Micro-food systems have been identified as those operating at the level of the neighbourhood, workplace or household (Finney et al., 2012). This focuses attention on the food environment and the capabilities of the household when managing its food security, and also considers intrahousehold distribution and power (Harris-Fry et al., 2017; Westbury et al., 2021). Individuals negotiate access to food within the microfood system, and ultimately, their digestive system transforms that food into energy, nutrients and waste—which could be named the nano-food system.

Adopting a territorial approach can help articulate these components of the food system, while addressing the complexity of processes related to food in a specific area. It emphasizes that food system actors don't only produce, distribute and consume food in markets, they also live in places where the potential, constraints and plausible futures of that place matter, and where answers to challenges can be identified through collective action. It highlights the multi-dimensional nature of the food system, the diversity of its actors, their different levels of action and the need for coordination (Blay-Palmer et al., 2018; Caron et al., 2017, 2018; Cistulli et al., 2014).

As such, the territorial approach facilitates food system resilience through adaptation to changes and risk management. Risks directly affect the stability of food system outcomes through price fluctuations, sudden changes in policies, changing social relationships, unstable governments and armed conflicts (Freshwater, 2015). Moreover, repeated shocks gradually erode household livelihoods, as well as the food system resilience of the communities and places in which households are located (Davies, 1996).

Connection and complementarity between markets facilitated by globalization have always been and continue to be major answers to risks related to climate or socioeconomic and political events. These risks can result in shortages and price increases with huge impacts on food systems (Godfray et al., 2010). However, the adoption of a territorial perspective, with greater attention to the characteristics of places through local lenses, helps to mitigate the negative impacts of globalization (unsustainability of long-distance supply chains, growing economic and phytosanitary risks, exclusion and adverse inclusion due to concentration of wealth and power). It also helps to highlight within-country food system disparities related to unequal socioeconomic development (Giordano et al., 2019) often characterizing the most rural provinces or districts, ethnic communities or indigenous groups, as described by Cistulli et al. (2014) in South Africa, Ghana, Vietnam or the highlands of Latin America.

Nesting food systems governance at different geographical scales provides a link to the well-established literature on risk and vulnerability and the more recent focus on food system resilience (Béné et al., 2016; Bullock et al., 2017; Dury et al., 2019, and the current book). Some events, such as injury or illnesses from non-communicable disease, are specific to individuals or households and can be thought of as 'idiosyncratic risk' (Barrett, 2011). Others, such as drought or infectious disease, simultaneously affect many households in a community or region. This 'covariate' risk refers to the extent to which individuals, communities or sub-groups, structures and places, and indeed systems are likely to be damaged or disrupted by such shocks. The impact of HIV and AIDS is a well-documented example (Beegle et al., 2008).

The COVID-19 pandemic represents such a covariate risk, and an analysis of responses to the pandemic can provide information about the resilience of food systems (Bidisha et al., 2021; Gupta et al., 2020). Notably, the relevance of a place-based approach in articulating different levels of interventions was confirmed during the lockdowns that COVID-19 prompted. In many countries, local authorities have borne the brunt of any early response to disasters and are central in the enforcement of regulations concerning the use of space, including those relating to social distancing such as access to public facilities and the enforcement of restricted trading hours (Wright, 2020). But local governments are also proved to be well positioned to identify and help to implement nutrition-sensitive interventions targeting the vulnerable groups (FAO, 2020).

In a review of documents published since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Béné et al. (2021) found that food security was primarily threatened through both covariate and idiosyncratic disruptions to physical and economic access to food, with the former caused by lockdowns restricting mobility, and the latter by the loss in employment and or income. They found no evidence of disruptions to food availability, and limited evidence on utilization dimensions of food security. They interpreted lockdown interventions as disruptors to the stability aspect of FNS.

Béné et al. (2021) also note that the apparent resilience of the food system as a whole often came at the expense of smaller actors in the food system, while benefitting larger actor consolidations. For example, lockdowns meant that informal food vendors were unable to trade, while supermarkets that were given 'essential service' status, made large profits during these periods (Kroll et al., 2021). This points to the importance of understanding the manner in which food system governance responds to disruptions and operates at the level of a place rather than in aggregate (Kusumasari et al., 2010).

## Experiences of Territorial Approaches to Food System Management

If there is a polysemy of wording related to places, there is also a diversity of experiences related to territorial approaches to food system management. These experiences adopt different perspectives, and it is important to consider the level of government, national or local, at which the policies or programmes have been designed.

National governments have long been, and continue to be, the main producers of public policies. Sectorial policies remain the backbone of governments' actions, with sectorial growth as a core objective pushing spatial issues in the background. Indeed, widening regional inequality was once seen as a stage in economic growth that would follow an inverted U progression as the benefits of agglomeration trickled down (Williamson, 1965). As a result, the adoption of spatially blind policies was considered as a prerequisite for economic development even if its cost was growing territorial inequalities at a first stage (Varga, 2017). Influential international organizations such as the World Bank have been advocating for this approach: the World Development Report 2009 on Reshaping Economic Geography being an example (World Bank, 2009). However, this conception has been criticized (Barca et al., 2012; Rodríguez-Pose, 2010), and there is evidence of the negative consequences of the rise in territorial inequality (Lessmann & Seidel, 2017). Other voices, like the European Union, particularly concerned with regional asymmetries and cohesion, and the OECD have been advocating for another approach recognizing the importance of the territorial level as a way to tailor strategies towards addressing local conditions (Barca, 2009; OECD, 2009; TP4D, 2018). This discussion is also emerging in Africa where structural challenges call for a paradigm shift towards territorial development (AfDB, OECD, UNDP, 2015; Losch, 2016).

Territorial approaches to food systems have emerged in this context (Forster et al., 2021). Still, it is necessary to clarify what is meant by the reference to a territorial approach, because some appellations can be misleading and the sectorial perspective often strongly remains behind a formal positioning on the territorial approach, which could be named 'territorial-washing'. The OECD-FAO-UNCDF study titled "*Adopting a Territorial Approach to Food Security and Nutrition Policy*" (OECD/FAO/UNCDF, 2016) is provocative. It advocates for the adoption of a territorial approach, taking stock of the limitations of existing food security policies through a series of case studies in Cambodia, Colombia, Côte d'Ivoire, Morocco, Peru, and quicker assessments in Mali and Niger. The main issues identified relate to the priority given to agricultural interventions, the persistence of project-based approaches, the insufficient coordination between sectorial departments and levels of government, the weaknesses of decentralization and the lack of spatial differentiation (i.e. spatially blind policies), which prevents taking on board within-country inequalities and disparities. It also talks to the specificities of different contexts—for instance metropolitan regions, periurban and remote rural regions.

Based on this assessment and common issues identified across countries, in spite of significant differences, what is proposed as a territorial approach is to implement multi-sectorial integrated policies, to promote multi-level governance and coordination and the role of sub-national institutions, and to improve territorial information for a better regional targeting of interventions. These recommendations correspond before anything else to an objective of improving national policies by a 'territorialization' of priorities and planning, as illustrated by the 3 N Initiative in Niger (Nigériens Nourish Nigériens)4 or by the Green Morocco Plan (Faysse, 2015). Although space-based, the 3 N Initiative is far from a coalition of local actors identifying common challenges and adopting a shared vision of objectives and priorities.

Another example to mention is the experience of development corridors, which is sometimes presented as a way to engage in a territorial approach. Joining physical transport infrastructure with ad hoc facilities and services and bringing in the private sector through public-private partnerships, corridors are supposed to stimulate territorial development with improved connection to markets and reduced costs (Kuhlmann et al., 2011). Again, these corridors, now supported in many African countries, are examples of a top-down approach. They are in effect reproducing the extractive schemes of the colonial period, facilitating the transport of resources from the hinterland to the coast—a framework which has profoundly shaped the spatial pattern of many African countries (AfDB, OECD, UNDP, 2015). As such, corridors can create 'tunnel effects' with adverse impacts on the surrounding areas (Fau, 2019; Scholvin, 2021). If they offer better market opportunities with reduced transport costs and can stimulate activities, their attraction tends to marginalize neighbouring places (similar to a vacuum effect), thereby increasing spatial asymmetries. They also tend to benefit the better-off, who can quickly reap the benefits of the new infrastructure and can pave the way for outsiders. The Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania (SAGCOT) is a good illustration. Supposed to support agriculture and small farmers, it has been managed by foreign enterprises and has excluded smallholders (Byiers & Rampa, 2013).

Contrary to these policies designed at the national level, initiatives developed by local authorities correspond more effectively to a territorial approach to development and food system management. They need to be put in perspective with processes of decentralization, which have spread worldwide at different paces since the 1980s, with differences depending on the characteristics of the state and the political regime (Beard et al., 2008; Faguet, 2014). Roles attributed to local governments are heterogeneous, but food and food systems' related issues are generally not in their mandates, even if local food system planning was identified as requiring

4 http://www.initiative3n.ne/.

attention two decades ago (Buchan et al., 2015; Pothukuchi & Kaufman, 2000).

In most parts of Africa, state consolidation objectives have delayed effective decentralization. Where administrative decentralization has occurred, with the relocation of administrative functions and executive responsibilities to different levels of government, fiscal decentralization (i.e. transfer of revenue-generating power) has been more limited (Cabral, 2011; Conyers, 2007; Crooks, 2003; Smoke, 2003). As a result, the lack of local fiscal resources prevents effective and numerous interventions and food system governance is rarely on the agenda of local governments.

This situation explains why the entrance of local governments in the food policy space first occurred in major cities of the richer countries, where the existence of a larger fiscal basis offered enough room for manoeuvre for independent action from central governments and their budgets, and where food appears as a critical issue. Among the main reasons supporting this new status of food are the rising awareness of consumers (and voters) with regard to the importance of healthy food, and growing concerns about sustainability questions (e.g. type of agricultural practices and origin of the food supply and the related transport costs). The foregoing explains why initial interest focused on localized production and the promotion of urban agriculture.

Yet, some cities have embraced a broader scope and adopted a food system approach, with pioneers like Toronto in Canada, or Belo Horizonte in Brazil (Blay-Palmer, 2009; Friedmann, 2007; Rocha & Lessa, 2009). Since the early 1990s, these cities have engaged in developing their own vision and food system planning, using the full potential of urban-rural linkages existing with their large periphery. In that context, the FAO started its 'Food for the Cities' programme5 in 2001, with the objective of building more sustainable and resilient food systems in the conditions of rising urbanization and environmental challenges, and to develop dialogue and partnerships.

These experiences contributed to the preparation of the New Urban Agenda (NUA), adopted by the Habitat III conference in 2016. This recognizes the importance of urban-rural linkages, the need to break away from silo thinking, and to support integrated urban and territorial planning and development (UN-Habitat, 2017). International dynamics and

5 https://www.fao.org/in-action/food-for-cities-programme/en/.

mobilization initiated by these processes have resulted in the development of a network of cities, formalized in 2015, with an international protocol calling for the development of more sustainable and resilient urban food systems: the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, signed by 210 cities.6 The approach is fostering decentralization and cooperation mechanisms between cities which have been active in sharing their experiences (Magarini et al., 2017) and is converging with other city initiatives focusing on resilience, like the Resilient Cities Network7 which includes a food component. Significantly, several cities hold their food initiatives under their resilience units, as it is the case for instance with Cape Town and Johannesburg in South Africa.

In that context, a new conceptual and policy framework has emerged. The City Region Food System (CRFS) formalizes a possible territorial approach to food system management (Blay-Palmer et al., 2018; Forster & Escudero, 2014). With reference to its own experience with the Food for the Cities program, the FAO started a CRFS programme in 2014. Its objective is "*Reinforcing rural-urban linkages for resilient food systems*," the CRFS being defined as "*all the actors, processes and relationships that are involved in food production, processing, distribution and consumption in a given city region*".8 The programme is today developed in 13 countries in six continents.

