Greater recognition is being given to the need for building sustainable and resilient urban food ecosystems . In Figure 1 we have attempted to illustrate how key concepts of agroecology can stimulate the food systems thinking in a city-region food system context.As highlighted above, the focus on food systems in the discussion about agroecology demands a far more comprehensive and holistic systems approach than, for example, the simple “value chain” or “supply chain,” long prominent in food systems development discourse. Agroecological approaches are based on minimal external inputs and increased recycling of resources. Food in a “chain” traces the steps on the way from production to consumption, with potential for complete detachment of relationships between the steps, and often sees eaters as“end-users” who are called “consumers.” In the current detached system, feed can come from a different continent, and the products can go to a third continent, enabling animal production and consumption literally “without limits,” as is the case for example in current Danish pig production, where the feed comes from South America, pigs are raised in Denmark, and the pork is exported to Asia. The systems approach gets lost in this regime, eliminating the potential for feedback signals to improve resilience and adaptive capacity,ebb and flow bench both regarding resource flows, and consumption patterns.
The question of animal products can reveal the limitations of this chain perspective: if stressing the systems approach, animal feed needs to come from within “the system,”which is also where animal products will circulate. If a systems approach is taken – as is necessary in an agroecological system – production is limited by the need to produce food for people situated within and maintaining landscapes – and closer proximity between animals and crops improves the potential and efficiency for nutrient cycling. A “full agroecological food system” may also have short supply chains, based on recycling and circulation, which will connect “the two ends of the chain” and actors within the food system. Following the emphasis above to constantly align and adjust food production with food consumption, the mere production of food can be seen as a big challenge. Depending on the magnitude of the urban areas, the agroecological food producing systems will have clear challenges in producing enough diverse food. Compared to many current urban food consumption patterns, the consumption patterns of agroecological food systems have to change, toward local food, and animal products of an amount which can actually be supported by each agroecological food system. How can the consumption patterns and the capacity of the food producing rural and urban farms be aligned and adjusted to each other, mutually and iteratively? This will require processes of negotiation, adjustments and development of common understandings, shared knowledge, and collective action to ensure that everybody at all times will have access to healthy nutritious food.One aspect which is rarely explored is how such strongly interwoven food systems can contribute positively and benefit the overall landscape and biodiversity , such as, for example, the findings of Chappell, Moore, and Heckelman , where increased ant biodiversity may have been linked to positive changes in local food security in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
Another aspect that is rarely explored in detail is how urban-rural food systems will require certain features of the food producing systems, which involve the rural areas. How will it change the consumption patterns? Seasonality can present constraints on the “boundedness” of a food system, as can the desire for convenience in contemporary diets. Depending on growing conditions, rain patterns, and seasons, it can be a huge challenge to produce diverse food all year round for a population in and around urban areas and the rural areas connected to it. These requirements emphasize the qualities which are highlighted in the agroecological food system: resilience and multi-functionality in a well-integrated and complex system. A development toward more diverse, integrated production can lead to a much more diverse all-year round production, as is, for example, seen in agro-forestry and food forest systems. The combination of rural farming and urban farming, where rural farming to a larger extent produces food, roots, animal products and, for example, fruit, and urban farming focuses on fresh vegetables, leafy food, spices, nuts and fruit, can form examples of ways of extending the traditional growing seasons. Innovative processing possibilities, for example, solar-powered freezing facilities, can offer other opportunities for bridging the “production cycle” with the “consumption cycle” in urban-rural areas. Furthermore, the diversity of systems – both within systems and within a web of systems of urban and rural farming – will contribute to resilience and nourishment based on balanced diets all year round.The challenges highlighted above – production at scale, producing diversity, and producing food all year round – will of course vary widely depending on the context. Clearly, tropical areas differ from temperate areas, dry areas differ from very wet areas, and the length of growing seasons varies widely. Vandermeer and Perfecto emphasize the necessity of using traditional and local knowledge in combination with the knowledge and insight of “modern ecological knowledge,” to develop agroecological knowledge which is both deep and broad at the same time, allowing for learning across sites, as well as developing each site. In large parts of Europe and North America, current farming practices have focused on very few types of production with only one yearly harvest of, for example, grain. Many exciting initiatives could serve as examples of urban food strategies involving local food producing systems , and emerging agroecological food systems, viewing rural–urban landscapes as interconnected, and connecting actors through exchange of food and resources .
