Food Studies Commons^™

No. 42: The Role Of Infrastructure Access In Urban Household Vulnerability To Food Insecurity In Southern Cities, Cameron Mccordic, Bruce Frayne, James Sgro

Hungry Cities Partnership

The geographical concentration of poverty in informal neighbourhoods across cities is a common socioeconomic feature of the urban form. Many of these impoverished areas also suffer from limited access to urban infrastructure. Given the expense and planning necessary to develop urban infrastructure, these areas are socially vulnerable in part because of their exclusion from urban master plans. This vulnerability is made more severe by the knock-on impacts of limited infrastructure access on other aspects of human insecurity. This paper uses HCP data to assess the predictive relationship between household infrastructure access and food insecurity across five case-study cities (Mexico City, …

No. 40: Food Retailing Transitions And New Retail Businesses In Nanjing, China, Ning Dai, Zhenzhong Si

Hungry Cities Partnership

China’s food retailing sector is transitioning towards a digitalized consumer society in the context of widespread food safety anxiety. At the forefront of this transition is an innovative form of food retailing called New Retail Businesses (NRBs). Based on field research and interviews with key stakeholders in Nanjing, this study outlines distinctive features of NRBs in contrast to the conventional food system. It also points out that NRBs have shared goals with the government’s Vegetable Basket Project. Thus the implementation of this project in Nanjing has propelled the growth of a local NRB. Equipped with an integrated ecological food supply …

No. 38: Reconceptualizing Informal Economic Governance: Implications From Cape Town, South Africa, Graeme Young

Hungry Cities Partnership

As awareness of the centrality of informality in urban development processes in the Global South is slowly incorporated into the international development agenda, a full understanding of the myriad ways in which informal economic activity is governed has become increasingly urgent. This discussion paper seeks to address this need through an analysis of informal economic governance in Cape Town, South Africa. It first outlines a general theoretical framework for understanding the governance of informal economies that focuses on the logics that inform governance, the systems in which governance take place, the modes in which governance operates, and the forms that …

No. 19: Inclusive Growth And The Informal Food Sector In Kingston, Jamaica, Robert Kinlocke, Elizabeth Thomas-Hope

Hungry Cities Partnership

This report should be read in conjunction with previous work on the food system in Kingston by the Hungry Cities Partnership. HCP No. 4, The Urban Food System of Kingston, Jamaica provides a comprehensive overview of the nature and operation of Kingston’s food system and the current state of knowledge about the informal food sector (Thomas-Hope et al 2017). It demonstrates the importance of the informal sector and city markets as a source of affordable food and employment. HCP No. 15, The State of Household Food Security in Kingston, Jamaica (Kinlocke et al 2019) presents the results of a city-wide …

No. 22: Inclusive Growth And Informal Food Vending In Mexico City, Mexico, Salomón Gonzalález Arellano, Guénola Capron

Hungry Cities Partnership

This report aims to shed further light on the food system of Mexico City’s Metropolitan Zone (referred to in this report as “the ZMCM”). The report is part of a research program on food security in cities of the Global South within the Hungry Cities Partnership (HCP) and builds on earlier HCP publications including The Urban Food System of Mexico City, Mexico (Capron et al 2017), The State of Household Food Security in Mexico City, Mexico (Capron et al 2018), and Urban Food Deserts in Nairobi and Mexico City (Wagner et al 2019). It also contributes to the comparative analysis …

No. 20:Inclusive Growth And The Informal Food Sector In Bangalore, India, Kailas Shankar Honasoge, Keerthana Jagadeesh, Veneet J. Kalloor, Shriya Anand

Hungry Cities Partnership

This report presents and analyzes the findings of a food vendor survey conducted by the Indian Institute for Human Settlements as part of the Hungry Cities Partnership (HCP) in Bangalore, India, in September and October 2018. It is a supplement to, and should be read in conjunction with, HCP Report No. 5: The Urban Food System of Bangalore, India (Surie and Sami 2017) and HCP Report No. 14, The State of Household Food Security in Bangalore, India (Koduganti et al 2019). The former provides essential contextual background on the history, demography, and economy of Bangalore, while the latter presents findings …