The CRFS toolkit, developed by the FAO in 2018, presents a method for assessing the performance and functioning of food systems for a city region, including defining and mapping the city region, collecting data on the food system in the city region and analysing the data through assessments to develop an understanding of the relationships between food systems components and multi-dimensional sustainability indicators in the city region (FAO, 2018b). These include indicators that reflect improved health and well-being and increased access to food and nutrition: access to affordable, sufficient, nutritious, safe, adequate and diversified food that meet dietary needs. There are also indicators showing improved social and economic conditions for workers; building local food culture, food heritage and sense of identity; strengthening rural-urban linkages including food production and flows of food, nutrients, energy, water,

6 https://www.milanurbanfoodpolicypact.org/.

7 https://resilientcitiesnetwork.org/?s=food.

8 https://www.fao.org/in-action/food-for-cities-programme/en/.

and income across rural and urban areas; and finally protecting ecosystems and environmental resources and reducing vulnerability and increasing resilience to shocks and disasters.

This standardization of the approach by the FAO has led to critics pointing to a rural bias with an emphasis on rural-urban linkages and food supply from neighbouring areas, preventing an effective vision and specific intervention on urban food security (Battersby & Watson, 2019) and the development of urban food-sensitive planning practices (Haysom et al., 2021; see also Battersby & Haysom, this volume). The toolkit approach, with priority given to flows and resource stock, is also possibly driving the focus away from governance, which is central to an effective territorial approach.

In spite of these growing decentralized experiences, the dominance of the de facto monocentric governance of food systems by the states remains. Rooted in the history of public policies, this top-down approach has been criticized over recent decades (Candel, 2014). The food system is complex; it includes many different stakeholders characterized by huge asymmetries in terms of incomes, assets and economic power; and it is characterized by a strong interdependency and interconnectedness between issues and actors. As such, a consensus has progressively emerged calling for a necessary shift towards a new approach which should be integrative and inclusive (Termeer et al., 2018). This moves away from the traditional monocentric governance towards an approach that may be considered as polycentric and paves the way for adaptive and collaborative governance. The case of South Africa is illustrative of this emerging trend.

## Place-Based Food System Governance: Recent Experience in South Africa

Historically, food system governance has been a central issue for the state. Food policies were designed and implemented by central governments, and this characteristic remains deeply rooted in the policy practice of most countries (Toussaint-Samat, 2009). Because food was first a question of supply, production was the central issue and ministries of agriculture have quickly taken the leading role in food security policies: a position that they continue to play in a large majority of countries, particularly in developmental states such as that aspired to by the South African government. It generally results in effective support from 'strong' ministries, like economy and finance and trade which can be explained by the growth and employment potential of agro-food production. In the case of South Africa, this has been referred to as an implicit 'Economic Growth' coalition between these core ministries (Thow et al., 2018). Even if food security is recognized as a cross-sectoral issue, other ministries (such as health or social development) are in the 'second line'. The result is a specific framing of food system issues, giving priority to production and food supply.

Based on a systematic literature review on food system governance in South Africa since the end of apartheid in 1994, Adeniyi et al. (2021) analyse these tensions and point towards the need for a new approach to governance. The literature reveals the importance of state policies: it particularly highlights a national paradox in which, despite the concerns of the Economic Growth coalition, South Africa is considered food secure, with the dietary needs of its population consistently exceeded by the food that is available. However, household food and nutrition insecurity is high when compared to countries of similar economic development.

To illustrate the national paradox, in 2015, 25% of the population lived below the national food poverty line (StatsSA, 2017a) and 27% of children under the age of 59 months were found to be stunted in 2016, a situation that has not improved despite two decades of appropriate policy interventions (Devereux et al., 2019). At the same time, 68% of adult women and 31% of men are either overweight or obese, which has translated into high prevalence of diet-related non-communicable disease (StatsSA, 2017b).

These sobering results are in contrast to a sophisticated food policy framework that is rooted in the interventionist tradition of the state, dating back decades. Contrary to other African countries, the colonial history has resulted in the development of a deep state with an autonomy of government since 1910, characterized by high centralization during the apartheid regime, and then the adoption of a limited federalism with the 1996 Constitution. Yet, food and nutrition security are enshrined as a basic human right in South Africa's Bill of Rights, and the right to food for all people and the right to nutrition for children are set out in South Africa's Constitution in Sections 27(1)(b), 27(2) and 28(1). Indeed, one of the first acts of the newly elected democratic government was to introduce a National School Nutrition Program (NSNP) in 1994 that was feeding 9 million children at the start of 2020.

The last major overhaul of South Africa's long-term strategy for social and economic development, the National Development Plan (NPC, 2011), identifies food security and rural transformation as enabling milestones for the eradication of poverty and reduction of inequalities by 2030. The National Policy for Food and Nutrition Security (NPFNS) gazetted in 2014 builds on the National Development Plan (NDP) and seeks to establish a platform for increasing, and better targeting, public spending in social programmes that impact on food security (DSD/DAFF, 2013). The policy is framed in terms of the recognition of the right to food in the South African Bill of Rights, and commits government to increasing access to production inputs for the emerging agricultural sector; leveraging government food procurement to support community-based food production initiatives and smallholders; and strategically using market interventions and trade measures which will promote food security.

The NPFNS acknowledges the complex nature of food and nutrition security and the importance of interventions that encourage increased access to affordable healthy food. However, due to weak consultative processes, the state-led NPFNS is argued to have led to policy directives that were "deemed inadequate by a wide cross-section of people" (Pereira & Drimie, 2016, p. 24). Notably, after reviewing the NPFNS, the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) recommends a rethink of the food system and concludes that the policy "does not speak to the need for an interconnected system" (SAHRC, 2017, p. 23).

Despite the establishment of an inter-ministerial National Food and Nutrition Plan (NFNSP) in 2017 coordinated by the Office of the President (PMG, 2017), there has been little evidence of action from national government. Although the policy framework has been put in place, both the NPFNS and NFSNP lack the legislative structures necessary to achieve their goals and objectives (Hendriks & Olivier, 2015). Jacobs & Nyamwanza (2020) go further and call for the establishment of national and sub-national forums and the involvement of non-state actors in the coordination and monitoring of both the policy and the plan.

Moreover, the South African government has been unwilling to take direct interventions such as the management of food prices, despite cycles of food inflation. The Integrated Growth and Development Plan (IGDP) of 2012 mentions addressing high food prices, improving smallholder access to markets and support services, and the need for an integrated approach to ensuring food security. The country's national agricultural policies also include strong support for food security, but again with no mention of nutrition. For example, the Agricultural Policy Action Plan (APAP) 2015–2019 places emphasis on value-chain interventions to improve food security, and also notes the importance of research and innovation, climate-smart agriculture, trade, agribusiness development and support. Nutrition, affordability and safety are not given attention (May, 2021).

Adeniyi et al. (2021) show an analytical convergence in most of these policy documents towards a series of governance challenges which are related to the framing problem, already mentioned, and to the importance of fragmentation, siloization and (lack of) policy coherence. These core problems are aggravated by a weak coordination, limited institutional capacity, and a partial and inadequate stakeholder engagement.

Among the proposed identified solutions to these shortcomings are the need for a legislative framework, necessary to actualize existing rights and particularly the right to food, the improvement of stakeholders' participation and stronger institutions, as well as priority to be given to local food system governance (Haysom, 2015). If multiple levels of governance are necessary to address the food system complexity, a place-based approach is an opportunity for an effective understanding of food systems' issues, facilitated and improved stakeholder engagement, improved connection with local networks and grassroot movements, and the progressive adoption of a shared vision of the main challenges on which to focus action. However, the way local processes can develop and strengthen remains an open question. Experiences of food system governance in the Western Cape province of South Africa during the COVID-19 pandemic offers a case study of how place-based food system governance may be emerging.

Due to the limited federalism, South Africa's provinces have restricted competency for food system governance. Trade, industrial policy, health, social development, education, agriculture, environment and rural development are managed by the central government, although in some instances, provincial government holds the mandate for delivery. Local governments do not have any specific mandate related to FNS and food system management.

However, there is room for action and local governments do have relevant competencies, notably for zoning and trading regulations, markets and street trading (De Visser, 2019). They are often responsible for the delivery of electricity and potable water, both central to food safety. Therefore, they can, or could, influence food system outcomes through the protection of agricultural land and food trade regulation, supporting activities in the informal economy, balancing the role of large retailers and supporting local food producers and traders. They can, or could, also improve access to healthy and nutritious food through advertising and support to farmers' markets. Budgets and human resources remain a major limitation to implementation and impact, with the exception of the metropoles.

Despite the Western Cape's prosperity when compared to other provinces and its well-established food system, the largest food economy in South Africa, the prevalence of the indicators of malnutrition among its population of 6.5 million is similar to national trends (StatsSA, 2019). The Western Cape Government (WCG) recognized the urgency for action and in 2014, set out to develop a food security strategy to complement its Provincial Strategic Plan. This strategy had to align with a National Policy on Food and Nutrition Security gazetted in 2014, as well as with other national policies such as those concerning land, water, health and sanitation. The process required dialogue and co-design between multiple agents and bodies of knowledge, as well as between multiple rationalities and multiple levels, a feature identified elsewhere to co-design policy (Himanen et al., 2016).

Termed 'Nourish to Flourish', this strategy commits to a wide range of interventions that address all food system outcomes, although the focus is on FNS. These include providing food and nutrition literacy interventions targeting diverse age groups; food-sensitive economic and spatial planning; influencing municipal planning for food and nutrition; promoting a climate-resilient low-carbon agricultural sector; and building an inclusive food economy that recognizes the role of informal traders as an important source of affordable food for low-income households (WCG, 2016). The strategy also addresses food security governance and the establishment of multi-stakeholder processes. Although the implementation of the strategy appears to have stalled prior to the pandemic, the response to COVID-19 in the Western Cape largely followed its 'whole of society' approach and appears to have had a positive impact (WCEDP, 2020).

Both the provincial government and the metropolitan government of the City of Cape Town have recognized their roles in regard to improving food security. Making use of an existing agreement with the Cape Higher Education Consortium (CHEC), a network for collaboration between the four universities of the province, research reports were commissioned to provide an information base (Adelle et al., 2020). These in turn recognized the complex nature of the food system and the nature of food security as a common good: an important improvement when compared to existing national policy frameworks. The research base informed stakeholder workshops conducted during 2015. These provided opportunities to discuss the conventional collective action related to concerns of coordination, cooperation, and finding and keeping agreements at the local level (Poteete & Ostrom, 2008). The deliberations of these workshops fed into a draft strategy document approved by the provincial cabinet in 2016 for public comment, which has subsequently evolved into a programme of work that includes civil society (WCEDP, 2020).

Parallel processes took place in other forums related to food security including health, governance and agriculture (Adelle et al., 2020). Following public comment, a non-government organization, the Southern African Food Lab (SAFL) specializing in partnering convened additional groups of stakeholders including 'Transformation Laboratories'. The purpose of these meetings was to develop projects to be implemented as partnerships between government and other actors in the local food system (Drimie et al., 2018).

These provincial dynamics of consultation and local debate have provided a fertile context which allowed further engagement and the implementation of a transdisciplinary community of practice on food governance in 2018. Based on an iterative process of shared knowledge and knowledge co-production (Adelle et al., 2021), this community of practice, still active in 2022, includes: decision-makers from provincial and metropolitan governments as duty bearers for the provision of food security as a public good; the private sector as the producers and suppliers of the food itself (from farmers to processors and retailers, including from the informal sector); and civil society organizations, including consumers, as final decision-makers as well as rights-holders.

