On food security and alternative food networks: understanding and performing food security in the context of urban bias

This paper offers one explanation for the institutional basis of food insecurity in Australia, and argues that while alternative food networks and the food sovereignty movement perform a valuable function in building forms of social solidarity between urban consumers and rural producers, they currently make only a minor contribution to Australia’s food and nutrition security. The paper begins by identifying two key drivers of food security: household incomes (on the demand side) and nutrition-sensitive, ‘fair food’ agriculture (on the supply side). We focus on this second driver and argue that healthy populations require an agricultural sector that delivers dietary diversity via a fair and sustainable food system. In order to understand why nutrition-sensitive, fair food agriculture is not flourishing in Australia we introduce the development economics theory of urban bias. According to this theory, governments support capital intensive rather than labour intensive agriculture in order to deliver cheap food alongside the transfer of public revenues gained from rural agriculture to urban infrastructure, where the majority of the voting public resides. We chart the unfolding of the Urban Bias across the twentieth century and its consolidation through neo-liberal orthodoxy, and argue that agricultural policies do little to sustain, let alone revitalize, rural and regional Australia. We conclude that by observing food system dynamics through a re-spatialized lens, Urban Bias Theory is valuable in highlighting rural–urban socio-economic and political economy tensions, particularly regarding food system sustainability. It also sheds light on the cultural economy tensions for alternative food networks as they move beyond niche markets to simultaneously support urban food security and sustainable rural livelihoods.     

Social capital dimensions in household food security interventions: implications for rural Uganda

We demonstrate that social capital is associated with positive food security outcomes, using survey data from 378 households in rural Uganda. We measured food security with the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale. For social capital, we measured cognitive and structural indicators, with principal components analysis used to identify key factors of the concept for logistic regression analysis. Households with bridging and linking social capital, characterized by membership in groups, access to information from external institutions, and observance of norms in groups, tended to be more food secure. Households with cognitive social capital, characterized by observance of generalized norms and mutual trust, were also more food secure than others. However, we established that social capital is, by itself, insufficient. It needs to be complemented with human capital enhancement. We recommend that development interventions which focus on strengthening community associations and networks to enhance food security should support activities which enhance cognitive social capital and human capital skills. Such activities include mutual goal setting, trust building and clear communication among actors. Education efforts for community members, both formal and non-formal, should also be supported such that they potentially strengthen social capital to improve food security in rural Uganda.     

中国刘易斯拐点和耕地红线的判断与三农治理新思维

刘易斯拐点的到来,导致传统劳动密集型农业生产模式的衰落,联产承包责任制的瓦解,粮食安全危机凸现;农地所有权的政府垄断也导致城市化成本过高,阻碍了农民的城市化,形成庞大的伪城市化人群,严重威胁到社会稳定。只有尽快改变以堵为目标的三农治理旧思维,充分利用耕地红线神话破产、刘易斯拐点到来的历史新机遇,进行深刻的农地制度改革,我们才能实现农地的规模化、产业化经营,降低农民的城市化成本,减少伪城市化人口,缓解国家粮食安全与社会稳定危机,实现城乡一体化的和谐发展。     

Potentials, problems, and policy implications for urban agriculture in developing countries

Urban agriculture has, forcenturies, served as a vital input in thelivelihood strategies of urban households inthe developing countries. As a response to theeconomic crises exacerbated by the structuraladjustment programs and increasing migration,urban agriculture has expanded rapidly withinthe last 20 years. An examination of thegeneral trends in urban agriculture reveals anumber of issues policy-makers in developingcountries should address to provide services toensure a sustainable behavior towards urbancultivation. Most important is the legalizationof urban agriculture as a step towards securinglands for the urban poor. The illegal statushas left a governance vacuum, which should befilled through policy formulation and regularinstitutionalized management in a participatorymanner including all relevant stakeholders iffood security has to be increased andenvironment improved in an urban developmentcontext.     

不同生计方式农户的土地利用变化与效率分析--以典型生态移民区闽宁镇为例

选取典型移民示范区宁夏永宁县闽宁镇为研究区域,采用参与式农村评估方法,在划分农户生计方式的基础上对不同生计方式农户的土地利用变化和土地利用效率进行研究。结果表明：不同生计方式农户的土地利用方式与用地效率之间存在明显差异。表现为纯农户种植结构单一,以种植粮食作物为主;非农户种植结构单一,以种植经济作物为主;兼业户的种植结构最为复杂。兼业户和非农户的土地利用效率高于纯农户。比较3种土地利用方式,纯农户所获得的收益最高。农业兼业化现象,使得农户对农业的投入减少和农业管理弱化。     

Gender, livestock assets, resource management, and food security: Lessons from the SR-CRSP

