EDITORIAL > RURAL–URBAN LINKAGES
Building sustainable food systems
beyond the rural–urban divide Rural–urban linkages connect people in cities with people in the countryside on a daily basis. The links are tangible and include markets, migration flows, knowledge exchange, leisure and tourism, ecosystem services, food production and consumption. To support sustainable, fair and resilient food systems, an enabling political and institutional environment is needed. This ‘twin’ issue of Farming Matters and Urban Agriculture Magazine, produced together by ILEIA and the RUAF Foundation, looks at some existing experiences with strengthened rural–urban linkages and what they teach us about improving food systems for both consumers and agroecological farmers. Madeleine Florin (ILEIA) and Henk Renting (RUAF)
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he role of both rural and urban spaces for rebuilding food systems is ever more relevant today. Cities are growing and globalisation is impacting everyone, producers and consumers alike. Hunger, malnutrition, unhealthy diets and obesity affect billions of people, soil degradation affects billions of hectares, and we face an alarming climate crisis. In this context, our food systems – how our food is produced, where, and how it ends up on our plates – must be rethought. From a production perspective, we need to value agroecological approaches and family farming as a way of life. From a consumption perspective, we need enough safe, nutritious and culturally appropriate food for everyone and to break out of non-resilient patterns of urban development. Many debates on rural and urban development have remained rather dislocated. The city was mainly conceived as a far-away place where consumers had to be reached with ‘market access’ programmes but very
6 | Farming Matters | June 2015
Domestic workers in Bolivia are keenly aware of the need for solidarity with rural producers. Photo: SITRAHO-SP