In 2017/18, extreme drought put provincial and local governments to the test and revealed the potential of community mobilization (Robins, 2019). This was followed in March 2020 by the implementation by national government of a hard lockdown in response to the first COVID-19 cases. Among the first food system impacts in 2020 was the suspension of the National School Nutrition Program (NSNP). Restrictions on informal sector food traders, the prohibition of mobility across municipal boundaries and a strict curfew also affected food systems' actors and consumers. Mitigation measures in the form of direct food assistance were slower to be implemented, and in the case of school feeding required litigation before being addressed.9 Even then, the reintroduction of the programme was slow and uneven (Section 27, 2020).

Responding to this in the Western Cape, multiple community-led initiatives facilitated the development of a vibrant and localized food debate and action. The continuation of school feeding though the Peninsula School Feeding Association was particularly important, but this also included coordination and advocacy such as Food Dialogues, organized in 2020 and 2021 (SAUFFT, 2020) and the Food Forum hosted by the Western Cape Economic Development Partnership (Trialogue, 2021). Altogether they improved the local capacity to react to the COVID-19 crisis with the rapid development of community action networks (CANs), such as those in an umbrella organization 'Cape Town Together', which linked almost 200 such organizations.10 These local networks, connected through information and communications technologies such as social media and WhatsApp® applications, contributed towards a localized and coordinated response to the crisis by civil society (Adelle & Haywood, 2021; Odendaal, 2021). In addition to addressing the immediate food and health crisis, a stated goal of the CANs was to "put the public back into the public sector" (Bust et al., 2021).

The Western Cape is a region characterized by extreme resource inequalities, resulting in communities that, although spatially proximate, are socially distant (Mears & Bhati, 2006). This has produced 'cities of islands' (Writers Community Action Network, 2020). To overcome this, partnering has been key, involving different forms of collaboration according to the specific issues being addressed Although partnering strategies have been widely used by local governments (Greve, 2015), they may be demanding in the context of food system governance in which there are fundamental differences in priorities, substantial material stakes and low levels of trust. In the case of the Western Cape, achieving successful partnerships required "moving at the speed of trust" as well as compromises, incentives and the enforcement of duties and rights. Despite this, the CANs still experienced push back by both local political leaders and the national government (Bust et al., 2021).

9 On 17 July 2020, a consortium of NGO successfully litigated against the Minister of Basic Education to reinstate the NSNP (Section 27, 2020).

10 See https://capetowntogether.net/ for more details.

Although still work in progress, the interventions and activities in the Western Cape since 2017 have shown the potential to produce polycentric forms of system governance and to engage in the pathway of a possible collaborative governance. They have required a dialogue between multiple agents and bodies of knowledge, as well as between multiple rationalities and multiple levels. As was shown, such dialogue is not necessarily initiated by the public sector and is unlikely to be proposed by the private sector even if some stakeholders, such as farmers, have strong incentives for collective action but generally lack adequate information. Key to the notion that these interventions may be nascent territoriality is the claim that they emerged when communities realized that "When you know that it is your neighbours who have empty cupboards, it is a political act to start cooking. As we cook, food becomes a vehicle for the sharing of social and cultural practices, as well as politicizing the hunger in the first place – generating learning, consciousness and human connection" (Writers Community Action Network, 2020).

In the case of the Western Cape, food system resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic has required assertive action on the part of consumers and civil society with the realization that they indeed hold rights for which others bear duties to fulfil. It is likely that some issues will still need to be resolved by the enforcement of duties and rights as contained in the national laws of South Africa, including the international treaties it has endorsed. As in other contexts, ensuring resilience has required litigation and civil society actions including consumer boycotts, social media campaigns and protests in order to put pressure on government and the main food corporate businesses (Huang et al., 2015). A possible outcome of these responses, and a possible objective, is the progressive adoption of a collaborative governance of the food system, where collaboration and consensus building are the rule.

The experiences since the start of the pandemic in the Western Cape may not be unique as similar responses have been documented elsewhere (Nemes et al., 2021; Zhan & Chen, 2021; Zollet et al., 2021). Within South Africa, CANs have spread to other provinces and have adopted similar modes of operation.11 Alongside this, some umbrella associations of CANs are identifying a more ambitious agenda. One such association, Gauteng Together, states that it intends re-orientating the work of the

11 For example, Eastern Cape (https://easterncapetogether.co.za/) and Gauteng (https://www.gautengtogether.org/).

CANs into a "*critical mass disruption agenda*" through the integrated zones to set up a CAN in every neighbourhood to "*save the soul of the nation*" (Nortier, 2021).

Taken together, local responses to the food system challenges arising from COVID-19 highlight how embryonic territorial approaches to addressing such challenges may contribute towards:

This is not to imply a return to the localization approach ably critiqued by Born & Purcell (2006), but rather the recognition of the potential role of local governments and local actors to guide place-based food systems towards goals of economic inclusion, environmental sustainability, equity and social justice. Certainly, the long value chains, which define most present-day food systems, necessitate territorial approaches to be embedded in global contexts so that the interplay between local and global causes and effects can be clarified and understood. Furthermore, territorial approaches to food system research and development must align with national policies and commitments, including social protection measures, trade policy and corporate regulation, all of which influence food system activities and outcomes.

## Conclusion: The Spirit of Place

Despite the usefulness of toolkits of indicators and activities, like those developed in the City Region Food System (CRFS) programme presented above, local government policy development concerned with food security, and the manner of its implementation, will depend both upon the actions, negotiations and relative powers of those engaging in the process, as well as those that do not. Changing the food system is likely to produce individual and collective costs, some of which will be borne by actors who are not duty holders, nor hold rights that can be realized. A changing food system also produces new beneficiaries, some of whom are free riders able to benefit without making any contribution. Building food systems that are resilient to disruptions requires addressing the distribution of costs/benefits and how/whether these are to be managed.

Re-localizing food systems and food systems governance can significantly contribute to resilience, reduce ecological footprint and costs of transportation and transaction, foster rural-urban linkages and local activities, strengthen the social fabric, promote local food and the related cultural heritage, and enhance natural resources management and the development of new uses and services. In the context of system shocks such as COVID-19, the unintended consequences of mitigation interventions can be more quickly identified and addressed. This included expanding social protection coverage through the provision of distress grants or disaster relief, providing food parcels and permitting essential economic activities such as informal food trading.

Implementing a territorial approach to food systems in the context and the aftermath of COVID-19 in South Africa will require more than community action networks. There is a need to address funding shortages, donor and practitioner fatigue and the pull towards returning to prepandemic practices in the food system. Already by November 2020, 33% of the CANs in Gauteng had stopped their operations (Mahwai, 2020). To move forward, it may be necessary to draw on the existing mandate and tools of local governments and to combine the relative strengths of both state-led and community-led approaches. New forms of innovative governance will be needed to do this. This could include establishing communities of practice that build on knowledge co-production techniques, developing food charters and implementing food policy councils. Buchan et al. (2015) detail some of additional actions that are already undertaken by local governments.

To do so will require interactions with the full array of food system actors (consumers, farmers, processors, distributors, retailers, government and so forth) who are pivotal in determining food system outcomes. Although there may be failures to reach agreement, an approach to identify and provide answers to local problems can gain traction. Furthermore, a process that involves local stakeholders will facilitate territory formation, an important outcome in its own right. In this respect, the territorial approach has shown that it is well suited to addressing collective action problems concerned with the resilience of food systems, and the urban-rural interface on which they often rest.

## References

collective action in a time of crisis. *International Health Policies*. Retrieved 19 December 2021, from https://www.internationalhealthpolicies.org/fea tured-article/bottom-up-responses-lessons-from-cape-towns-community-net works-that-inspired-collective-action-in-a-time-of-crisis/

The case of South Africa. *NJAS—Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences, 84*, 85–93. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.njas.2017.08.001

Thow, A. M., Greenberg, S., Hara, M., Friel, S., du Toit, A., & Sanders, D. (2018). Improving policy coherence for food security and nutrition in South Africa: A qualitative policy analysis. *Food Security, 10*(4), 1105–1130. https:// doi.org/10.1007/s12571-018-0813-4

Toussaint-Samat, M. (2009). *A history of food*. Wiley.

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

## Urban Food Security and Resilience

## *Gareth Haysom and Jane Battersby*

## Introduction

Many writers have effectively captured the emergence, progression, framings and limitations of the concepts of urban resilience (see Béné et al., 2018), crisis and disaster management and resilience, both urban and more generally (Boin et al., 2010) and how, given the challenges in many developing countries and societies, including socioeconomic inequities, "negotiated resilience" may be more desirable (Ziervogel et al., 2017). The concept of resilience within urban systems has gained significant academic and policy focus in the last 10 years (see Coaffee et al., 2018; Béné et al., 2018). We suggest here that the concept of urban food

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G. Haysom (B) · J. Battersby

African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
J. Battersby e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
J. Battersby

Environmental and Geographical Science Department, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

C. Béné and S. Devereux (eds.), *Resilience and Food Security in a Food Systems Context*, Palgrave Studies in Agricultural Economics and Food Policy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-23535-1\_11

systems resilience is inadequately framed and these framings miss the everyday resilience practices of African urban consumers. While emerging arguments encompass useful touchpoints and relevance, in general these lack contextualised, and specifically Southern, applicability.

The emergence of generalised urban and food systems resilience positions aligns both to the increased global awareness of the problem of food insecurity in urban areas, and to the increased focus on subnational policy for sustainable development. There has been a particular flurry of academic interest in the wake of COVID-19 which demonstrated a series of vulnerabilities in the food system and the urban system (Moseley & Battersby, 2020) which evolve at the intersection of multiple systems, including social systems, social services systems, health systems, infrastructure systems and economic systems at an urban scale.

The population of food and nutrition insecure urban residents is growing in absolute terms in many cities in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa (Crush et al., 2012; Hawkes & Fanzo, 2017; Popkin et al., 2012; Ruel et al., 2017). This figure is higher in informal and marginalized settlements (Crush & Frayne, 2010). For many decades, food and nutrition insecurity has been framed as a food provision issue, with the belief that food shortages and unavailability were the key limiting factors of food security. Yet, this framing lacks the means to effectively conceptualize food and nutrition security, which are also affected by access to, use of and stability of food.

This chapter focuses on the aspirations and limitations associated with the resilience of African urban food systems. This focus is deliberate. Firstly, a key component of the wider argument of this chapter is the importance of contextual nuance and focus, rejecting travelling concepts that are often parachuted into distant contexts (Battersby, 2012a). A further reason is that while other regions, particularly South Asia, may face similar demographic and governance shifts, African cities are poised for dramatic change. The scale and pace of African urban transition requires specific considerations of what urban food system resilience requires and how resilience manifests in context. Added to this, the demographic shifts that have taken place and are currently accelerating in sub-Saharan Africa, mean that our current understanding of the drivers of food and nutrition insecurity, policy responses, as well as threats and related crises, need review and nuance.

Africa's demographic and emergent economic growth is primarily taking place in cities (Cirolia, 2020). When these changes are considered in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, food, nutrition and urban health issues are of critical importance. Africa's urban transition is taking place in largely unplanned ways. Current urban development processes generally prioritize large scale infrastructure (Cirolia, 2020), decentralized governance (Pieterse et al., 2018) and elite developments (Myers, 2015; Turok, 2016), all with little or no cognizance of urban food system challenges, specifically food and nutrition insecurity (Battersby & Watson, 2018). Africa's urban transition requires far greater attention because "the urban transition of the next few decades will be formative of future developmental opportunities on the continent" (Pieterse et al., 2018, p. 151).