North Sumatra and West Java in Indonesia, the Andes of Bolivia and Peru, Western Province, the Coast and Machakos in Kenya, were Small Ruminant Collaborative Research Support Program (SR-CRSP) sites in which the role of small ruminants was studied and where technological interventions were designed. In all cases the target groups were poor rural households that could maintain sheep, goats, or South American camelids. The objective was to increase the welfare of families through the use of small ruminant technologies. Access to and control of resources, and intrahousehold dynamics were analyzed to understand if, how, and when, technological interventions help achieve this objective. The way in which the studied villages integrate into the market, the specific role that livestock and other productive enterprises play in the household economy, the risks faced by families in rural areas condition the role of livestock and other resource management technologies. As an asset, small and large stock are gendered, but this is qualified by the alternatives that household members have. Small ruminants under the domain of women, either through production or marketing, are shown to contribute to in-kind consumption or, as liquid assets, to household welfare purchases, in the case of Andean agropastoral households and households in Kenya. Women are also managers of the grazing areas, which are often fallow fields. The research experiences show the relationship between gender, resource management, and the ability to build livestock assets and security, in different houehold production systems. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Contributing to food security in urban areas: differences between urban agriculture and peri-urban agriculture in the Global North

Food security is becoming an increasingly relevant topic in the Global North, especially in urban areas. Because such areas do not always have good access to nutritionally adequate food, the question of how to supply them is an urgent priority in order to maintain a healthy population. Urban and peri-urban agriculture, as sources of local fresh food, could play an important role. Whereas some scholars do not differentiate between peri-urban and urban agriculture, seeing them as a single entity, our hypothesis is that they are distinct, and that this has important consequences for food security and other issues. This has knock-on effects for food system planning and has not yet been appropriately analysed. The objectives of this study are to provide a systematic understanding of urban and peri-urban agriculture in the Global North, showing their similarities and differences, and to analyse their impact on urban food security. To this end, an extensive literature review was conducted, resulting in the identification and comparison of their spatial, ecological and socio-economic characteristics. The findings are discussed in terms of their impact on food security in relation to the four levels of the food system: food production, processing, distribution and consumption. The results show that urban and peri-urban agriculture in the Global North indeed differ in most of their characteristics and consequently also in their ability to meet the food needs of urban inhabitants. While urban agriculture still meets food needs mainly at the household level, peri-urban agriculture can provide larger quantities and has broader distribution pathways, giving it a separate status in terms of food security. Nevertheless, both possess (unused) potential, making them valuable for urban food planning, and both face similar threats regarding urbanisation pressures, necessitating adequate planning measures.     

Hiding hunger: food insecurity in middle America

This is a community based research project using a case study of 20 people living in middle America who are food insecure, but do not use food pantries. The participants’ rate of actual hunger is twice that of food insecure community members who use food pantries. Since most of the participants are not poor, the Asset Vulnerability Framework (AVF) is used to classify causes of food insecurity. The purpose of the study is to identify why participants are food insecure and why they do not use food pantries. Findings reveal that the participants restrict the quality and quantity of food eaten as a strategy to manage their budget. Following AVF, this strategy allows them to offset lower returns to labor assets, cover rising costs of human capital investment, protect their two most important productive assets of housing and transportation, and compensate for household relationships that increase their vulnerability. In addition, food insecurity itself inhibited social capital formation, further increasing vulnerability. The main reasons the participants do not use food pantries is to protect their social capital assets: almost all of the participants hid their hunger from colleagues, friends, relatives, and even the people they lived with. The participants described fear of societal shaming and blaming as motivations for hiding their hunger. However, using food pantries could reduce their food insecurity. Therefore, there was a feedback loop between food insecurity and social capital: food insecurity reduced social capital and efforts to protect social capital prevented participants from improving food security by using food pantries.     

农民工定居转移的影响因素

在对农民工迁居城市的影响因素和农民工放弃永久性迁居城市的解释进行综述,把定居方式选择（migration）作为因变量,把性别（sex）、年龄（age）、相对月总收入（income）、教育程度（edu）、工作经验（exp）、社会关系（relation）、社会保险（security）设定为自变量,采用2009中国农业大学国家大学生创新性实验计划调查所得的数据,利用Logistic二元选择模型构建相关的计量经济模型测算各影响因素对定居方式选择的影响程度。结果表明,教育水平、个人能力、社会关系与社会保障是决定农民工举家永久迁居城市的主要影响因素,人力资本与社会保障对于提高农民工收入、改善其生活质量具有重要意义。     

Edible backyards: a qualitative study of household food growing and its contributions to food security

Food security is a fundamental element of community health. Informal house-lot food growing, by providing convenient access to diverse varieties of affordable and nutritious produce, can provide an important support for community food security. In this exploratory assessment of the contribution home food gardening makes to community food security, in-depth interviews were conducted with gardeners in two contrasting neighborhoods in Toronto, Canada. A typology of food gardeners was developed, and this qualitative understanding of residential food production was then assessed from a community food security perspective. It was found that growing food contributes to food security at all income levels by encouraging a more nutritious diet. The sustainability of household food sourcing and gardeners?? overall health and well-being also increased with food production. Secure access to suitable land to grow food and gardening skills were the most significant barriers found to residential food production.     

