Д-р. Marc Wegerif
Research on urban food systems, land and agrarian issues.
Senior Lecturer, Researcher, and Development Studies Programme Coordinator at the University of Pretoria, South Africa.
Dr Marc Wegerif has worked on development and human rights issues in a range of organisations for about 30 years, with land and agrarian reform, food systems and economic justice being a focus. He has set up and run a number of land research and land rights organisations and carried out research on evictions. His work has extended from local project work to policy and advocacy within the UN and AU systems. Marc obtained a Master’s Degree in Land and Agrarian Studies from the University of the Western Cape and Rural Sociology PhD from Wageningen University. His research now focuses on food systems, from food eaters to food producers, in particular the food systems the subaltern create themselves to meet their food and livelihood needs.
He is a member of the Management Committee of the DSI-NRF CoE Food Security and leads the project on Urban Food Systems. Land relations are part of food systems and his recent research includes a 12 country assessment of the state of governance of tenure, an overview of the implementation of the AU Agenda on Land, and papers on land inequality for the International Land Coalition’s Uneven Ground project.
Д-р. Marc Wegerif
I made a separate submission specifically critiquing the centring of a supply chain thinking in the scoping document and appealing for a more holistic approach to be used. Here I make some other inputs in the attached in response to the prompting questions in the online consultation page.
Key points include:
More details are in the attached. I hope these inputs are of interest.
Marc…
Input two from Dr Marc Wegerif
Thank you for taking forward discussion and work on the essential process of building resilient food systems. I appreciate the opportunity to share some inputs on the draft scope of the HLPE-FSN report.
I made a separate submission specifically critiquing the centring of a supply chain thinking in the scoping document and appealing for a more holistic approach to be used.
Here I make some other inputs in response to the prompting questions in the online consultation page.
Consumer choices are mentioned as a factor affecting whether or not people get enough nutrition, even when they have the resources. Access, education and awareness are mentioned as factors affecting this. There is no mention, however, of the probably far bigger impact of advertising. I urge that this be added. Food companies are some of the biggest spenders on advertising and clearly shape often bad food choices. This needs to be addressed.
While your questions to guide the consultation mention inequality, the scope document does not. I believe inequality is one of the major factors shaping our current food system/s and their outcomes and should therefore have a bigger place in the scope of the study. Inequality directly affects nutrition outcomes; who gets what. Inequality also exists in food system decision making power often leading to decisions that are shaped by powerful vested interests and not in the best interest of equity and sustainability. Inequality is also a factor of social division that can cause instability which threatens food systems.
We need to do more to recognise and learn from the food systems created by the subaltern, especially in poorer countries. The food systems I am talking about are the ones made up of many small-scale farmers, traders, local markets, etc. that feed many countries, including their cities, in much of Africa and Asia. As these are what people, especially those in poverty, create and have sustained for themselves over centuries, they have strong resilience and lessons we can learn. Understanding and building on what people are already doing, including what is working well, needs to be a principle of work on building a resilient food system. It is not that these are perfect but they should be a starting point to build on and they should not be undermined. These food systems are not utopian dreams, their strength is their pragmatism and their real-world proven ability to survive and operate within their particular and often challenging contexts. That is what we need for sustainability.
I believe my own work on food supplies to Dar es Salaam has useful insights into the nature of food system that provides for that large and fast-growing city[1]. My current and ongoing urban food system research in South Africa is showing how even in that corporate dominated economy street traders and public (municipal) markets are playing a large and important role at least in fresh produce supplies. They are out competing the supermarkets on price and other factors of accessibility, which is very important for food security and sustainability[2]. A range of other work has shown the importance of the informal sector for food accessibility in low income neighbourhoods[3].
A recently (2023) completed PhD by Dr Stephen Hahlani focussed on the resilience of the Mbare Musika market in Harare, which is the largest fresh produce market in Zimbabwe (https://repository.up.ac.za/handle/2263/94268 ). This market has survived and prospered, playing a key role in food supplies, within changing and difficult times of political and economic crises from the colonial to the post-colonial times.