The urban food system allows for a nuanced and broader approach to questions of resilience. Urban food systems and the resultant outcomes are shaped by flows of multiple physical, economic, material and social goods. These are all supported, deepened and made resilient through constantly maintained relationships. The resilience of the food system depends on flows of food, money and social networks inter alia, each of which have unique points of vulnerability and resilience. For many urban food system actors, particularly the poor in rapidly growing African cities, the ability to use the food system is shaped by the form and function of the urban system. However, it is the agency, the ability of those different food system consumers to use the urban food system in ways that suit their daily, contextual and wider community needs, that contributes in a significant way to build their resilience.

Using food as a lens (per Steel, 2008), this chapter builds on critiques from other disciplines, such as urban poverty (Friend & Moench, 2013), taking a more critical view of current urban food systems' resilience approaches and conceptualizations, posing two questions about the intersections between the food system and the urban systems. First, we argue that in many framings of resilience, components such as agency, choice, even a diversity of options, are seldom effectively considered. Secondly, we present food security framings from FANTA (Swindale & Bilinsky, 2006) aligned food security surveys highlighting the state of food insecurity in cities in Kenya, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe to question notions of resilience, particularly framings of resilience articulated as the ability to recover from disruption (Friend & Moench, 2013), stoicism (James, 2011) or revert to a pre-existing state of stability (Padgham et al., 2015). Our point is that many African urban food systems users are in a constant state of crisis or prolonged shock, a concept described by Béné et al. (2016, fig. 7) as a "continual state of incomplete recovery". Does a more traditional framing of the capacity to bounce back (James, 2011) or recover assume a measure of stability, or a desired previous state that is ideal? We suggest in this chapter that different measures of resilience are required, measures that take into account the constant state of crisis, and how the extremes of these perpetual stressors are mediated, diluted and overcome, albeit temporarily, while at the same time valorizing the agency and networks present and activated in these situations.

The chapter proceeds with a review of Africa's urban transition. It then engages some of the current trends evident at the intersections between resilience, urbanization and food security. The chapter then reflects on global processes, such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the UN Habitat New Urban Agenda (NUA) agreements. These global targets and indicators of sustainability and well-being aspire to greater sustainability and resilience. A review of the state of food insecurity is presented supported by responses to that food insecurity and the strategies applied in accessing food. The chapter closes, reflecting on these aspects, their implications for policy engagements around urban food and nutrition systems' planning. We also suggest a need for greater engagement in context, questioning generalizations and approaches that assume universal applicability of such concepts.

## Urban Food Resilience and the 2nd Urban Transition

Africa is urbanizing at a rapid rate, faster than any other continent (UN-DESA, 2019). Two aligned processes are driving this demographic transition. First is a move from rural to urban areas. The general depopulation of rural areas discourse requires interrogation though, with endogenous urban growth being an equal, if not greater driver in Africa (Crankshaw & Borel-Saladin, 2019; Menashe-Oren & Bocquier, 2021). In addition to this, Africa's median age is 19.7 years—the youngest in the world (Saleh, 2021). The rapid growth in African and Asian cities is a component of what has been termed the second urbanization transition (Pieterse, 2008).

The global North was the site of the first general societal urbanization process and was facilitated by, and resulted in, a number of societal shifts. Agricultural innovation and resulting increases in production lowered the price of food. Lower food prices meant reduced rural employment opportunities. Abundant labour and lower food prices were vital drivers of the industrialization process, particularly in rapidly growing urban areas (Beall & Fox, 2009, p. 47; Satterthwaite, 2007). The combination of cheap food, industrialization and subsequent specialization and new forms of urban governance enabled urban development. Cities in Europe and North America became the centres of economic growth. These foundational urbanization processes are playing out in different ways in cities in the global South, with great variations across African cities. The second urban transition is taking place within a particular geopolitical and economic moment (Satterthwaite, 2007). The lack of industrial growth in African cities reflects the sharp contrast between Africa's current urban transition and that of the first urban transition (Swilling & Annecke, 2012). Two differences have a direct bearing on the resilience of African urban populations. Firstly, the first urbanization process paid little attention to the sites of resource and wealth extraction and the longer-term consequences of that extraction, specifically the lock-ins now seen in terms of economy, resource types and ecological and climatic threats. Secondly, the general trend in the first urbanization wave was linked and mutually benefiting urbanization and industrialization. In Africa, urbanization is taking place in the context of a general post-Fordist environment (Pieterse, 2008) and in an economy where there is a restricted middle class and thin tax base (Pieterse et al., 2015), resulting in constrained economic activity. Earlier resource-based development models and systems (such as energy from coal) curtail options further as a result of issues such as climate change and the limitations placed on access to capital and resourcing to facilitate large-scale infrastructure development (Turok, 2016). One manifestation of this is informality, in housing, employment and other essential services. The largely informal profile of African cities presents a very different entry point to engage questions of resilience.

Rapidly growing African urban areas encounter multiple and, at times, mutually reinforcing development realities related to food, including food insecurity (Frayne et al., 2010), food systems transformation (Battersby & Watson, 2018), the growth of supermarkets (Peyton et al., 2015; Reardon et al., 2003) and the nutrition transition (Drewnowski & Popkin, 1997; Hawkes, 2006). When these food systems-related transitions intersect with other transitions, such as increased poverty and inequality, increased climatic variability (IPCC, 2021), global geopolitical shifts and global economic contraction, and watershed events such as pest infestations (often driven by climatic changes) and global health crises, urban areas face significant development and governance challenges.

In sum, Africa's urban transition presents a unique challenge. But it also offers opportunities. The scale of Africa's urbanization is unprecedented (Pieterse & Parnell, 2014; Satterthwaite, 2007). Given the state of under-development in African cities, the African city of 2030 and beyond is yet to be cast in concrete.

General descriptions of the African city, the slum city (Davis, 2006), or the auto-constructed city (Pieterse, 2013), while real, fail to effectively capture the processes, networks and dynamics of the African city. What the African city does reflect is an endless struggle. In this struggle, different forms of city-ness, networks and agency emerge, and with them different forms of resilience. Inequality and its intersection with the everyday nature of diverse African cities feeds directly into how the food system operates.

Despite what has at times been a hostile approach to cities on the African continent (see Pieterse et al., 2018), recognition of the importance of cities in Africa's development is slowly emerging. Importantly cities are also now a key part of wider global governance arrangements such as the sustainable development goals (SDGs). Tracking global processes offers a useful lens through which to understand the emergence of specific approaches and positions, specifically urban resilience.

## Evolving Global Governance Positions

There are many drivers framing what resilience might be. Attempts to articulate resilience in the urban food system, engaging processes that intersect between wider food system threats and challenges, and urban processes heightens complexity. In this chapter, we chart the wider sustainability and resilience-oriented processes and how these intersect with wider global and urban development processes. Here, we apply the challenge posed by Pieterse et al. (2018, p. 151) that

Rather than bemoaning the lack of policy impact, we suggest it is important for scholars to engage global urban policy-making, probing where and how to augment and refine what is clearly a path-breaking moment in how development on the African continent is understood and how the life in the African metropolis is perceived.

To this end, we align the evolution of global urban and food systemsrelated development approaches to their impacts on urban food resilience framings. First, we track the evolution of global goals, then the explicitly urban processes. These are followed by a reflection and critical engagement with concepts and approaches that have evolved from, or been given meaning, as a result of these processes and their employment in urban food resilience.

Histories and evolving processes matter. Fukuda-Parr and Orr (2014) argue that the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have had important "governance" (policy) and "knowledge" (norms and concepts) effects through their goals, targets and indicators. They have both shifted policy and programmatic focus and redefined the concepts and norms that shape development discourse (Battersby, 2017). It has been argued that the MDG approach and framing may have distorted the development agenda and removed focus from some critical issues (Yamin & Falb, 2012) such as food security and urban food security specifically.

Food and nutrition security was included as part of the MDG 1, under Target 1C: "Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger." Although the inclusion of food within the first MDG should have assured its prominence, World Bank Managing Director Wheeler called it the "forgotten MDG" (Fukuda-Parr & Orr, 2014, p. 152). This indicator-led development agenda has been critiqued for allowing these indicators to drive development agendas, rather than being used to measure progress towards broader development aims. And as has been argued "measurement drives diagnosis and response" (Barrett, 2010, p. 827).

The SDGs build on the foundation provided by the MDGs which they replaced in 2016. SDG Targets 2.1 and 2.2 are the only two food security targets within the SDG 2 targets, and both frame the food problem as one of scarcity (Burchi & Holzapfel, 2015, p. 17). This does not reflect the current and future realities of food insecurity in the global South. The lack of attention to urban and consumption issues within SDG 2 is exacerbated by the lack of dialogue across goals (Weitz et al., 2014).

SDG 11, which focuses on cities and communities, makes no reference to food and consumption in any way. As Jonathan Crush has argued in a public presentation, "SDG 2 imagines a world without cities, while SDG 11 imagines an urban world in which no-one eats" (Crush, 2017). The omission of food in SDG 11 was deliberate. In order to enable the inclusion of an explicitly urban goal in the SDGs, caution was required to avoid encroaching on other goals and interests. This was particularly evident with SDG2. While the inclusion of an exclusively urban goal is of great benefit, it does present certain challenges. Given scarce resources in many African cities, statistical data collection is limited (Acuto & Parnell, 2016). Programming and reporting on the SDGs are being prioritized over other data collection processes. In countries where limited data exists and data collection capacity is weak, this has consequences. Where SDGrelated data collection becomes one of the only measurement processes in these countries, evidence for policy programming is constrained. If diagnosis of the realities is constrained by the limited focus of the goals, policy actions run the risk of missing key needs. Misaligned policy actions run the risk of undermining resilience. Arguably, it was left to the Habitat III and the policy position articulated in the New Urban Agenda to then enable some measure of urban food programming and policy action.

Habitat III, the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development, which took place in Quito, Ecuador, in 2016 formed part of the bi-decennial cycle (1976, 1996 and 2016) of urban conferences facilitated by the UN body, led by UN-Habitat. Habitat III was one of the first United Nations' global summits after the adoption of the Post-2015 Development Agenda. It was an opportunity to discuss important urban challenges and questions, such as how to plan and manage cities, towns and villages for sustainable development. In particular, the Habitat III conference elaborated on SDG11 to "Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable" (Amann & Jurasszovich, 2017).

The Habitat III conference aimed to re-assert the global commitment to sustainable cities, through the implementation of the conference strategic outcome. The New Urban Agenda set out an urban vision encapsulated in three overarching principles and four commitments. The principles include:

The four mechanisms envisioned for effecting the New Urban Agenda are:

Together, the MDGs, SDGs and the NUA established a platform for how sustainable urbanization and wider sustainability questions are framed and understood at the global scale. These framings intersect with other aligned more normative approaches that seek to connect different systems, envisioned as offering opportunities to enhance sustainability and resilience.

## Emerging Concepts and Positions

The notion of sustainability that developed following the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, and the later Brundtland Commission that gave voice to the term sustainable development in their "Our Common Future" report (WCED, 1987) formalized earlier processes and embedded the concepts into global governance structures. Subsequently, multiple iterations of the concept sustainable development and sustainability have emerged (Swilling & Annecke, 2012). Alongside these multiple conceptualizations, various strategies and models have been suggested as tools to enact and enliven the concept of sustainable development (Dresner, 2012).

At the intersection between food and cities, varied positions are articulated. These approaches are often embedded in specific normative, ideological and value-oriented positions (see Haysom et al., 2019). Four such approaches are discussed below, selected because they align with the vision of sustainable urban food systems embedded within the New Urban Agenda, each suggesting tools through which urban food systems resilience could be enacted.

