ABSTRACT
Background: Secondary cities tend to be better linked with local food systems than primate cities, acting as important platforms to trade agricultural produce with rural surrounding. COVID-19, conflicts and climate change continue to expose inefficiencies in food systems and have further exacerbated malnutrition, calling for substantial food systems transformations. However, tackling current food systems' challenges requires new approaches to ensure food and nutrition security. Nutritious and agroecologically produced food offer the potential to transform food systems by improving diets and alleviating pressure on the environment, as well as by creating jobs and reducing poverty. This paper describes the design of a project by a Swiss public-private consortium to improve food and nutrition security and to reduce poverty in city ecosystems in six secondary cities in Bangladesh, Kenya and Rwanda through governance/policy and supply and demand side interventions. Methods: The Nutrition in City Ecosystems (NICE) project promotes well-balanced nutrition for city populations through interdisciplinary agricultural, food, and health sector collaborations along city-specific value chains. Adopting a transdiciplinary systems approach, the main interventions of NICE are (i) advocacy and policy dialogue, (ii) building of decentralized institutional capacity in multi-sectoral collaborations, (iii) support of data-driven planning, coordination and resource mobilization, (iv) anchoring of innovations and new approaches in city-level partnerships, (v) capacity building in the agricultural, retail, health and education sectors, as well as (vi) evidence generation from putting policies into practice at the local level. NICE is coordinated by in-country partners and local offices of the Swiss public-private consortium partners. Discussion: The NICE project seeks to contribute to urban food system resilience and enhanced sustainable nutrition for city populations by (A) strengthening urban governance structures involving key stakeholders including women and youth, (B) generating income for producers along the supply chain, (C) triggering change in producers' and consumers' behavior such that nutritious and agroecologically produced foods are both in demand as well as available and affordable in urban markets, and (D) allowing a scale up of successful approaches to other national and international cities and city networks.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Ecosystem , Female , Humans , Rwanda , Kenya , BangladeshABSTRACT
In diesem Beitrag wird am Beispiel der SARS-CoV-2-Pandemie die Frage diskutiert, was die Soziologie als sozialwissenschaftliche Disziplin im Schockmoment einer Krise eigentlich leisten kann. In Abgrenzung zu Heinz Bude (Soziologie, Heft 3, 2022) wird argumentiert, dass die Aufgabe der Soziologie nicht darin bestehen sollte, Zustimmung in der Bevölkerung zu staatlichen Maßnahmen zu organisieren, sondern eine sozialwissenschaftliche Beobachterrolle einzunehmen, um die blinden Flecke staatlicher Akteure und Expertenstäbe gerade auch unter Krisenbedingungen sichtbar zu machen. Statt in den Modus einer Krisenrhetorik der einfachen Worte zu verfallen, wird dafür plädiert, sich auf die methodologischen und methodischen Kernkompetenzen des Faches zu besinnen und interdisziplinären Austausch nicht mit undisziplinierter Extradisziplinarität zu verwechseln.Alternate :This article uses the example of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic to discuss the question of what sociology can actually do in the moment of shock of a crisis. In contrast to Heinz Bude (Soziologie, no. 3, 2022), it is argued that the task of sociology should not be to organise public approval for state measures, but to take on a sociological observer role in order to make the blind spots of state actors and expert groups visible, especially under crisis conditions. Instead of falling into the mode of a crisis rhetoric of simple words, it is advocated that one should remember the methodological and methodical core competences of the discipline and not confuse interdisciplinary exchange with undisciplined extradisciplinarity.
ABSTRACT
Climate change, rapid urbanization, war, and economic recession are key drivers of the current food systems' disruption, which has been exacerbated by the COVID pandemic. Local, regional, and global food systems are unable to provide consumers with nutritious and affordable diets. Suboptimal diets exacerbate the triple burden of malnutrition, with micronutrient deficiencies affecting more than two billion people, two billion people suffering from overweight, and more than 140 million children who are stunted. The unaffordability of nutritious diets represents an obstacle for many, especially in low- and middle-income countries where healthy diets are five times more expensive than starchy staple diets. Food system transformations are urgently required to provide consumers with more affordable and nutritious diets that are capable of meeting social and environmental challenges. In this review, we underline the critical role of innovation within the food system transformation discourse. We aim to define principles for implementing evidence-based and long-term food system innovations that are economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable and, above all, aimed at improving diets and public health. We begin by defining and describing the role of innovation in the transformation of food systems and uncover the major barriers to implementing these innovations. Lastly, we explore case studies that demonstrate successful innovations for healthier diets.