Urban Food Policy

Turin is rich of experiences of practices, projects and policies making the food system more sustainable and fair, touching most of the many dimensions of food: environment, culture, economy, health, social and spatial justice, and so on. This book presents a collection of the more interesting of these experiences, describing them and showing their multidimensionality and integration with the different phases of the food system.

South Africa’s towns and cities experience high levels of food insecurity.i Although municipalities have no direct mandate to address food insecurity, many municipalities have attempted to alleviate food insecurity. These efforts have generally focused on the promotion of urban agriculture. However, the vast majority of urban residents obtain the vast majority of their food via market sources, formal and informal. This policy brief argues that the informal food retail sector is an important contributor to the food security of the urban poor, and therefore requires greater policy attention.
Supermarkets and informal food traders are important components of the urban food system and deliver different food security benefits to urban residents. Although supermarkets are generally cheaper per unit food, and are recognized to have higher food safety standards, they are not always responsive to the food security needs of the poor. Informal food retailers, including spazas and street traders, sell in smaller unit sizes, operate for longer hours and will often offer credit. These make them an important contributor to household food security. Therefore, a mix of retail types is important to ensure food security for the poor.
At present municipalities do not consider the food retail sector, and their role in shaping the food retail environment, as an element in ensuring food security. As a result local government planning and management of food retail, formal and informal, takes a purely local economic development or livelihoods approach. Informal traders have been over-regulated on the basis of food safety.
There is a need for a new approach to food security. Although there is a lack of formal mandate for local government, there are many activities taking place within existing mandates that impact the food system and therefore food security. Municipalities should therefore assess their role in enhancing or hindering food security. This policy brief recommends the following: a) Integrated (formal and informal sector) food retail planning should be a component of any food security strategy; b) The sale of healthy foods near transport hubs should be incentivized; and c) Municipalities should engage informal trader associations to co-develop appropriate means to ensure food safety

Although South Africa is food security at a national level, there is widespread household food insecurity. Despite clear evidence of high levels of urban food insecurity, the problem is generally framed as being predominantly rural. This has led to a neglect of urban considerations in food security policies and programmes at the national and provincial levels, and an approach that fails to consider the systemic drivers of food insecurity. This has left local government without a clear mandate to address food insecurity.
Although National policies and strategies continue to neglect the drivers of urban food security, the 2014 National Policy on Food and Nutrition Security does identify a role for local government. The National Development Plan argues for a more complex understanding of food security and its possible solutions. Although the vast majorty of local government food security initiatives focus on urban agriculture, there are indications that a more systemic approach is being considered.
This policy brief calls for national government to formally acknowledge the mandate for food security to local government, and for provincial government to provide more scope for local government to drive the provincial urban food security agenda. The South African Cities Network has an important role to play in driving these processes, and in providing opportunities for horizontal learning. The brief argues that local governments should seek to maximise their food security programming and interventions within their existing mandates and develop over-arching food security and food system strategies, which address sustaianability issues and vulnerabilities to mega-trends. Finally, it argues that food systems governance should be recognised as an intervention with multiple benefits and returns on investment.