#### *Urban Agriculture as a Source of Food System Resilience*

There is a body of evidence questioning the importance of urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA), suggesting that its role in relation to food security has been overstated (Ellis & Sumberg, 1998; Zezza & Tasciotti, 2010). Others have presented concerns over the assumptions about the UPA growers (see Battersby, 2012b). Padgham et al. (2015) have identified a variety of factors that undermine the potential of UPA. Despite this, UPA is still actively advocated and promoted by some as a powerful urban food systems' resilience tool. This is best seen in a recent peer reviewed piece arguing in favour of UPA as a "necessary pathway towards urban resilience and global sustainability" (Langemeyer et al., 2021, p. 1). Here, it is argued that UPA reduces and offers resilience against social and ecological vulnerabilities and risk-related inequalities of urban inhabitants, including food shortages and different scenarios of global change, including climate change or pandemic events such as COVID-19. UPA is also posited by these authors as an effective tool to reduce the "intensified negative environmental (and related social) externalities caused by distant agricultural production, as well as lacking consideration of nutrient re-cycling potentials in cities (e.g., from wastewater) to replace emission intensive mineral fertilizer use" (Langemeyer et al., 2021, p. 1). Finally, the authors' point to the multifunctionality of UPA, and with it, the "multiple benefits it provides beyond the provision of food, including social benefits and insurance values, for instance the maintenance of cultural heritage and agro-biodiversity" (Langemeyer et al., 2021, p. 1). African urban food system studies do not find empirical evidence to support such assertions, particularly for poorer urban residents (see, e.g. Crush et al., 2017; Joubert et al., 2018; Pieterse et al., 2020).

#### *Localized Food Systems as a Source of Resilience*

There have been many advocates for localized systems, some embedded in local knowledge and cultures (Norberg Hodge, 2013), embeddedness within local systems (Feenstra, 2002) and economic regeneration (Hopkins, 2011), to name a few. However, as Born and Purcell (2006, p. 196) point out "the assumption that the local is desirable does not always hold". Born and Purcell's statement is based on case study evidence, but also a wider normative and theoretical engagement in questions of scale. These critiques challenge some of the wider SDG-related assumptions and earlier sustainability processes, such as Local Agenda 21, now Agenda21. Agenda21 is a non-binding action plan promoting a local sustainability agenda. This emerged following the 1996 Rio Summit on Sustainable Development, and guides work of a number of urban bodies, including Local Governments for Sustainability or ICLEI, previously the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives.

#### *City Regional Food System as a Way of Building Resilience*

More recently and embedded within the overarching urban food system framing, and by implication, resilience agenda, of Habitat III, was a wider vision of cities being able to "fulfil their territorial functions across administrative boundaries and act as hubs and drivers for balanced, sustainable and integrated urban and territorial development at all levels" (UN-Habitat, 2017, p. 7). With specific reference to food and food systems governance, the City Region Food System (CRFS) aspires to "a sustainable, resilient CRFS (…) to enhance sustainability across scales and sectors" (Blay-Palmer et al., 2018, p. 3). The CRFS is argued to increase access to food generate decent jobs and income, increase the region's resilience against shocks and lessen the dependence on distant supply sources, fostering rural-urban linkages, promotes ecosystem and natural resources management, and supports participatory governance (Blay-Palmer et al., 2018).

#### *The Water-Energy-Food Nexus*

As a concept, the wider nexus hypothesis of the water-energy-food nexus was launched at the Bonn 2011 Nexus Conference (Endo et al., 2017, p. 20). This work is also closely linked to a publication on water security, also using the nexus concept, produced by the World Economic Forum (WEF) in 2011 (WEF, 2011). The WEF work starts with a position that assists in clarifying how this concept frames the nexus: "Water security is the gossamer that links together the web of food, energy, climate, economic growth, and human security challenges that the world economy faces over the next two decades … the increasing volatility on food prices in 2008, 2009 and again in 2010 should be treated as early warning signs of what is to come. Arguably it is water that lies at the structural heart of these agricultural challenges" (WEF, 2011, p. 1). While the WEF presented the nexus framework from a securities' perspective (water–energy–food security), later versions have taken on various facets with alternative components (Biggs et al., 2015). Subsequently, "there is no fixed concept of nexus (…) but the (…) nexus is internationally interpreted as a process to link ideas and actions of different stakeholders under different sectors and levels for achieving sustainable development" (Endo et al., 2017, p. 22).

These positions and concepts all intersect with and are given life in an array of urban food and resilience programmes and practices that are emerging. These are generally global but are increasingly grappling with the challenges evident in African cities. Many of these, thanks to their wider urban systems framings, engage the question of urban food systems resilience, while some are deliberately urban food focused, embedded within wider sustainability and resilience conceptualizations. The leading programmes are summarized in Box 11.1.

**Box 11.1: Leading urban food systems sustainability/resilience programmes and initiatives**

**The Resilient Cities Network**1: Consists of member cities and Chief Resilience Officers from the 100 Resilient Cities programme (100RC), sharing a common lens for holistic urban resilience and projects in implementation. 100RC was initiated by The Rockefeller Foundation in 2013, as part of its Global Centennial Initiative.

**C40** is a network of mayors of nearly 100 cities2: C40 was founded in 2005 by the then mayor of London where agreement was sought (initially from a collection of "mega-cities"—the C20) for cooperatively reducing climate pollution. Following the formation of a small group, in 2006 a further collection of mayors were invited to ensure "balance from the Global South", creating an organization of 40 cities. Also in 2006, the Clinton Climate Initiative became the implementing partner and in 2007, then New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg hosted the second C40 Summit, and in 2010 he was elected Chair of C40.

**Milan Urban Food Policy Pact (MUFPP)**3: Formed in 2014 by the mayor of Milan, MUFPP is an international agreement of mayors that operates as a network of cities, providing tools and guidance for cities seeking to implement urban food actions. The MUFPP uses a Framework for Action listing 37 recommended actions, clustered in six categories, as the overarching guide to urban food systems' engagement. For each recommended action, there are specific indicators designed to assist in monitoring progress for implementing the Pact. The six MUFPP categories or indicators are:

**FAO—Food for the Cities initiative**4: In 2001 the FAO launched this multidisciplinary initiative, aimed at addressing the challenges that urbanization brings to urban and rural populations, as well as the environment, "by building more sustainable and resilient food systems". The initiative draws on the CRFS concept as the key philosophical and operational concept informing how urban food systems are conceptualized and approached. CRFS "encompasses a complex network of actors, processes and relationships to do with food production, processing, marketing, and consumption that exist in a given geographical region that includes a more or less concentrated urban centre and its surrounding peri-urban and rural hinterland; a regional landscape across which flows of people, goods and ecosystem services are managed" (FAO, n.d.).

**ICLEI—RUAF City Food Network in Africa**5: The ICLEI-RUAF city food network (CITYFOOD) is a global network for local and regional governments with the ambition to develop a strategic approach to their city-region food systems. It aims to accelerate action on sustainable and resilient city-region food systems by combining networking with training, policy guidance and technical expertise. CITYFOOD Network is open to all local and regional governments. Over and above hosting the African City Food Month, ICLEI CITYFOOD projects include: Investing in Urban African Food Systems (FS-Invest); Understanding Innovation in Food Water Energy Nexus and Green and Blue Infrastructure (IFWEN), assisting in the Cape Town Food System Vision, developing food governance frameworks in cities such as Arusha and Antananarivo (Fisher et al., 2019), City-to-city Food System Exchange (RF) and Innovative Food System Governance.

When read as a collective, the global governance actions and the emerging concepts pertaining to urban food, and the subsequent projects, programmes and actors driving efforts to enhance urban food systems resilience, a number of key trends become evident. The first is the embedding of the urban food system within a region, evident in the framing of the NUA and local food system action, UPA and the City Region Food System. An important component is the descaling of food and food security as a general concept, something that for the most part has been seen as a rural issue, to the urban and regional scales. Additionally, these concepts actively link the urban food system to questions of sustainability and resilience.

There has, however, been little reflection on the utility of a regional focus in specific urban governance questions. How, given their distinct administrative boundaries and urban mandates, can cities engage issues that extend beyond their governance purview and legal mandates? Do concepts such as the CRFS and the Water-Energy-Food Nexus and the wider framings of food within the NUA adequately engage these scalar challenges? This is not a call for local food systems, in full recognition of Born and Purcell's (2006) warning, but it is a central question of governance. Flows of food into a city and the reliability of these flows presents a specific resilience question, but these flows do not make up the urban food system. Such systems are far more complex and require very deliberate governance approaches to effectively engage scale, but also the multiple other systems that make up the urban system. Here, the

1 https://resilientcitiesnetwork.org/our-story/.

3 https://www.milanurbanfoodpolicypact.org/the-milan-pact/.

4 https://www.fao.org/fcit/fcit-home/en/ and https://www.fao.org/in-action/foodfor-cities-programme/en/.

5 https://africa.iclei.org/cityfood/.

2 https://www.c40.org/about-c40/.

fundamental management question of "who wakes up and worries about an issue?" needs to be asked. Can urban food resilience be achieved if multiple actors across multiple scales, working to their own mandates and principles are assumed to hold the interests of those for whom urban food systems resilience needs to be facilitated?

Such questions are compounded by the fact that traditional framings of food, aligned to agriculture, as rural (Crush & Riley, 2018) and twin track development approaches (see Frayne et al., 2010) mean that cities have limited food systems policy mandates (Battersby & Watson, 2018). Roles are often reduced to policing and controls, not strategic governance. The result is that food security and wider food system mandates are delegated to national and regional governments, along with fiscal allocations to enable programming and action. Governing urban food systems and enabling some form of urban food system resilience therefore takes place in the context of an absent mandate, undermining strategic action and deep engagement and effective urban policies that might enable resilience (see Fig. 11.1).

Additionally, given the international profile of these global governance and programmatic initiatives seeking to enhance urban resilience, is there adequate African specificity in the targets, metrics and even overarching

**Fig. 11.1** Urban food insecurity within a wider set of intersecting urban processes and vulnerabilities despite absent governance action (*Source* Authors' own representation)

assumptions that underpin these initiatives? Measurement proxies and programming interventions are in effect generic copies of assumed pathways to sustainability and some form of resilience. Absent in these are locally specific needs and issues.

The next section draws on a selection of African food systems studies to attempt to answer these questions and challenge some of the apparent assumptions that drive such processes. These case studies also speak specifically to the challenges of food insecurity and Africa's urban transition.

## Understanding Resilience in the African Urban Food System

Urban food resilience spans different scales. While the impacts of regional disruptions to food supply, for whatever reasons, might impact the resilience of a localized food system, this chapter explicitly focuses on the strategies, and urban food systems processes evident in select African cities to attempt to answer earlier questions. This engagement works from a number of positions that require clarification, as these views inform our arguments. Firstly, the household food system status, specifically the state of food and nutrition security, is an indicator of the state of the food system in a specific urban context. Using food and nutrition security as an indicator of potential resilience is also strategic. This focus is part of a realization that households face significant resilience challenges and that the general state of food insecurity is declining globally (see, e.g. Fanzo in this volume). The focus on food security, or food insecurity, also assumes a pre-existing state of distress and as such, we avoid engaging in the ability to "bounce back" or stoicism of society, but rather, strategies to enable a measure of shorter-term stability, and longer-term sustainability as tools to secure improved or stable food systems outcomes. The primary imperative is to ensure a measure of food access, and then adequate and appropriate utilization of food. These processes are enabled through effective policy and programming. Central to ensuring food access is individual and community agency. It is for this reason that we utilize the recent FAO High Level Panel of Experts (HLPE) expanded definition of food security, one that includes availability, accessibility, utilization and stability, but also, sustainability and agency as determinants of food security (HLPE, 2020).