食物安全测量指标比较与影响因素分析

为探究农户饮食多样性得分和食物消费得分2种食物安全测量指标的差异以及影响食物安全的因素,采用陕西省镇安县、洛南县,云南省武定县、会泽县和贵州省盘县、正安县2015年1 368户农户实地调研数据,并运用Logit模型进行影响因素实证分析。研究结果表明:1)农户饮食多样性得分和食物消费得分的相关性较高,但从定义、测量方法到结果都有差异,饮食多样性得分的食物消费追溯期短,获取的食物消费情况更准确,而食物消费得分设定不同的食物种类权重更能识别真正食物不安全人群;2)家里有婴幼儿、劳动力平均受教育年限、家庭人均年收入、家里养殖牲畜对农户食物安全具有显著的正向影响。基于以上分析,食物安全评估和测量指标应该根据不同的需要进行选取,且在减贫的同时应关注贫困地区农户的食物获取能力以减轻农户食物不安全的状况。     

河南省农村剩余劳动力转移的障碍与对策

针对河南省农村剩余劳动力状况,从经济发展水平、户籍制度、社会保障等宏观方面和农民思想观念、素质等微观方面分析了制约其转移的障碍,提出建立转移农村剩余劳动力社会保障制度,改革现行户籍制度、土地制度,加强教育培训等加快河南省农村剩余劳动力转移的具体对策。     

初始禀赋差异、农业补贴与农地流转选择——全国8省30村的微观实证分析

【目的】研究农户家庭土地禀赋、人力资源禀赋、财产禀赋的差异和国家农业补贴政策对农地流转选择的影响,从而分析农地流转的根本动因。【方法】基于2010年全国8省、1 585个农户的微观入户调查数据,采用二元分位数选择模型和贝叶斯估计方法,测算不同初始禀赋和国家农业补贴政策对农户转出和转入农地的选择影响。【结果】各种资源禀赋和政策变量对农户农地流转的选择并不具有稳定的单调关系,而是呈现明显的分位数效应。【结论】农地的社会保障功能与农地流转的增收效应存在替代关系,对于初始禀赋处于劣势的农户,农地的社会保障功能更加显著;种粮补贴、良种补贴、农资补贴对农户转入农地的激励作用有限;农业补贴政策应与农村劳动力的职业技能培训相结合;小额信贷对农地流转具有明显作用。     

Resolving differing stakeholder perceptions of urban rooftop farming in Mediterranean cities: promoting food production as a driver for innovative forms of urban agriculture

Urban agriculture (UA) is spreading within the Global North, largely for food production, ranging from household individual gardens to community gardens that boost neighborhood regeneration. Additionally, UA is also being integrated into buildings, such as urban rooftop farming (URF). Some URF experiences succeed in North America both as private and community initiatives. To date, little attention has been paid to how stakeholders perceive UA and URF in the Mediterranean or to the role of food production in these initiatives. This study examines the promotion and inclusion of new forms of UA through the practice of URF and contributes to the nascent literature on the stakeholder and public perceptions of UA. It seeks to understand how those perceptions shape the development of new urban agriculture practices and projects. Barcelona (Spain) was used as a Mediterranean case study where UA and URF projects are growing in popularity. Through semi-structured interviews with 25 core stakeholders, we show that UA is largely perceived as a social activity rather than a food production initiative, because the planning of urban gardens in Barcelona was traditionally done to achieve leisure and other social goals. However, several stakeholders highlighted the potential to increase urban fertility through URF by occupying currently unused spaces. As a result, the positive valuation of URF depends on the conceptualization of UA as a social or food production activity. In turn, such conceptualization shapes barriers and opportunities for the development of URF. While most UA-related stakeholders (e.g., food co-ops, NGOs) preferred soil-based UA, newer stakeholders (e.g., architects) highlighted the economic, social and environmental opportunities of local and efficient food production through innovative URF.     