There is too little of this kind of research that looks at the existing food systems, the economic organisation of the subaltern, and public markets. This requires more research that is not on supply chains and not applying the lens of supply chain thinking.
As has been shown by FAO et al state of food and nutrition security reports, and others, conflict is a major cause of food and nutrition insecurity. The wars and military conflicts including in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan clearly highlight that we cannot ignore the military and issues of peace and security if we want to ensure resilient food systems. Armed conflicts severely disrupt food systems from local to global levels. Therefore, measures to ensure peace and security, difficult as they are, need to be central in food system resilience strategies. This is not given much focus in the scope of work document and needs more attention than ever as the international system is under extreme pressure.
[1] See for example:
Wegerif, M., 2020. The symbiotic food system. In Routledge Handbook of sustainable and regenerative food systems (pp. 188-203). Routledge.
Wegerif, M.C. and Hebinck, P., 2016. The symbiotic food system: An ‘alternative’agri-food system already working at scale. Agriculture, 6(3), p.40. https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/6/3/40
Wegerif, M.C., 2018. An ethnographic exploration of food and the city. Anthropology Today, 34(5), pp.16-19.
Wegerif, M.C. and Martucci, R., 2019. Milk and the city: Raw milk challenging the value claims of value chains. Agroecology and sustainable food systems, 43(10), pp.1077-1105.
[2] See:
Wegerif, M.C., 2024. Street traders’ contribution to food security: lessons from fresh produce traders’ experiences in South Africa during Covid-19. Food Security, 16(1), pp.115-131.
Ongoing price monitoring work that started in 2022 is not yet published but the data can be shared and is showing significant prices savings across a range of fresh produce items as sold by street traders compared to the formal sector.
[3]See for example:
Battersby, J., et al. (2016). Mapping the invisible: the Informal food economy of Cape Town, South Africa. Urban food security series. J. Crush. Cape Town, African food security urban network. 24.
Rudolph, M., Kroll, F., Muchesa, E., Paiker, M. and Fatti, P., 2021. Food security in urban cities: A case study conducted in Johannesburg, South Africa. Journal of Food Security, 9(2), pp.46-55.
Д-р. Marc Wegerif
Thank you for the opportunity to share some inputs on the draft scope of the HLPE-FSN report.
In this input (document attached) I focus on my concern with the centring of supply chains throughout the draft scope document. I believe we have moved in our thinking beyond the limitations of supply chain thinking. The supply chain approach is limited by its narrow focus on vertical production and economic links and is also rooted in and still overly influenced by corporate supply chain management thinking. This leaves it missing completely or undervaluing the horizontal relations including the social and ecological factors that shape the food system and are shaped by it. These social and ecological factors are clearly central to resilience that this report is focused on. Supply chain thinking has been widely critiqued for this narrowness, I believe suffering the same limitations as the value chain approach it is related to that has also been criticised for the same reasons.
The development of the concept of food systems was in part to specifically address the limitations of supply/value chain thinking and there are other more holistic approaches available to us. Appeal that this report and the process of its production put aside the supply chain thinking central to the current draft scope and embrace amore holistic approach.
Input from Dr Marc Wegerif on the Centring of Supply Chains Approach
Thank you for taking forward discussion and work on the essential process of building resilient food systems. I appreciate the opportunity to share some inputs on the draft scope of the HLPE-FSN report.
I am concerned about the centring of supply chains throughout the draft scope document. I believe we have moved in our thinking beyond the limitations of supply chain thinking. The supply chain approach, which is closely related to the value chain concept, is limited by its narrow focus on vertical production and economic links and is also rooted in and still overly influenced by corporate supply chain management thinking. This leaves it missing completely or undervaluing the horizontal relations including the social and ecological factors that shape the food system and are shaped by it. These social and ecological factors are clearly central to resilience that this report is focused on. Supply chain thinking has been widely critiqued for this narrowness, I believe suffering the same limitations as the value chain approach it is related to that has also been criticised for the same reasons.