We draw on the HLPE definition of a food system, which makes the connection between food security, the food system and the wider set of systems in which food operates. The HLPE (2014, p. 12) defines a food system as "a system that gathers all the elements (environment, people, inputs, processes, infrastructures, institutions, etc.) and activities that relate to the production, processing, distribution, preparation and consumption of food, and the outputs of these activities, including socioeconomic and environmental outcomes".

Importantly, the articulation of food security and the food system, and how this might impact the urban scale, is necessary because "previous work on food security has conventionally focused at either the household scale or at aggregate food production, with far less focus on the food system itself and its intersection with cities" (Battersby & Watson, 2018, p. 3). These connections are important because food security and food systems are influenced by governance decisions made in the absence of consideration of their potential food security impact (Battersby & Watson, 2018, p. 1).

Using evaluations based on the food security measurement approaches developed by the United States Agency for International Development's Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance programme (FANTA) (Coates et al., 2007). Table 11.1 provides an indication of the state of food security across a collection of both primary and secondary African cities.

Table 11.1 reflects both the contextual variation across different African cities and the extreme state of food insecurity in studies targeting poorer communities only. Household dietary diversity scores (HDDS) (Swindale & Bilinsky, 2006) presented in Table 11.1 reflect a significant dietary challenge. As a general rule, HDDS scores of less than six are seen as a proxy indicator for potential risks of under nutrition. Across many cities, the average scores are less than or equal to six. Amounts reflected in Table 11.1 are from pre-pandemic research between 2015 and 2018 and as such, scores are undoubtedly worse in 2022 following the impacts of COVID-19.

The varied levels in the 12 HDDS food groups consumed from a Cape Town study provide insights into different dietary profiles across income terciles (Fig. 11.2). A similar profile was evident across the different cities assessed. Figure 11.2 also highlights an increase in grains, and less fruits, vegetables, proteins and pulses in the diets of the lowest income tercile. This raises questions about whose food system resilience requires policy support and targeting at the urban scale. Given the developmental and public health challenges associated with constrained diets, do resilience

**Table 11.1** Food security and dietary diversity scores for selected Southern cities—periods 2015–2018

aAll studies are at the city scale excepting Kitwe and Windhoek *Source* Pieterse et al. (2020)

enhancing programmes need to focus on the overall food system resilience or adopt a deliberate pro-poor approach?

The results shown in Table 11.1 and Fig. 11.2 are drawn from conventional surveys and their tools, such as the FANTA. It is suggested here that these food security and food access metrics are still largely informed by the food availability and food access dimensions of the four dimensions interpretation of the earlier FAO (1996) definition of food security. Such measures have value in terms of understanding the state of food insecurity in both urban and rural households. However, they are less appropriate to offer greater detail on the profile and functioning of that food system. Second, they fail to capture some of the more multidimensional poverty challenges faced by those households under review. For policy and programming understanding, the state of food insecurity is essential but having greater clarity on how the specific food system is being used by different elements of society would add great utility.

**Fig. 11.2** Household food types by HDDS food groups across all income groups in Cape Town, South Africa (High: *n* = 200; Middle: *n* = 504; Low: *n*  = 1800) (*Source* Haysom et al. [2017]—from 2013 data)

Using data again drawn from Cape Town, Fig. 11.3 offers a sense of the diversity of food sources used to access food and highlights the variations across the same income terciles detailed in Fig. 11.2. Figure 11.3 suggests that while all income categories may use supermarkets, other food retail outlets are used frequently, with the informal economy being a key source of food access for low-income communities. Local *Spaza shops* (a South African term for a small informal corner-type store located in a neighbourhood) and street vendors are a key source of food access for poor households.

The frequency of use of informal food access points requires greater engagement (see Fig. 11.3). The fact that local corner stores are used as frequently as "at least five days a week" or "at least once a week" raises questions about proximity, spend profiles and other household needs, such as infrastructure. These frequency profiles are very different to the purchasing patterns of the upper income terciles, where weekly and monthly shopping dominate, indicating different food use and purchasing

**Fig. 11.3** Food access profiles in Cape Town, South Africa (*n* = 2,503) (*Source*  Haysom et al. [2017])

profiles. The reasons for such variations in use frequency and typology (nature of the retail outlet) of access differ in different contexts.

What the food access use and typology variation shows are varied everyday strategies applied by households in cities. This requires an engagement with the multi-dimensional nature of poverty (MDP). This is essential given that the second urban transition is not driving economic growth and not absorbing labour (Satterthwaite, 2007). While this does not directly capture food security, it is a means through which the intersections between food choice, the food system and the urban system can be better understood. The example used below in Fig. 11.4 draws on a form of MDP, the Lived Poverty Index (Mattes, 2008), which reflects a categorical scale indicating the frequency over the past year in which households went without food, fuel to cook food and clean water (Haysom & Fuseini, 2019). Here, multiple deprivations are evident.

**Fig. 11.4** Combined Lived Poverty Index results for key indicators in three African cities in response to the question "how often in the past year did you go without …" (Epworth, Zimbabwe *n* = 483; Kitwe, Zambia *n* = 871; Kisumu, Kenya *n* = 841) (*Source* Haysom and Fuseini [2019, p. 17])

As Kennedy et al. (2004) have pointed out, infrastructure is a key consideration to understand food and nutrition security. While the general focus on the links between food access and nutritional intake and water and sanitation has received attention (Young et al., 2021), links to the means to prepare food, household appliances and other factors that influence choice have been less considered. These questions are absent from traditional food and nutrition security assessments.

Household and community scale decisions, and the different forms of agency that inform the decisions, align with the process of iteration, projectivity and practical evaluation (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998). Such processes shift in response to wider urban disruptions and constraints, and would inform actions taken to enhance resilience, as Emirbayer and Mische point out:

structural contexts of action are themselves temporal as well as relational fields—multiple, overlapping ways of ordering time toward which social actors can assume different simultaneous agentic orientations. Since social actors are embedded within many such temporalities at once, they can be said to be oriented toward the past, the future, and the present at any given moment, although they may be primarily oriented toward one or another of these within any one emergent situation. (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998, pp. 963–964)

The household dynamics observed in Fig. 11.4 have an additive effect and intersect with the food retail options chosen and the nature of that food retail in many African cities. Informal vendors are able to adapt and respond to infrastructure deficiencies in ways that the formal sector cannot. In many instances, the informal sector takes on the role of the refrigerator, of the stove and of the storage cupboard for poor households living in precarious types of dwelling, across the continuum from self-built formal to largely informal dwellings. The adaptive approaches applied by informal food vendors enables a measure of food access, through bulk breaking and pre preparation of key foods.

These days, because wood is scarce and other cooking fuel is so expensive, we cook a lot of these beans and then we place these in small packets and freeze them … otherwise no-one here would eat beans anymore; the tinned beans from the shops are also too expensive. Dry beans are not expensive, other costs [energy] are high and this takes beans from diets. Informal food trader, Epworth, Harare, 2016

The quote from the vendor in Epworth demonstrates the processes and practices that are emerging. Dry beans have traditionally been a key component of many diets across Africa, but these take time to prepare and, as a result, require energy. Infrastructural deficiencies are also faced by food vendors.

Such examples point to the fact that negative food system outcomes are at times driven by factors external to the food system. In the urban context, the functioning and distributional aspects of urban infrastructure, plays a central role in how food secure urban residents might be and influence the strategies to enhance food access. The same applies when considering urban informal economy actors.

Figure 11.5 reflects the responses from vendors in the city of Kisumu, in Kenya, where the top three costs are directly related to infrastructure. The cost of transport is linked to both the temporary nature of these stores making them difficult to secure, but also the risks associated with unreliable (but costly) energy. Here, vendors strategically choose to stock small amounts and re-stock daily. This drives up prices as bulk purchasing benefits fall away, and costs associated with transport impact food prices. This is again reflected in the high costs associated with spoilage. Refrigeration is not listed as one of the highest cost items, but this is due to the low frequency of respondents who chose to make use of refrigeration.

The high levels of food insecurity, linked to high levels of multidimensional poverty, represent the reality in most African cities. Households make use of a diverse food system to make the best of the limited resources that they have. Equally, as the MDP analysis shows, other costs eat into food budgets. Dietary diversity is low. Staple foods dominate diets, and nutrition-providing foods are largely absent. Informal food vendors respond to the challenges faced by households but they themselves are subject to similar resource constraints. The poor state of infrastructure means that vendors change the foods that they stock to both respond to the households' resource constraints, but also to ensure minimal losses for their own businesses as a result of such infrastructure deficits. These intersecting challenges are being responded to in dynamic and resourceful ways by both vendors and households.

**Fig. 11.5** Kisumu food trader costs after stock purchase costs (multiple response option; *n* = 1,839) (*Source* Opiyo et al. [2018])

## Discussion and Conclusion

The vignettes used here provide insights into both the household food and nutrition challenges, as well as some wider food systems challenges. They also offer insights into the specific challenges that emerge when the urban food system intersects with the wider urban system. A resilient food system needs to be framed as a system shaped by flows of multiple physical, economic and social goods. These systems are underpinned and supported by social and economic relationships, flows of food, money and social networks, each of which having unique points of vulnerability and resilience.

Households and communities are faced with high levels of food stress (be this food insecurity, reduced diets, even hunger) and wider stressors that impact and constrain food choices, such as energy costs, time poverty, costs related to earning an income and general poverty. As a result, households strategically use the diversity of the urban food system, and the opportunities provided by the urban system, to mediate food system and food security stress. Diversity of flows exist across a series of systemic connections. Examples include economic flows (access to credit networks) and remittance flows in accessing food (both by traders and consumers) and alternative capital circulation (*stokvels,*6 buying clubs, etc.). The urban poor navigate these multiple systems (formal and informal retail, social networks, alternative capital circulation). Households apply a diversity of access and utilization strategies. These flows are further supported by other access strategies such as social networks and material flows and materiality of flows. These terms (material and materiality) are used deliberately to elevate discussions from a single grid view, a material flow, offering ways of considering an object, service or resource and the material relations and agency, as well as the interplay between agency with the material realities of everyday life and broader political and socioeconomic structures (see Bennett et al., 2010).

We argue that it is these networks, social, material, political and institutional, coupled with the diversity of the urban food systems, and that of the urban system, spanning the economic continuum, from deeply

6*Stokvels* are invitation-only clubs of 12 or more people serving as rotating credit unions or saving schemes in South Africa, where members contribute sums of money to a central fund on a weekly, fortnightly or monthly basis. The name "stokvel" originated from the term "stock fairs", the rotating cattle auctions of English settlers in the early nineteenth century.

informal to formal, that enable urban food systems resilience. This type of resilience forms part of everyday activities and practices.

The intersections between food choices and infrastructure deficits are inadequately understood. Households are having to make critical strategic choices every day. In the absence of infrastructural justice—equitable access to reliable and affordable infrastructure—in many of Africa's urban areas, the choices that are made, we argue, are not driven by ignorance, disregard for health outcomes, as some nutrition literature might argue (Abuya et al., 2012; Igumbor et al., 2012), or laziness, even fecklessness (see Tihelková, 2015). These choices are highly strategic but do involve having to make challenging trade-offs between immediate needs and the consequences of those choices, a form of negotiated resilience (Ziervogel et al., 2017). Households' choices align directly with and counter deficits in Africa's urban systems, and the wider dynamics associated with Africa's urban transition. Here, households make use of multiple grids, physical, social, material and relational. This "griddedness", an overlay of options, as opposed to a hierarchy of options, provides a diversity of options and enables a measure of resilience which is at best not fully understood, at worst disregarded in the wider framings and programmes gathering momentum in the current urban food thematics.