No. 18: Inclusive Growth And Informal Vending In Maputo's Food Markets, Inês Raimundo, Jeremy Wagner, Jonathan Crush, Ezequiel Abrahamo, Cameron Mccordic

Hungry Cities Partnership

This report builds on, and should be read in conjunction with related work on informality in the Mozambican capital by the Southern African Migration Program (SAMP) (Chikanda and Raimundo 2017, Crush et al 2015, Peberdy 2000), the African Food Security Urban Network (AFSUN) (Raimundo et al 2013), and the Hungry Cities Partnership (HCP). The HCP has produced two reports that provide essential context. HCP Report No. 2, The Urban Food System of Maputo, Mozambique (Chikanda et al 2016), provides a comprehensive overview of current knowledge about the nature and operation of Maputo’s food system. It demonstrates the importance of the …

No. 44: Change, Challenge And Opportunity In The Indian Urban Food System: Lessons From Bangalore, India, Farhan Rahman

Hungry Cities Partnership

Over the past decade and a half, food policies have undergone much change as decentralization and the reliance on free markets have escalated. Increasing levels of research into the traditional wholesaling system prompted Indian lawmakers to embark upon reform. Using evidence obtained from doctoral research in Bangalore, India, this paper demonstrates that the traditional system is still largely intact. However, there are structural socio-economic and political challenges that act as barriers towards the continued survival of traditional food vendors in the urban sphere. This paper outlines key areas of research in price management, micro-small medium enterprise development, political empowerment and …

No. 45: Food Security Policy Responses To Covid-19 In Wuhan And Nanjing, China, Yi-Shin Chang, Zhenzhong Si, Steffanie Scott, Taiyang Zhong, Jonathan Crush

Hungry Cities Partnership

After decades of famine and thousands of deaths caused by food shortages and starvation, China was able to achieve food security for the majority of its population through ensuring food availability. Despite this, during COVID-19, the government needed to heighten their responses to ensure food security and faced several challenges in doing so. This paper analyzes Chinese policies around food security during COVID-19 in two cities: Wuhan and Nanjing. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s definition of food security and the four pillars it identifies (availability, access, utilization, and stability) are used to provide a framework for this analysis. …

No. 39: Urban Food Governance Perspectives In Changing African And Southern Cities, Gareth Haysom

Hungry Cities Partnership

The key urban food governance question in African and other Southern cities is understanding the role that appropriate infrastructures could play in delivering positive outcomes in the urban food system. This discussion paper looks at urban food governance needs in African cities and reflects on the governance actions required in order to respond to wider food system changes and challenges. It argues that food in the African city is a public good and discusses the role that a state (and city government) should play in enabling access. The paper finds that the normalization of food poverty, the absence of agency, …

No. 41: Migration And Food Security In Cities Of The Global South, Abel Chikanda, Jonathan Crush, Godfrey Tawodzera

Hungry Cities Partnership

South-South migration is an important, though poorly researched, component of the global migration regime. This discussion paper focuses on the movement of migrants from one country in the Global South to live and work in urban areas of another. While they move from one country to another for a variety of reasons and with variable outcomes, the vast majority of South-South migrants move to cities in countries of destination where employment and livelihood opportunities are greatest. The authors find that the data for generating an overall picture of the global distribution of South-South migrants in cities is patchy and dated …

No. 43: Revisiting China’S Supermarket Revolution: Evidence From Nanjing City, Yuan Yuan, Taiyang Zhong, Zhenzhong Si, Xianjin Huang, Jonathan Crush

Hungry Cities Partnership

Like many emerging economies in the Global South, China is experiencing major transformations of its national and local food system characterized by the rise of supermarkets. There has been an ongoing debate on the relationship between the supermarket and the wet market in developing countries. Drawing on data from a city-wide supermarket mapping and surveys conducted in Nanjing in 2019, this paper revisits China’s “supermarketization” process and challenges the prediction of supermarket domination. It reveals that Nanjing’s food retailing system has been shaped by the complementarity and co-evolution of the wet market and the supermarket with great policy support. It …

No.05: Food Security And The Changing Landscape Of Food Retailing In Nanjing, China, Zhenzhong Si, Jonathan Crush

Hungry Cities Partnership

■ The expansion of supermarkets and online food markets are changing the complexion of food retailing in Nanjing. At the same time, traditional forms of retail display considerable resilience.

