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 production and ecosystem management, Food supply and distribution, Food loss and waste - Frameworks
In a constantly urbanizing world, city governments have come to play a crucial role in urban food policies. From among the challenges facing cities, ensuring food security for their residents is vital, and this must be achieved keeping in mind both the balance to be found between urban and rural...
(Global coverage)
2017 - R. Fages, N. Bricas
Governance and planning, Food supply and distribution - Reports & Case Studies
Institutional food procurement programmes (IFPPs) refer to initiatives that are intentionally designed to link an institution’s demand for food to social, environmental and economic development objectives, contributing to the transformation of local food systems that are inclusive of small farmers and enterprises. FAO released a technical study to provide insights...
(Global coverage)
2017 - Siobhan Kelly; Luana F. J. Swensson
Food supply and distribution - Policy Briefs
Incentives and enabling measures encourage farmers to adopt sustainable agricultural practices. They include im-proving farmers’ education and technical training, imple-menting strategies for reducing the costs of inputs, en-acting organic farming legislation that protects product integrity, and providing financial incentives for adoption of sustainable practices. Market demand for sustainable products can...
(Global coverage)
2017 - FAO
Governance and planning, Social and economic equity, Food production and ecosystem management, Food supply and distribution, Food loss and waste - Reports & Case Studies
This issue of the UA Magazine is a joint effort of the RUAF Foundation and the Centre for Agroecology Water and Resilience (CAWR). It aims to articulate and document the emerging field of urban agroecology. Definitions differ and tend to reflect the various ways the term agroecology is understood in...
Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Cuba, Ecuador, India, Italy, Netherlands (Kingdom of the), Spain, Taiwan province of China (Global coverage)
2017 - Coll.
Governance and planning, Social and economic equity, Food supply and distribution - Reports & Case Studies
The informal sector remains an important component of the South African food system, despite the rapid transformation and consolidation of the formal food sector since the end of apartheid. (Greenberg 2010, Ramabulana 2011, Vink and van Rooyen 2009). The Marketing of Agricultural Products Act (Act 47 of 1996) and the...
South Africa (Africa)
2017 - Jane Battersby, Maya Marshak and Ncedo Mngqibisa