Given these forms of resilience and their intricate connections to the urban and other systems, our work suggests that the existing city regional framing employed by a number of global actors needs to be cognizant of these nuanced and yet highly vulnerable systems of networks, contingency, negotiation, compromise, deep knowledge and "hustle". Principally, these programmes with a predominantly urban food-specific framing of resilience overlook the intersections with the urban system. Equally, general urban programmes miss the nuance of the urban food system as used and relied on by the urban poor in African cities.

Further, our work suggests that there is a need to situate policy recommendations within a more contextually informed framework. When food security and related policies are still viewed by most African governments as a national mandate, policy directives and fiscal flows to enable operational actions generally prohibit the establishment of municipal interdepartmental government bodies for advisory and decision-making of food policies and programmes. Where agency is constrained as a result of colonial histories and extreme inequalities, the urban poor, those actively seeking to enhance their own food system resilience, are excluded from active multi-stakeholder food policy and planning structures. The few processes that exist are not open to all, often dominated by political leaders at the urban scale and remain a collection of connected elites. As per the above governance structuring, the likelihood of local government's having an urban food policy or strategy and/or action plans is slight, but possible. For a local governance structure to effectively programme and drive real change fiscal resources are required. Having access to such resources for urban food actions is highly unlikely. Given the data paucity in African cities (see Acuto & Parnell, 2016), and the high levels of informal food system activities that are not always recognized, developing an inventory of local food initiatives and practices to guide development and expansion of municipal urban food policy and programmes would be difficult. Equally, having a mechanism for assembling and analysing urban food system data to monitor/evaluate and inform municipal policy making on urban food policies is unlikely. As a result, the general approach of city governments is to defer to case studies or studies from other cities as proxy indicators. The absence of a common urban food systems view, or political mobilization, would make the viability of any food supply emergency/food resilience management plan for the municipality based on vulnerability assessment very challenging.

Given these limitations, the concepts and arguments used to lobby for urban food systems resilience should be subjected to great critique. Urban agriculture projects offer little real food systems resilience. When an expanded view of urban resilience is taken, as argued here, adding further areas for negotiation and network building, such as facilitating access to land, securing tenure and accessing water all make resilience even more complex, thus potentially even undermining the initial objective.

The limited potential to scale out and expand such urban agriculture programmes also means that it reduces innovation, allowing city governments a sense of "doing something", but in reality, only assists a few. More problematically, the UPA focus on sites or projects constrains any attempt to engage the wider systemic issues, those that local actors are building networks to mitigate. Local is important. However, our view is that local should not be viewed as confined to a discrete bounded area. Local governance of the food system serves the discussed forms of resilience best when there is a detailed understanding of the benefits and risks in specific contexts provided by the diverse social, material, economic and wider food system flows. Local is important in terms of how resilience actions and responses can be enabled through these flows.

Importantly, given the centrality of urban systems in enabling urban food systems resilience, key enablers of urban food systems resilience are local government and local governance. While multiscale governance of the food system is essential, the current focus on territorial food systems as the primary mode of engagement serves to obscure the vitally important work of local government in addressing food systems issues that fall within their borders and within their mandates.

Based on these arguments, we see urban food systems resilience as a system in which urban households (1) can have access to and support from a diverse food system, have diverse food access options and a diversity of alternatives that align with their lived realities (accessibility, utilization); (2) can make food-related decisions and choices within an infrastructurally just urban system (utilization, stability); and (3) in which system users are seen as active agents in shaping theirs and wider food system resilience (agency and stability and sustainability).

Required is greater engagement with the urban system, approaches that engage across multiple infrastructure grids and systems. These are highly complex systems and cannot be understood in silos. Arguably, the complexity of the system offers a measure of "negotiated resilience" (as per Ziervogel et al., 2017). This resilience forms part of a collection of urban practices enlivened to secure a measure of resilience. The outcomes of such processes do not necessarily align with the framings of resilience proposed in international programmes and initiatives such as those discussed here. Existing governance structures and regimes are ill-equipped to engage in and surf the complexity of these intersecting systems, essential processes if resilience is to be facilitated. The absence of a distinct urban food mandate makes this even more challenging. Further, when urban food is equated to production and increased supply, linked to rural regions, the ability to enhance food security and urban food resilience through a focus on deliberate urban processes and mandates, such as energy, transport, water provision and economic activity is lost.

New forms of governance are required, together with new forms of measurement. Also required is the validation of local knowledge and the diversity of resilience actions. These should be integrated into new forms and understandings of African cities and African urban food systems resilience.

## References

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## Reflections and Conclusions

## *Stephen Devereux and Christophe Béné*

The contributions to this book provoke and inspire reflections on a wide range of issues—conceptual, empirical, and policy-related. In this concluding chapter, we reflect on what we have learned, what outstanding issues remain unresolved, and the way forward for the three 'heroes' of this journey: resilience, food security, and food systems.

## The Elusiveness of Concepts

Perhaps because concepts like 'resilience', 'food system', and even 'food security' (which now has six pillars) are so abstract and elusive, they are prone to generalisation—'the global food system' (Caron et al.,

C. Béné International Center for Tropical Agriculture, Cali, Colombia

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S. Devereux (B)

Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
Wageningen Economic Research group, Wageningen, The Netherlands e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
C. Béné and S. Devereux (eds.), *Resilience and Food Security in a Food Systems Context*, Palgrave Studies in Agricultural Economics and Food Policy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-23535-1\_12

Chapter 3), 'a globalized food system' (Losch & May, Chapter 10), or 'the African food system' (Pinstrup-Andersen, 2010), for example. Generally, the less precisely a concept is specified, the more likely it is to be contested and the more challenging it becomes to analyse and apply to real-world issues. But a lack of precision does not necessarily mean a lack of clarity. The contributions to this book have all added to our understanding of these three central concepts, conceptually and empirically. All the co-authors are grappling with how to make these concepts more practically useful, in terms of solving the perennial global challenges of food insecurity and hunger, not least by building the resilience of food systems against stressors like climate change and unforeseen shocks like COVID-19.

One reason why solutions are so elusive is because the questions are not clearly specified. Is there in fact a single unified global (or even African) food system—or are we edging towards this—or are there numerous interconnected food systems operating at different scales in overlapping spaces? Are we aiming to build resilient food systems, or do we look to well-functioning food systems to build resilient households and communities? Is a food system expected to deliver food, or food security? Put another way, is the persistence of food insecurity, malnutrition, and hunger the fault of the food system, or are these negative outcomes the results of failures elsewhere in local societies, national economies, and public and private policies?

While the concepts of food security and resilience both have written histories dating back several centuries, resilience has been applied to food security only very recently, probably since the turn of the century. Constas (Chapter 5) describes food security as the 'incumbent concept' and shows how the frequency of occurrence of the word 'resilience' has steadily (but erratically) increased in a key food security policy document—the FAO's annual 'State of Food Insecurity' (SOFI) report—and in two relevant peer-reviewed journals—'Global Food Security', and 'Food Policy'. De Pinto et al. (Chapter 7) find similar trends for the co-occurrence of 'resilience' and 'food security', in a wider search of publications in the Web of Science Core Collection since 1996.

As for food systems, the recent flurry of conceptual work emerged out of dissatisfaction with limited understandings of food systems that paid too much attention to individual components in isolation notably agricultural production, food markets and food prices—while neglecting other essential components, and the linkages between them. A food system has many actors—producers, processors, distributors, and consumers—who are all located in wider socioeconomic, environmental, and policy contexts that profoundly affect food security outcomes for individuals and households. Hoddinott (Chapter 6) points out that we know much more about producers and consumers than we do about processors and distributors, who have been relatively neglected by researchers and policy-makers. The COVID-19 pandemic drew particular attention to the processing sector, because workers handling food in close proximity were highly susceptible to transmitting the virus to each other, potentially disrupting operations due to absentee workers or temporary shutdowns of entire facilities.

This points to one advantage of broadening the lens of food security analysis—from availability to access, then adding utilisation and stability, and more recently agency and sustainability—and to analysing food security outcomes for people in terms of the food systems that deliver (or don't deliver) food to them. The complex flowcharts that capture the causal linkages between the components of and agents operating in food systems provide more 'hooks' with which to analyse food security and resilience. For instance, food resilience requires resilient producers, resilient processors, resilient distributors, and resilient consumers. Analytical tools are needed for each of these actors, and policy levers must be found and applied to strengthen resilience at each of these nodes and links in the food system.

One challenge with linking or overlaying different concepts or paradigms is that each comes with its own framings, terminologies, and unresolved debates. Constas (Chapter 5) illustrates this with his 'Integrated food security and resilience model' which has three dimensions: *food security* (World Food Summit, food sovereignty, and food systems approaches—each with their own models and pillars); *shocks and stressors*  (at macro, meso, and micro scales); and *resilience capacities* (absorptive, adaptive, and transformative). While this is useful as an overarching framework and as a heuristic tool, the three-dimensional diagram (see p. xx) looks as puzzling as a Rubik's cube to 'solve', in terms of how to reshape food systems to achieve desirable outcomes such as food security and resilience.

## The Food System is Broken…

Food security, resilience, and food systems are not only academic constructs that have generated decades of peer-reviewed literature; they are all instrumentally concerned with human well-being and are central components of contemporary policy discourse (see Lindgren & Lang, Chapter 4), at global level and in countries around the world. As Fanzo shows (Chapter 2), eradicating hunger has been an explicit goal of global public policy since the Hot Springs Conference in 1943. This commitment has been repeatedly reaffirmed—by the World Food Congress (1963), World Food Conference (1974), World Food Summit (1996), Millennium Development Goals (2000), Sustainable Development Goals (2015), and, most recently, the UN Food Systems Summit (2021). However, actual achievements have lagged behind these good intentions, with 'only mixed success' (Fanzo, p. xx)—a euphemism for partial failure—to date.

One reason for this, Fanzo argues, has been a narrow framing of the problem, leading to interventions that follow either a vertically sectoral approach (e.g. Green Revolution), a technological treatment approach (e.g. GMOs), or a short-view approach (e.g. food aid). By contrast, a food systems lens offers a comprehensive framing of food insecurity problems, leading to more holistic interventions. Only by understanding better the relationships and linkages between a food system's *drivers* (population growth, urbanisation, climate change, etc.), *components* (food supply chains, food environments, consumer behaviour), and *context* (sociocultural, political), can adverse *outcomes* (in nutrition, livelihoods, the environment, and social equity) be more effectively addressed (HLPE, 2017).

## …Or Is It?

Even if hunger has not yet been eradicated from the world, it could be argued that the key indicators are moving in the right direction, and that this is largely due to scientific advances and strengthening institutions (Pinker, 2018). As evidence of the increasing resilience of 'the global food system', Caron et al*.* (Chapter 3) draw attention to the fact that it withstood a historically unprecedented shock—the doubling of the world's population from three to six billion in just four decades—while continuing to produce and distribute more than enough food to feed these rapidly rising numbers. In terms of food availability, by the early 2000s the proportion of the world's population living in countries with critically low food supplies had fallen from 50+% to close to zero in just 40 years, partly driven by adoption of Green Revolution innovations in South Asia. In terms of economic access to food, international grain prices fell by 30+% over the same period (Baldos & Hertel, 2016). With hindsight, this under-appreciated achievement refuted neo-Malthusian pessimists who, even before the 1970s world food crisis, were predicting mass starvation due to unchecked population growth (Brown, 1974; Hardin, 1974; Paddock & Paddock, 1967).

The global capacity to feed a constantly growing population has been facilitated by simultaneous advances across a range of human endeavours, from yield-enhancing agricultural innovations to transport systems and the globalisation of trade, to information and communications technologies. This technical progress has been complemented by global humanitarianism: an increasingly sophisticated and responsive emergency relief system, effectively filling supply gaps that appear when food systems are disrupted by natural disasters or human conflicts—a success story for which the World Food Programme was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2020.

