can be increased by:
• Increasing food production by promoting
urban and peri-urban agriculture.
• Promotion of food marketing, food trade.
idasa

9. Policies to improve access to food - poverty alleviation
Access refers to capacity of households and individuals
to obtain the food they need.
FS and poverty alleviation policies will have
to focus on:
 urban employment and income generation, cash/food for
work
 enhancing productive employment for the urban poor
• Public transfers / social safety nets of vulnerable
groups
idasa

10. Policies to improve utilization
Effective utilization = ability to utilize food
maintaining its nutritive quality and making it available
to the consumer.
It can be inhibited by:
• lack of knowledge about proper food
preparation;
• lack of knowledge about nutritional
requirements;
• diseases and poor health;
• lack of hygiene, sanitation, safe
drinking water. idasa

11. Policies to improve utilization
Policy measures to improve utilization:
• improving food preservation and
preparation technologies;
• establishment of proper food standards;
• improving public health;
• provision of safe drinking water;
• improved sanitation; and
• hygiene and nutrition education.
idasa

12. Policies to ensure stability of food supplies
Instabilities in access and availability can result from:
• seasonal variations of food supplies as a result of
inefficient urban food marketing systems;
• rising food prices as result of inflation, depreciation in
the exchange rate
•Acute food shortages, as a result of natural or man
made disasters
idasa

13. Policies to ensure stability of food supplies
Relevant policy measures for preventing
temporary supply shortfalls are related to
establishing a system of disaster preparedness
and response, including a EWS and a set of
measures to ensure food stability.
idasa

14. strategic principles
1. Adopt an approach that is consultative, participatory,
open-minded, alliance-seeking, and technically sound
and involves the private sector;
3. Promote competition and reduce the influence of large
intermediaries;
5. Leave to the private sector facilities and services that can
best be run as businesses;
7. Encourage effective development that lowers the cost of
living and stimulates employment growth in the city.
idasa

15. Conclusion
• Relevant and effective policies will emerge from a
system of governance that connects the needs of
the poor to a politically responsive local
government that has the technical and institutional
capacity to act.
 Programs therefore should work to strengthen
the poor’s ability to organize, make demands
and affect local authorities and to strengthen
the municipality’s understanding of its
responsibility to respond.
idasa