■ Nanjing has low levels of food insecurity overall as measured by the HFIAS and HDDS. The one in five households who are food insecure are primarily low-income and female-centred.

■ Concerns over food safety are a major characteristic of all consumers in Nanjing irrespective of income and food security status.

■ Policy implications include ensuring food access for households with higher levels of food insecurity, promoting trustworthy food sources in …

No.04: Enabling Informal Food Vending In Urban South Africa, Godfrey Tawodzera, Jonathan Crush

Hungry Cities Partnership

■ Food vending is an important component of the South African economy, where it provides employment, income, livelihoods and contributes to the food security of poorer households.

■ Policies towards the informal food sector in most South African cities are restrictive and often punitive, and undermine the critical contributions of informal food vending.

■ To maximize their impacts, informal food vendors need an enabling policy environment with less red tape, better infrastructure, greater financial and other supports, and public recognition of their positive role in the urban food system.

No. 37: Validation Of The Hcp Survey Tool For Measuring Urban Food Insecurity: An Item Response Theory Approach, Vonai Charamba, Ndeyapo Nickanor, Lawrence Kazembe

Hungry Cities Partnership

There is some controversy on the applicability of the summand-based Household Food Security Assessment Score (HFIAS) and Household Dietary Diversity Score (HDDS) as measures of food insecurity in urban areas in the Global South. These measures were primarily designed for measurement in rural communities where food insecurity itself was first identified and is still predominantly conceptualized. The objective of the research reported in this paper is to assess the internal and external validity of the HFIAS and the HDDS in determining food insecurity levels in an urban context, using HCP data for urban households in Windhoek, Namibia. Validation was performed …

No. 32: Wet Market Vendor Profits In Nanjing, China: A Spatial Analysis, Xinxan Qi, Taiyang Zhong, Zhenzhong Si, Xianjin Huang, Jonathan Crush

Hungry Cities Partnership

Wet markets play an important role in urban food security in many Asian countries. Existing research pays more attention to the wet market food accessibility of urban residents and less on the business operations and profits of wet market vendors. Based on a survey of 1,119 small food enterprises in Nanjing, this study employs the spatial analytical method Geodetector to explore spatial variations in vendor profits in Nanjing. The study shows obvious spatial differentiation in the profits of wet market vendors across the city and draws several conclusions. Profitability is mainly related to the demographic features of vendors, their business …

No. 17: Inclusive Growth And Small-Scale Food Vending In Nanjing, China, Zhenzhong Si, Taiyang Zhong

Hungry Cities Partnership

This report should be read in conjunction with HCP Report No.1: The Urban Food System of Nanjing, China (Si et al 2016) and HCP Report No. 9: The State of Household Food Security in Nanjing, China (Si and Zhong 2018). The first report provides contextual background on the history, demography, and economy of Nanjing. It also contains a review of existing studies on Nanjing’s changing food system. The second summarizes the results of the household food security survey conducted in Nanjing in 2015. It provides essential information on the food purchase patterns of urban residents and highlights the importance of …

No. 15: The State Of Household Food Security In Kingston, Jamaica, Robert Kinlocke, Elizabeth Thomas-Hope, Adonna Jardine-Comrie, Beth Timmers, Therese Ferguson, Cameron Mccordic

Hungry Cities Partnership

This report provides an analysis of results from a household food security survey conducted in Kingston, Jamaica, by the Hungry Cities Partnership (HCP). It documents the state of food insecurity in households across selected communities in the Kingston Metropolitan Area. It should be read in conjunction with HCP Report No. 4: The Urban Food System of Kingston, Jamaica (Thomas- Hope et al 2017), which provides more detailed background and context for the results discussed here.