The visions and practical organization shown in these examples bridge rather than contrast “rural” and “urban,” which opens opportunities for sustainable, agroecological food systems across the rural–urban continuum , which again highlight the importance of contextuality, where smaller towns provide completely different options and challenges than larger cities, seen as contexts for city-region food systems. “Equity” is a cornerstone in relation to systems research and agroecology ,indoor garden and relates to justice in terms of “equitable access to resources” in relation to farming, seed, water, and land, for current and future generations. Many initiatives on justice in the food chain also address equity, for example, “technology justice” building on access, local innovation, and sustainable use of technologies . The term highlights social aspects and includes original populations and peoples’ rights to land, water, and natural resources. It also encompasses the genetic inheritance of humanity, and equal rights to make a living and survive on this planet. It also raises issues of gender equality, acknowledging both women and men’s rights to dignified futures and livelihoods as well as food. It recognizes that women often are responsible for family food, agrobiodiversity, and knowledge transfer between generations regarding many agricultural and food practices. Where agroecological farming systems use methods to nurture the soil and the ecosystems while producing healthy nourishing food, the agroecological food systems takes the very same principles up to the level of the way in which we compose our entire diets and process, sell, buy, and exchange food within the food systems. The concept of nourishment includes nutritional and cultural aspects of food and food consumption, and links to ideas of “sustainable diets,” as defined by FAO: . Furthermore, focusing on nourishment also emphasize the concept of health, which in a more holistic framing can be seen through the lenses of resilience , linking our diets closely to the farming and the food systems. The different understandings of resilience do not only cover social, economic, institutional, and environmental transformation processes of land and food, but also of public health and the health at all levels from soil, plants, animals to humans, and ecosystems.Whether rural areas can benefit from urbanization and can be closely linked to food systems in rural–urban areas depends much on national and international policies on subsidies, land use, trade, and agriculture. Nelson and co-authors emphasized the importance of governments actively promoting and supporting the development of sustainable food systems, although they also notice that in the case of Cuba, this was done primarily for ensuring food for the current generation of humans, rather than for ideological or moral reasons . Schipanski and co-authors outline strategies for realizing resilient food systems in different contexts, and Petersen and co-authors demonstrate a process of increased agroecological governance of the food system in the case of Brazil, strongly influenced by the struggles of rural social movements, helped to gradually form more inclusive and direct rural– urban connections in the food system. Vorley and Lancon call for a shift from “agricultural policies” to more integrated “food policies” involving both agriculture and food in increasingly urbanized areas, and Proctor and Berdegué emphasize the need to deconstruct the rural–urban dichotomy as the first step of creating equitable inclusive rural–urban food systems.
The Kenyan Greenbelt Movement is another example on how land, cities, ecosystems, human livelihoods, and equity issues were combined in efforts for better food security and sovereignty.They are multifaceted and encompass economic, environmental, social, and institutional aspects, requiring deliberation and negotiation within a multi-actor perspective . This is fundamentally different from the current globalized food system that takes little account of the diverse range of perspectives and needs among multiple actors in the production, processing, and exchange of food. Bellamy and Ioris discuss the imbalanced subsidy system, for example, within the EU context from farming to research, where the majority of support goes to industrial farming systems. However, many initiatives are taken on governance levels to stimulate domestic food production and local value chains, for example, Nigeria’s policy to stimulate domestic production of major commodities, and ban of rice imports in 2012 . A considerable effort is required regarding the governance of each agroecological city-region food system to facilitate social interaction and institutional arrangements that can constantly support the processes of recycling and exchange between different levels and elements of the system. Jennings et al. provided a visualization of the concentric city food provenance zones to illustrate how the idea of a “region” might pertain to a political or an ecological region, and to describe how different zones might contribute to a city’s food supply in varying proportions. The importance of planning for change and transition into coherent and efficiently working CRFS is emphasized through innovations in infrastructure and governance, for example, as illustrated in Figure 1 above. Different options for governance of city region food systems are pointed to by Da Silva and Fan , who mention the necessity to coordinate policies for rural and urban areas, promote social protection in rural and urban areas and support inclusive and efficient value chains between rural–urban areas. These highlight the importance of bringing stakeholders, researchers, politicians, and practitioners together, and draw emphasis on the importance of facilitating legal frameworks for these city-region food systems . The city-region food systems need to be organized and supported through governance, among others to allow farmers to plan their strategies and form collaboration efforts , which necessarily must be place-based and complex. Governance is also required in relation to the pricing policy, and external factors surrounding food production are not considered in the current pricing system . Another aspect is the protection of farmers, who are often overlooked or reduced to out-growers or industrial workers on their own land – which is maybe even taken from them – and the governance system around agroecological food systems needs to ensure that the potentials of diverse farms and human as well as social knowledge are fully utilized and valued, and are being described in research efforts taking agroecological principles into account . In current food systems, small-scale producers are particularly often marginalized and have no possibilities to participate to attain a fairer share or distribution of the income, risks, and benefits in these structures of prevailing markets, policies, and related institutions . Agroecological food systems can be essential features contributing to the practical and theoretical realization of initiatives linked to the so-called Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, which was launched in October 2015 and signed by 117 mayors from all over the world .