Urban Food Actions Platform

Food systems should ensure that enough nutritious food is available for everyone, whether they live in urban or rural areas, and they are poor households. The challenge is to do so while minimizing any harmful impact on the environment. 

This thematic area focuses on efficient and resilient food supply and distribution systems. For instance strengthening the rural-urban food supply chain in order to face and adapt to disruptive events; developing sustainable food transportation and logistics planning in order to reduce carbon emissions by improving alternative fuels or means of transport and thus improve connections with peri-urban and rural nearby areas; strengthening or developing energy efficient municipal public markets including farmers markets, retail and wholesale markets; creating an enabling environment for the informal food system sector and their stakeholders.

Related Resources

Governance and planning, Sustainable diets and nutrition, Social and economic equity, Food supply and distribution - Articles
Today SNV publishes a report that explores the malnutrition situation in the urban environment and explores interventions that can be used to address it. Urbanisation is expected to put an increased pressure on the global food systems. As the world’s cities expand, they are becoming home to an increasing number...
(Global coverage)
2018 - SNV
Food supply and distribution - Articles
Why is it so difficult for farmers operating just outside the city of Chicago to sell to people living there? This was the question that led a team of researchers from the University of Wisconsin–Madison (United States) to explore urban food logistics. Their work, published in a report entitled Regional...
United States of America (North America)
2018 - Albane Gaspard
Sustainable diets and nutrition, Food supply and distribution - Articles
Who forages and why? A team of researchers across a variety of Baltimore-based organisations carried out an exhaustive survey to identify what, why, and, for the first time, how much people foraged in the city. This study puts this activity on the radar of urban planners and raises questions regarding...
(Global coverage)
2018 - Albane Gaspard
Sustainable diets and nutrition, Social and economic equity, Food supply and distribution - Reports & Case Studies
This report marks the first stage of AFSUN’s goal of expanding knowledge about urban food systems and experiences of household food insecurity in secondary African cities. With regard specifically to studies of food security in urban Malawi, the report builds on two previous AFSUN studies. The first was conducted as...
Malawi (Africa)
2018 - Liam Riley, Emmanuel Chilanga, Lovemore Zuze and Amanda Joynt
Governance and planning, Sustainable diets and nutrition, Social and economic equity, Food supply and distribution, Food loss and waste - Methodology and Training Materials
This City Region Food System (CRFS) toolkit provides guidance on how to assess and build sustainable city region food systems. It includes support material on how to: define and map your city region; collect data on your city region food system; gather and analyse information on different CRFS components and...
(Global coverage)
2018 - FAO