Rural and Urban transformation
FAO’s Framework for the Urban Food Agenda: A holistic approach to ensuring sustainable development.
With unprecedented levels of urban population growth and with almost 80% of all food that is produced already consumed within urban areas, fostering resilient and economically prosperous food systems, integrated across landscapes and based on multi-stakeholder, multi-scalar and multi-sector collaboration, will be key to supporting more sustainable urbanization processes. The provision of a wide range of ecosystem services and goods including food, timber, freshwater and labour, that place social justice, ecological integrity, climate resilience and regional economic development at the centre of urban policies and planning will be essential. Investment in food system architecture and related soft infrastructure is also crucial to facilitate food flows and to strengthen rural-urban linkages.
The FAO Framework for the Urban Food Agenda aims to:
- Guide the implementation of an urban food policy agenda that leverages untapped potential to drive sustainable food consumption and production and addresses food insecurity and malnutrition in urban areas
- Define FAO’s guiding principles and engagement in relation to the changing food security and nutrition needs associated with urbanization and urban development, advocating for more inclusive place-based approaches that promote more equal access to sufficient, safe, nutritious and adequate food and create meaningful and secure jobs and business opportunities for small-scale food and non food-actors
- Delineate FAO’s value-added contributions to the New Urban Agenda and to the 2030 Agenda through the provision of more effective and coordinated support that connects urban food dynamics with territorial development approaches
