Promoting better market access and market performance for smallholder agricultural producers and the provision of access to better quality and lower price food for the majority of the world’s population requires the strengthening of rural-urban linkages and putting ‘place-based development’ at the centre of policy and investment in food systems. Whilst traditional markets at the level of villages, towns and small and medium cities continue to be the entry point into the food system for the large majority of the world’s smallholders, profound, and in some regions rapid, changes are taking place in the food system from production to consumption. These changes have implications on local economic development within functional rural-urban spaces, on urban and rural livelihoods, and on food security and nutrition.