I'm very encouraged by the direction of this report, and I know there will be a substantive report on territorial food systems in which I'm involved with IPES-Food published in a few months. Some areas in which I think the HLPE might consider extending itself:
1. Climate change. There's not as much thinking here around the extent to which climate change renders urban farming more necessary and harder, especially given rising temperatures and the lack of ecosystemic buffers to manage extreme weather events.
2. Finance and the payment for regional/local food infrastructure might be more explicitly raised. Existing financial flows are inimical to such systems, and it's worth naming public and private finance as inhibitors of sustainable food systems.
3. Diets are shaped by expansive marketing regimes that encourage urban amnesia around food systems. That marketing, and the corporations that profit from it, is also a barrier to the creation of seasonal and sustainable eating.
I'm very much looking forward to the fruits of your labours.
Sincerely
Raj Patel
Research Professor
Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs
The University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin
Raj Patel