No. 14: The State Of Household Food Security In Bangalore, India, Jyothi Koduganti, Charrlotte Adelina, Mohanraju Js, Shriya Anand

Hungry Cities Partnership

This report presents and analyzes the findings of a household food security survey conducted by the IIHS and the Hungry Cities Partnership in Bangalore, India, from April to September 2016. Surie and Sami (2017) provide essential contextual background for this report on Bangalore’s history, demography, economy, and changing food system. This report describes the survey and presents and discusses its findings. It then analyzes the food security situation and food system functions in Bangalore. The report thus provides solid background information for future research on Bangalore’s food system and lays the foundation for comparative studies with the other cities of …

No. 27: Social Protection And Urban Food Systems, Gareth Haysom, Issahaka Fuseini

Hungry Cities Partnership

This discussion paper examines development implications for food and nutrition when cash transfer interventions intersect with food system changes, particularly in urban areas where food is predominantly accessed through the market. South Africa is used as a case study because of its advanced social protection system as well as the rapid food system changes it is experiencing that are similar to those in other cities in the Global South. The authors consider the possible nutritional transition-related consequences for society, as well as the livelihood-related consequences for the poor when cash transfer systems, such as that of the South African social …

No. 25: The Climate Change-Food Security Nexus: Intergovernmental Frameworks And Hyper-Experimentation In Cities, Carrie L. Mitchell, Joanne Fitzgibbons, Kristen Regier, Siya Agrawal

Hungry Cities Partnership

In this discussion paper we detail the challenges of tackling the food security-climate change nexus in an era of hyper-experimentation in cities. We detail how the challenge of addressing food security and climate change at the international scale has opened the metaphorical door for urban experimentation, or interventions in the processes of city building at the local level taken by state and non-state actors. Yet, today’s urban experiments differ significantly from their historical counterparts. We detail examples from planning history to contextualize the differences between historical and contemporary urban experimentation. Through a review of three global and national urban experiments, …

No. 29: Modes Of Governance Of Street Food Vending In Nanjing, China, Ning Dai, Taiyang Zhong, Steffanie Scott

Hungry Cities Partnership

In the Global South, the informal food economy is both a source of income for disadvantaged urban groups and an accessible source of food for consumers. Yet governance of this economy has commonly been restrictive in Southern countries including China. Consequently, in China there has been an antagonistic relationship between vendors and chengguan (China’s city management officers). This antagonism has been studied by researchers and reported by Chinese media. This discussion paper uses semi-structured interviews with street food vendors to evaluate how recent policy reforms have affected vendor-chengguan relations and vendor livelihoods in Nanjing. It identifies a non-confrontational relationship …

No. 28: Urban Food Deserts In Nairobi And Mexico City, Jeremy Wagner, Lucy Hinton, Cameron Mccordic, Samuel Owuor, Guénola Capron, Salomón Gonzalez Arellano

Hungry Cities Partnership

Recent conceptualizations of “food deserts” have expanded from a sole focus on access to supermarkets, to food retail outlets, to all household food sources. Each iteration of the urban food desert concept has associated food sourcing behaviour in relation to household poverty, food insecurity, and dietary diversity characteristics. While the term continues to evolve, there has been little empirical evidence to test whether these associations hold in cities of the Global South. This discussion paper empirically tests the premises of three iterations of the urban food desert concept using household survey data collected in Nairobi, Kenya, and Mexico City, Mexico. …

No. 24: Achieving Urban Food Security Through A Public-Private Hybrid Food Provisioning System: A Case Study Of Nanjing, China, Taiyang Zhong, Zhenzhong Si, Jonathan Crush, Xianjin Huang, Steffanie Scott, Menglu Yan, Shuangshuang Tang, Xiang Zhang

Hungry Cities Partnership

Private and public markets are two models of urban food retailing governance. This paper examines the public-private hybrid model of urban food provisioning system and its governance in Nanjing, China. Based on data from surveys, non-structured interviews, and bibliographical material analysis, we examine the public-private hybrid model and its linkages with urban food security. Our analysis shows that the public-private hybrid model of food markets and its governance ensures a relatively high-level urban food security in Nanjing. We argue that the hybrid food market governance system effectively integrates public and private capital into a government-supported and regulated, small-business-based system in …

