Let me start by congratulating you and all the other members of the team on a very good piece of work. The report is super-well documented, incorporates many perspectives on urban food systems, and reviews many dimensions of it. It is a tour-de-force which is coming together well. In what follows I would like to make a few suggestions that reflect my own engagement with the topic and I hope they are useful for the team.
1. Regarding question 1 on the conceptual framework, I am in two minds. The conceptual framework elaborates in more than sufficient detail the different dimensions of urban food systems and it will be very useful for any scholar that wants to understand an urban food system anywhere. In this respect I was very happy with the report.
What the report and the conceptual framework do not achieve is a sense of urgency, of why this issue needs attention. Would there be a way to start the report with a summary of some of the biggest problems that have been observed, and then illustrate those problems with some numbers? I would expect the following problems to come up high, at the least in the developing world: waste, lack of hygiene and outbreak of food born diseases; unbalanced diets, certainly in the lower income strata, and resulting malnutrition; excessively high food prices in urban spots, because of poor logistics and insufficient local competition. But maybe I am wrong, and the biggest problems are different ones, if so fine.
By all means, the team might wish to consider what it wants to achieve. To lay out the analytics of urban food systems or to draw attention to a hot, urgent upcoming issue, create buy-in, and outline a way forward........
2. I was not particularly convinced of the need for six dimensions of food security, the former three were actually good enough for me. With the six dimensions, the risk is that the analysis dies in sophistication (paralysis through analysis). The report should not be about the implications of a broader definition, but about the implications of ongoing urbanization on food security. The more the report focuses on the real life issues instead of the definitions, the better.
3. I find the subjects treated in the report very relevant. There is maybe one issue that may need more attention, and that is food preparation by poor urban households. In my view, the urban food system does not end when the food reaches the consumer, but only after the food is prepared and consumed. I would guess that poor food preparation contributes a lot to bad nutrition outcomes but also to other health problems, such as air pollution in and outside the house, and to fire risks. If food preparation is difficult, a lot of improvements earlier in the urban food system may go to waste.
4. Finally, it would be fantastic if the report spelled out a way-forward. Such a way-forward might be split up in a few action areas:
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- the research agenda: what are the issues where understanding is lacking? How can those be addressed?
- data and information: how could the data availability on urban food systems be improved, so that better decisions can be made?
- investment frameworks: what are, in general, the most important type of investments that are required to improve urban food systems, are those in the realm of the public or the private sector?
- governance and policy: what are the type of policies that have shown success in different cities? How were they brought about?
- the yardsticks of success: how can we see that the urban food system of one city is better than that of another city? And also, how can we measure the success of possible "urban food system improvement programs"?
Best regards,
Willem
Willem Janssen