Of course, resilience is not only about aggregate improvements over time; it is (by definition) about dealing effectively with shocks and stressors. Food systems recovered quickly after the global food crisis of 2008 (Golay, 2010), and do not appear to have been severely affected by the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic (Béné et al., 2021). The risk of famine, which killed tens of millions of people in Africa, Asia and Europe during the twentieth century, has receded and is now confined to a handful of mainly conflict-affected countries, almost all in and around the Horn of Africa (Devereux, 2020). On the other hand, there are justified concerns that climate change could threaten local, regional, and even global food security in the coming decades, through reduced or more volatile yields of staple crops and the displacement or mass migration of affected populations, many of them being farmers.

 Chapter 7). One lesson from work on climate change for those concerned with food security is to accept that building stable food systems is an unrealistic goal in the context of a changing climate. Food systems must constantly adapt and reconfigure themselves, because the environment itself is unstable. 'Resilience theory teaches us that social-ecological systems are always changing and can act or respond in unpredictable ways, normalizing wicked problems' (Craig, 2020, p. 29). Achieving food security for all remains the ultimate goal, but the pathways to achieving that goal are shifting over time. Resilience in an era of rapid climate change is not about preserving the *status quo ante* at all costs, it is about making the necessary adjustments to continue delivering food—for instance, by adopting 'climate-smart agriculture' approaches (Lipper et al., 2018).

One shift in emphasis induced by climate change is to deprioritise perpetual increases in crop *yields* and prioritise instead reductions in yield *volatility,* with innovations that achieve both, of course, being the first prize. Beyond food production, an array of 'climate-proofing' interventions is needed in the areas of food storage, packaging, distribution, processing, marketing, and preparation—in short, at every stage of the food system. Some of these interventions require technological innovations, but others require stronger institutions and more committed governance (De Pinto et al*.,* Chapter 7).

In other words, achieving food security and resilient food systems needs scientists and politicians, as well as activists and the private sector, to work together cooperatively towards these shared objectives (see Fanzo, Chapter 2; Caron et al., Chapter 3). Investment in research on its own is not enough. Political speeches and resolutions made at climate conferences are not enough. Defeating the unprecedented threat to global food security posed by climate change requires an alignment of scientific innovation and political commitment.

## Food System Paradoxes

A food system (or systems) that appear(s) increasingly efficient and resilient over time at the global level can conceal pockets of fragility and inability to meet food needs for vulnerable groups of people in specific places ('food deserts') at specific points in time (seasonal hunger). Even worse, efficient food systems can co-exist with high levels of persistent or chronic food insecurity over time, as reflected in indicators such as child stunting that appear to contradict the confident claims by some that the global food system is working, is fit for purpose, and 'is not broken' (Caron et al*.,* Chapter 3).

How do we explain, for instance, the puzzling fact that 25% of children in South Africa display stunted growth, despite living in a country that not only produces enough food to meet domestic consumption needs but also exports surpluses to neighbouring countries? This paradox is easily explained by invoking the laws of supply and demand. In marketdominated economies, producers and traders respond to demand signals from consumers. In South Africa and in other countries across the world, farmers and markets deliver adequate supplies of food to local or foreign consumers who can afford to pay for it. Hunger follows not from insufficient food supplies, but from inadequate purchasing power of poor consumers— i.e. demand failure or 'entitlement failure', to use Amartya Sen's terminology (Sen, 1981).

Even a resilient food system with falling rates of undernutrition can generate other forms of food insecurity such as obesity and micronutrient deficiencies. These forms of food insecurity are increasing globally, not necessarily because food systems are not resilient but because they are producing unhealthy diets (Haddad et al., 2016). The persistent preoccupation with aggregate food availability (as quantified by the FAO's food balance sheets) has diverted policy attention away from the urgent need to shift the focus towards affordable access for all to quality diets.

It follows that well-functioning food systems are necessary but not sufficient to eradicate food insecurity (see Fanzo, Chapter 2), because food systems are themselves embedded within larger systems. Food security also depends on, *inter alia,* well-functioning health and education systems, water and sanitation facilities, as well as sound governance, economic growth, political stability, and social inclusion. Moreover, food systems resilience, defined as 'the capacity over time of a food system to sustainably provide sufficient, appropriate, and accessible food to all, in the face of shocks and stressors' (Hoddinott, Chapter 6), might not guarantee the same outcome indefinitely. Another paradox is that the trajectories taken by evolving food systems, despite generating adequate food supplies in the recent past and the present, could contain the 'seeds of their own destruction', potentially undermining their performance and resilience in the future. Examples include the harmful effects of agricultural intensification on soil quality, biodiversity, environmental sustainability, and certain rural livelihoods (on this point see Fanzo, also Caron et al., in this volume).

## Action for Resilience

Contributors to this book draw attention to the roles of various actors in constructing food resilience—governments, development agencies, the private sector, and local communities—operating at different scales, from global to local, and requiring coordination at all these levels.

Resilient households require resilient food systems. As we noted earlier (in Chapter 1), a wealthy household that is food secure and apparently resilient might nonetheless be "plunged into hunger" (Lindgren & Lang, Chapter 4) or even "plunged into starvation" (Sen, 1981, p. 47) if its access to food is severely disrupted by the closure of local markets and restrictions on mobility, due to a pandemic or military conflict. It follows that strengthening resilience has two discrete but complementary aspects: building the capacities and resources of individuals, households, groups, and communities, on the one hand, and 'shock-proofing' each component of the food system(s) with which they interact, on the other.

Hoddinott (Chapter 6) considers the role of *governments* in building resilient food systems, following the United Nations (2020) guidance on public action to support improved anticipation, prevention, absorption, adaptation, and transformation. Examples drawn from related areas include famine early warning systems (improved anticipation and prevention of food crises), social protection (improved ability to absorb shocks such as COVID-19 lockdowns), or conservation agriculture practices (better adaptation to climate shocks) as supported by the Adaptation Fund (see De Pinto et al., Chapter 7). Progress can best be described as uneven, probably because these efforts to build resilience are occurring in some of the world's most challenging contexts, in low-income fooddeficit countries (LIFDCs) and in areas that are ecologically marginal, with infrastructure deficits and weak governance.

In parallel, bilateral and multilateral *donors* play important roles in conceptualising food security and food system resilience, and in designing, financing, and implementing projects in low- and middle-income countries to strengthen food security and resilience. Lindgren and Lang (Chapter 4) describe a 'fractured consensus' in terms of what development agencies mean by these concepts, and how to achieve globally endorsed objectives for ending hunger. One reason for divergence across agencies is weak global governance and institutional architecture on food, while another explanation is ideological. Some agencies favour right-ofcentre neoliberal approaches driven by economic analysis and focusing on food production plus economic growth; while others are left-ofcentre, advocate for a rights-based approach, and focus on sustainable and equitable access to food for all.

Moving to the *private sector*, a concentration of actors in any component of a food system generally increases risk and undermines resilience. There is a long history of literature on the risks of oligopolies or cartels in the global grain trade (Morgan, 1979) and, more recently, at national and subnational levels, of 'supermarketisation' in food wholesale and retail sectors (Crush & Frayne, 2017; Reardon et al., 2003). Too few firms in any sector raises the risk of market distortions such as price-fixing, to the detriment of poor consumers. Conversely, having many actors in the food sector, or access to many markets (including integration into global food markets), increases competition and spreads the risk of depending on a single actor or market. An open food system is likely to be more resilient than a closed system (Hoddinott, Chapter 6). On the other hand, some adaptations trade off maximising output or revenue (e.g. through specialisation) *versus* stabilising output or revenue (e.g. through diversification, or by purchasing insurance), so resilience can come at a cost.

An important implication of the recent addition of 'agency' as a pillar of food security (HLPE, 2020) is that it empowers *people* to strengthen their own resilience—as individuals, households, communities, or identity-based groups—rather than reducing them to passive recipients of government policies or donor assistance. As Haysom and Battersby argue (Chapter 11): 'Central to ensuring food access is individual and community agency', but the agency of the poor in their interactions with food systems is often constrained by social and economic inequalities, and the domination of political structures and decision-making processes by local elites. We conclude from this that food resilience can be enhanced if the agency of all food system actors and users is enhanced. However, agency has not yet been fully incorporated into mainstream analysis of food security and food systems.

## Food Security and COVID-19

COVID-19 provided an unprecedented test for the resilience of food systems across the world. In one of the most empirical contributions to this volume, Upton et al*.* (Chapter 9) analyse COVID-19 as a shock that compounded many other shocks and stressors faced by vulnerable people in low-income countries. As a pandemic, COVID-19 differed from shocks that are more usually studied—such as natural disasters (droughts), economic shocks (food price spikes), and sociopolitical shocks (conflicts)—but its secondary impacts, especially on livelihoods through restrictions on economic activity imposed by lockdown regulations, seem to be remarkably similar.

In general, food systems were relatively protected, as food was declared a priority sector by most governments, allowing food supply chains to continue performing their essential functions, mainly to protect consumers during lockdowns. Nonetheless, drawing on panel survey data from rural communities in three African countries—Kenya, Madagascar, and Malawi—Upton et al*.* find that COVID-19 impacted adversely on all pillars of food security. Barrett and Constas (2014) define resilience as the capacity for 'attaining and maintaining' food security, implying that chronically hungry households are neither food secure nor resilient. Using this definition, Upton et al*.* find that many households they surveyed were food insecure and therefore not resilient pre-pandemic, and that COVID-19 exacerbated both their food insecurity and their lack of resilience. In effect, COVID-19 was absorbed by these households as one more shock on top of others they were forced to deal with at the same time, notably a severe drought in Madagascar and flooding in parts of Kenya.

On the other hand, the situation did not deteriorate for all people everywhere. In Malawi, the negative shock of COVID-19 was more than compensated in many households by the positive shock of a bumper maize harvest. Upton et al. conclude that resilience must be understood and addressed not in relation to any one specific shock or stressor, but in terms of the full range of context-specific risks and vulnerabilities that households and communities face at each point in time. This brings us onto the contentious and seemingly insoluble challenge of how to measure resilience, which is discussed next.

## Measuring Resilience

Whatever their ideological differences, one commonality among almost all development agencies is a preoccupation with measurement, which is understandable given their need to demonstrate positive impacts from their investments in initiatives to improve food security and resilience in low- and middle-income countries. While a range of tools for quantifying household food security has been devised—e.g. dietary diversity score (DDS), food insecurity experience scale (FIES), and coping strategies index (CSI)—resilience is less tangible and more challenging to measure, although the Resilience Index Measurement and Analysis (RIMA-II) tool (FAO, 2016) has gained some traction, especially among United Nations agencies (Lindgren & Lang, Chapter 4).

Of course, resilience must often be measured in volatile contexts that embody a significant risk or actual occurrence of shocks to livelihoods and food systems. Recognising this reality, Haysom and Battersby (Chapter 11) suggest that 'different measures of resilience are required, measures that take into account the constant state of crisis'. Again, this is not merely of academic interest. Once the context of vulnerability and resilience is accurately understood, appropriate interventions can be designed that strengthen absorptive, adaptive, and transformative capacities of relevant populations.

However, an empirical challenge remains. Resilience implies the capacity to withstand shocks without resorting to 'distress' behaviours, such as selling productive assets to buy food, that will compromise the integrity of the affected household's livelihood. Measuring this capacity requires assessing each household's food security status and asset-holdings before and after a shock occurs, but shocks are, by their nature, unpredictable. Development programmes are much simpler to evaluate, because 'treatment' and 'control' households can be surveyed and compared before (baseline) and after (endline) an intervention is delivered. Perhaps resilience—like 'vulnerability' and 'sustainability'—is destined to remain an elusive and contested concept that is challenging to define and even more challenging to measure, for this reason.

## Disaggregating Vulnerabilities