No. 33: Containing The Informal Food Sector In Windhoek, Namibia, Lawrence Kazembe, Ndeyapo Nickanor, Jonathan Crush

Hungry Cities Partnership

Policy responses to the growth of the informal food sector in African cities vary from benign neglect to active destruction. The eradication of street food vending is the dominant mode of governance. Alternative approaches that recognize the inevitability of informality and the role of the sector in making food accessible to the urban poor have begun to emerge. One is an enclose-and-contain model, which creates spaces for trading and seeks to confine trading to these spaces through active policing outside them. This strategy has been pursued in Windhoek but has been compromised by consumer demand that is not satisfied by …

No. 30: Governing The Informal Food Sector In Cities Of The Global South, Graeme Young, Jonathan Crush

Hungry Cities Partnership

The role of the informal food sector in the urban food system cannot be appreciated or understood without the compilation and analysis of systematic and representative data on the activities of informal enterprises across a city and along food supply chains outside it. At present, there are significant gaps in the knowledge base about the character, operation, and roles of the informal food sector; a pre-requisite for sound and supportive governance. This paper presents evidence on the relative importance of the informal food sector and discusses various methodologies for improving the knowledge base. It identifies the challenges and opportunities facing …

No. 36: The Interface Between Urbanization, Gender And Food In The Global South, Liam Riley, Belinda Dodson

Hungry Cities Partnership

The interface between urbanization, gender and food in the Global South offers a vantage point from which to think through the integrated nature of contemporary development challenges from both the structural elements of urban poverty and the ways in which urban residents navigate their cities. The starting point of this paper is that there is insufficient research from the vantage point where all three of these concepts interface, even as there is a rich body of literature at the interface of each pair of elements (e.g., gender and urbanization, gender and food, food and urbanization). This paper draws attention to …

No. 35: The Food Safety And Food Security Nexus In The Urbanizing Global South, Jodi Koberinski, Zhenzhong Si, Steffanie Scott

Hungry Cities Partnership

Socioeconomic and structural changes in the global food system, driven by rapid urbanization in the Global South, shape the nature and scale of food safety problems as well as the strategies designed to cope with them. These changes create new challenges for ensuring food security, given that food safety is an essential dimension of food security. By reviewing existing studies, this paper summarizes three key types of contaminant (microbiological, chemical, and physical) that compromise food safety. With analyses of three cases (avian flu, genetic modification contamination, and melamine-tainted milk) in the Global South, the paper explores how food safety is …

No. 31: Motivations And Challenges Of Youth Entrepreneurs In Maputo's Food Markets, Cameron Mccordic, Ines Raimundo

Hungry Cities Partnership

Amidst a growing youth unemployment crisis spreading across Sub-Saharan Africa, there is a pressing need for effective policy intervention, based on sound research, to support young people’s entry into labour markets. As urban labour markets continue to catalyze the growth of national economies in the Global South, the inclusion of youth entrepreneurs in the food retail sector in Maputo has become an important but largely unstudied phenomenon. This paper assesses the demographic and entrepreneurial characteristics of this population through a vendor survey of 504 youth entrepreneurs (those aged 35 years and younger) operating small-scale food enterprises in the Mozambican capital. …

No. 26: Supermarkets And Informal Food Vendors In Windhoek, Namibia, Ndeyapo Nickanor, Lawrence Kazembe, Jonathan Crush

Hungry Cities Partnership

Much of the literature on urban food systems has focused on the expansion of supermarkets and their ability to reach urban consumers. However, the current pace of urbanization and rising urban poverty have been accompanied by a major upsurge in informality and a growing role for the informal food sector. One of the persistent arguments in the literature on supermarkets is that the expansion of modern retail undermines the informal food sector. Critics of this argument suggest that there are two conditions under which this may not occur: first, when there is spatial differentiation with supermarkets servicing higher income areas …