Impacts of formal credit on rural household income: Evidence from deprived areas in western China

Financial support is a crucial part of China's poverty alleviation effort. Thus, it is vital to understand how formal credit impacts income growth in rural households. In 2012, 2015, and 2018, a survey was conducted to obtain a panel dataset of 592 rural households from 6 poverty-stricken counties in western China, including counties in Guizhou, Yunnan, and Shaanxi provinces. We use the data to examine the effect of formal credit on rural household income and the mechanism that underlies this effect. We find that formal credit can significantly increase rural households' income in deprived areas in western China. Furthermore, formal credit promotes the reallocation of household labor from the agricultural sector to the non-agricultural sector and changes rural households' decisions about investment-consumption behavior. These are the drivers of changes in the amount and structure of household income. Further analyses show that formal credit may widen income inequality among rural households in western China's deprived areas. The individual characteristics of rural households, such as different levels of material capital, human capital, and social capital, bring about differences in the effects of formal credit on income growth. This study emphasizes that the implementation of formal credit is an essential strategy for poverty alleviation in underdeveloped areas, but policymakers should not excessively interfere with the financial market.     

“Never at ease”: cellphones,multilocational households,and the metabolic rift in western Kenya

Western Kenya has been a labour-exporting region for over a century, with many households straddling both rural and urban contexts. While the spatial separation of migrants from their rural places of origin represented the first tangible metabolic rift within Kenyan agricultural production systems, that rift is being reshaped as rural families engage in new forms of interconnection with migrant members (“multilocationality”). These changes appear to be driven by the ongoing crisis of agrarian livelihoods and are supported by the advent of cellphone communication and mobile money transfer technologies. Interviews and ethnographic data collected in a western Kenyan community and amongst its out-migrants reveal the role of cellphones in mediating social, financial, and knowledge flows within multilocational households. The increased ease of communicating and sending money is associated with less frequent physical movements between rural and urban settings, with commensurate disruptions in the acquisition and development of agro-ecological knowledge, and a shifting burden of agricultural labour. Gender relations are also put under further stress: migrant men remain (or believe they have remained) involved in rural affairs but appear to be using cellphone technologies to reinvent their household roles, replacing previously social or labour contributions with financial ones and by asserting claims over the on-farm decision-making of rural households previously considered female-headed.     

西部地区农户禀赋对农户参与休闲农业行为及方式的影响——基于云南省国家休闲农业示范区域的调查

基于资源禀赋和理性小农理论,以云南省国家休闲农业示范区域558份农户调查数据为基础,用二元Probit模型分析农户禀赋对农户是否参与休闲农业行为的影响,又用多变量Probit模型进一步分析农户禀赋对农户各参与方式(个体经营、劳动力参与和土地参与)的影响。研究结果表明:农户禀赋大多数变量对农户是否参与休闲农业有显著影响,但在各参与方式中,农户禀赋的影响不尽相同,其中人力资本禀赋主要对个体经营方式影响显著,社会资本禀赋对各参与方式的影响均显著,自然资本禀赋的影响主要体现在景区区位优势上,扶持政策认知对户主教育程度和参与行为的调节作用主要体现在个体经营方式中。故西部地区政府对休闲农业的引导要因地制宜,充分考虑农户禀赋因素及各参与方式的差异。     

西部典型山区农户的生计状况分析——以四川省宝兴县为例

为揭示山区农户的生计状况,采用可持续生计分析框架,以西部典型山区宝兴县为例,通过实地调研,对不同生计策略农户的生计资本和生计后果进行对比分析,结果表明:1)2次地震对宝兴县农户生计资本的影响主要体现在物质资本和金融资本两方面;2)农为主型生计策略农户的自然资本显著高于非农为主型和非农型农户,但其人力资本和物质资本显著低于后2种农户,不同生计策略农户的金融资本和社会资本差异不显著;3)农为主型生计策略农户的生计后果最差,其陷入贫困的比例最高,对生态环境的不利影响最大。但因其拥有较高的自然资本,可以选择特色农业、生计多样化和参加生态补偿等多种生计发展策略。     

人力资本与社会资本对农户非农经营选择的影响

非农经营是农户创业选择的主要活动之一.该研究运用微观调查数据对农户非农经营选择的影响因素进行Probit回归,结果表明,除物质资本和金融资本外,人力资本和社会资本也起到了显著作用.从人力资本角度看,作为家庭主要决策者的男性户主在本地非农经营中的主观能动性更强,而拥有健康的身体,受过专业的非农职业技能培训和教育,对农户选择非农经营也有推动作用;从社会资本来看,乡村干部职工户则因为视野较开阔,接触的人际范围广,拥有更多的非农经营门路和资源,得以在乡村非农经营中优先发展起来.因此,建议农村增加劳动力自雇就业的相关政策向提升农村人口职业教育水平倾斜,采取措施增加社会资本积累,以利于农产创业.