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Building sustainable and resilient food systems: Integrating Market Systems at the Centre of Urban-Rural Linkages

On the 21st of April, Earth Day 2022, a technical consultation was hosted by UN-Habitat. The subject was integrating market systems at the centre of urban-rural linkages as a pathway to building sustainable and resilient food systems. A concept note for the
consultation can be found here. The topic of market systems builds on the worldwide crisis of food markets during the pandemic and the widespread innovations and lessons from food market responses
to crisis.
The crisis of food systems and the need for their transformation became a global conversation in the first United Nations Food Systems Summit in 2021. To bring market actors from the front lines of impact and response to the shocks of COVID-19 and other
crises, three global market platforms were invited to be co-organizers of the consultation. They are the World Union of Wholesale Markets (WUWM), the Market Cities Initiative, and the World Farmers Markets Coalition (WFMC).

From Plate to Planet: How local governments are driving action on climate change through food

The small window of opportunity the world has to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions and limit global
warming to 1.5°C is rapidly closing. The latest
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
report, published in March 2023, sounded a stark
warning and final call to action. The report
underlined that global warming is already killing
people, destroying nature, and making the world
poorer. Damages are accelerating as temperatures
rise, causing unprecedented costs to people,
economies, the environment, and food security.
Women, youth, marginalized urban populations,
smallholder farmers, and Indigenous communities
bear the brunt of these damages. Deeper and faster 1
cuts to greenhouse gas emissions are the only
way to limit these impacts.

Centering Values in Food Procurement

In September, SFC changed the name of our newest program from the “Supply Chain” Program to the “Value Chain” Program. Read on to learn why we made that change and how the program is transforming our food system.

Strengthening food markets across the rural-urban continuum

The importance of maintaining functioning food markets in the face of global food supply chain vulnerability and disruption has brought new attention to markets that support local and territorial food systems. Drawing on lessons from Covid-19 impacts on rural and urban regions and their populations, our author presents proposals for these markets – formal and informal alike – to cope with future shocks.
The world has been living through the Coronavirus pandemic (Covid-19) since early 2020 with differing impacts and responses between rural and urban areas. The pandemic began in cities and spread to rural areas over the course of 2020, and continues to evolve as new variants keep spreading. Local and national governments, the private sector, civil society, donors and the UN system pivoted in 2020 to analyse impacts of Covid-19 and, based on new evidence, apply interventions to address the most Covid-vulnerable. The capacity to understand and respond to protect populations in poorer countries has been uneven and far more challenging in rural areas, especially in the Global South.

Public food procurement for sustainable food systems and healthy diets

Sustainable Public Food Procurement (PFP) represents a key game changer for food systems transformation. It can influence both food consumption and food production patterns. It can deliver multiple social, economic, and environmental benefits towards sustainable food systems for healthy diets.

This publication aims to contribute to the improved understanding, dissemination, and use of PFP as a development tool in particular in the case of school meals programmes. In this Volume 2, researchers, policymakers, and development partners can find extensive evidence of the instruments, enablers, and barriers for PFP implementation. It also provides case studies with local, regional, and national experiences from Africa, Asia, Europe, and North and South America.

Which schools receive state-level support for local food purchases? Evidence from reimbursement incentive programs in Michigan and Oregon

State-level reimbursement programs are increasingly being used to incentivize procurement of local foods by US K-12 school food authorities (SFAs), which are schools or school districts that administer a food service program. However, few studies have explored the characteristics of SFAs that are associated with applying for and receiving reimbursement incentives. We consider reimbursement incentive programs in two states, Oregon and Michigan.

Promoting the Consumption of Beans and Other Pulses for Public Health

Beans and other pulses (i.e., the dry, edible seeds of non-oilseed legumes like chickpeas, cowpeas, dry beans, dry peas, and lentils) are linked to a myriad of positive impacts on human and environmental health, including promotion of gut health and healthy weight management, reduction of chronic disease risk, mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions, improvements in soil health, conservation of water resources, and more. Moreover, pulses are highly nutrient-dense, have a long shelf-life, demonstrate wide culinary versatility, and are relatively affordable compared to other foods. Accordingly, pulses offer the chance to consume a healthful diet based on sustainable food choices, all at an economical price point.

Navigating community engagement in participatory modeling of food systems

This paper describes the participatory modeling experiences of five discrete teams across the U.S. working to develop models of food systems to identify leverage points and policies to induce food system transformation. Collaboration between academic and community partners within these individual modeling processes enables teams to address food systems complexity, integrate scientific evidence and local knowledge into models, while improving a model’s credibility and accessibility for policymaking. While tools for facilitating participatory modeling are becoming more available, there is scant discussion on the practicalities of community engagement processes, including how teams respond to the needs of partners, navigate challenges that arise during projects, and communicate results. Synthesizing results from five independent teams in Albany, New York; Austin, Texas; Cleveland, Ohio; Denver, Colorado; and Flint, Michigan, this paper provides an overview of each team’s approach to community engagement for participatory modeling of food systems. Analysis of engagement strategies across these five teams revealed four essential components to successful participatory modeling projects: 1) building research in collaboration with partners from the onset, 2) developing awareness of the challenges of community-researcher partnerships, 3) supporting transparent communication, and 4) promoting justice and trust through accessible dissemination processes. We emphasize that there is no single best approach to participatory modeling with community partners, rather that researchers need to understand and respond to various stakeholder needs. While each team faced challenges to the engagement process, including responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, our findings reveal important considerations for research in participatory modeling for food system policy.

Considering tradeoffs in “local” food policies: examples from school feeding programmes

City, national, and multinational governments are increasingly leveraging nutrition programme spending, specifically pursuing policies that require or incentive “local” procurement, to meet a myriad of goals. However, these policies involve tradeoffs that are often not fully considered by government officials, planners, and advocates. This perspective article provides some examples of those tradeoffs from the peer-reviewed literature, which, we argue, are useful to consider in setting school feeding programme policies to achieve sustainability goals.

Factors influencing consumer purchase intent for meat and meat substitutes

The availability of new plant-based burgers, designed to address the environmental, health, and ethical issues associated with animal husbandry, represents a significant transition toward the alternative protein market. These meat substitutes aim at providing climate and health-conscious consumers with valuable options while maintaining the typical taste and feel of animal products. This study explores the appeal of alternative meat burgers as an option for reducing individual and collective meat consumption. We analyzed 169 U.S. burger consumers who tasted and reported their purchase intent for four types of burgers: a traditional beef burger, a mushroom/beef blended burger, a plant-based burger made with pea protein, and a plant-based burger made with animal-like protein (this refers to Impossible™ products that use a heme protein as an ingredient to closely replicate the mouthfeel and experience of eating a beef burger). We found that information about the product composition plays a critical role in predicting purchase intent. Moreover, product information increased purchase intent for all the burgers, except for the pea-protein one, and the provided information had the highest impact on the beef burger. Purchase intent could also be predicted by certain consumer socio-demographic characteristics (e.g., gender, political affiliation, and income) as well as behavioral attitudes toward beef, blended, and plant-based products. Our results can help identify effective strategies in promoting meat alternatives, particularly in efforts to substitute traditional beef burgers with plant-based substitutes.

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