The FAO (2021) State of Food and Agriculture report, which the scope draft refers to, defines food supply chains as the “series of activities” involved from primary production to retailing of food. There is no mention of the wider policy, social, economic, or ecological environment which are factors that chape food systems and fall outside the notion of “activities”. The definition also confirms the similarity of supply chain and value chain thinking in its definitions where it says that the food supply chain “definition differs from that of “food value chains” as proposed by FAO (2014) by excluding food consumption and disposal”. This makes clear that the supply chains are the same thing, in the FAO view, as value chains except they stop before consumption, so are even more limited. Further, to exclude consumption when part of the vision is SDG 2 and to exclude disposal (that is waste) when sustainability is central does not make sense.
The same FAO (2021) report goes on to define three different subcategories of food supply chains from the “Traditional”, to the “Transitional” and ending with the “Modern”. This clearly reveals the modernisation paradigm underpinning the supply chain concept and some of the quite specific assumptions involved, such as that it is the “Modern food supply chain” which feeds large urban populations and that these are “dominated by supermarkets and large processors”. This is simply not the reality of many food systems that feed large urban populations, at least across much of Africa and Asia. To go into this report with a scope informed by such assumptions would be highly problematic. It is within wider food systems, not narrow supply chains, that we need to look for the factors that could hinder resilience as well as the existing practices that could enhance resilience. It is also within some of the non-corporate parts of the food system, including those parts feeding many African and Asian cities that we might find important lessons for resilience[1].
We do not need to broaden the definition of food supply chains or try to clumsily add on areas of analysis that really don’t fit within the definition. Firstly, this is not the process within which to challenge and try to change an entrenched (including within FAO) definition and approach to analysis. Secondly, it does not need to change, it is a useful definition that is needed for discussions that are more narrowly focussed on “the activities” involved in production. This study, however, is not one of them as a broader approach is needed to explore options for resilient food systems. There are other approaches and other language that can be used for this report on food system resilience. Of course, the food system approach itself, which is being developed in practice by different researchers. Other approaches include, for example, the systems of provisioning approach that was developed precisely to find a better balance between overly horizontal analysis (focused on social and cultural influences) and the narrowly vertical focus of supply chain management and analysis[2].
The very development of the concept of food systems is in part to overcome these limits of supply chain and value chain analysis and interventions. As the FAO (2018) document “Sustainable food systems concept and framework” puts it: “The VC [Value Chain] development approach nonetheless focuses on one particular commodity and therefore tends to overlook the interdependencies of different VCs… Achieving broad-based developmental impacts, thus, requires taking a broader look at the interactions of all food VCs at the food system level.”[3]
The FAO (2018) document goes onto argue that given the limits of the value chain and some other approaches the “food systems approach is a way of thinking and doing that considers the food system in its totality, taking into account all the elements, their relationships and related effects. It is not confined to one single sector, sub-system (e.g. value chain, market) or discipline, and thus broadens the framing and analysis of a particular issue as the result of an intricate web of interlinked activities and feedbacks. It considers all relevant causal variables of a problem and all social, environmental, and economic impacts of the solutions to achieve transformational systemic changes.” That is part of what this report on food system resilience needs to do.
I appeal that the supply chain focus be replaced with a more holistic approach to analysis and seeking solutions in this report and the process of its production.
[1] For example: Wegerif, M., 2020. The symbiotic food system. In Routledge Handbook of sustainable and regenerative food systems (pp. 188-203). Routledge. And Wegerif, M.C. and Hebinck, P., 2016. The symbiotic food system: An ‘alternative’ agri-food system already working at scale. Agriculture, 6(3), p.40. https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/6/3/40
[2]For example: Bayliss, K. and B. Fine. 2020. A Guide to the Systems of Provision Approach. Springer International Publishing and Fine, B., Bayliss, K. and Robertson, M., 2018. The systems of provision approach to understanding consumption. The SAGE handbook of consumer culture, pp.27-42.
[3] FAO (2018) Sustainable Food System Concept and Framework. https://openknowledge.fao.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/b620989c-407b-4caf-a152-f790f55fec71/content