The Transforming City: Exploring the Potential for Smart Cities and Urban Agriculture in Africa

2021 ◽  
pp. 0972558X2110571
Author(s):  
Gerelene Jagganath
Keyword(s):  
Urban Agriculture ◽  
Food System ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Agricultural Practices ◽  
Vulnerable Groups ◽  
Global Challenge ◽  
The World ◽  
Conceptual Background ◽  
African Context ◽  
Global Food

As the world becomes more urbanized and poverty and food insecurity rise, it is inevitable that varied forms of urban agriculture (UA) will play an important role in the future of the global food system. Food security presents a global challenge particularly among vulnerable groups and the poor and the great cities of Africa are no exception. This study presents an overview of two African cities and the evolving presence of UA in these cityscapes. It is an attempt to examine and explore the potential of smart cities toward supporting urban agricultural practices in Africa. The 1st part of the study provides a brief conceptual background on smart cities and UA in the African context, while the 2nd part provides an overview of the development of two smart cities, namely, Cape Town (South Africa) and Arusha (Tanzania) specifically.

Food Systems

2019 ◽  
pp. 134-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henk Jochemsen ◽  
Corné J. Rademaker
Keyword(s):  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Agricultural Practices ◽  
Process Of Care ◽  
Environmental Consequences ◽  
Nutrition Security ◽  
Food And Nutrition ◽  
The World ◽  
The One ◽  
Global Food

Today's predominant food system on the one hand produces plenty of food, making food relatively cheap for most people in the world. However, for many people, the food they can afford is insufficiently nutritious. Major global health problems like obesity are partly a result of the present food system. Furthermore, the modern industrial way of producing food has negative environmental consequences, consisting among others of a decline in soil fertility and a loss of biodiversity. Another food system is required to obtain sustainable global food and nutrition security. This food system should observe the normativity of the agricultural practices that produce food. The authors' analysis of agricultural practices shows that the farm is economically qualified but that the primary process of care for soil, crops, and animals can best be seen as an ethically qualified supporting practice that steers the “meaningful shaping” of the interventions foundational for agricultural practices.

Safe milk and risky quinoa

Focaal ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 (83) ◽  
pp. 72-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Astrid B. Stensrud
Keyword(s):  
Low Income ◽  
Food System ◽  
Smallholder Farmers ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Price Volatility ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Open Market ◽  
Irrigation Project ◽  
The World ◽  
Global Food

The neoliberal global food system has intensified the uncertainties associated with peasant farming and agrarian livelihoods around the world. This article examines processes of precarization among smallholder farmers in the Majes Irrigation Project in Peru. By discussing price volatility and uncertainty related to the “free market,” I argue that the conditions of small-scale entrepreneurial farmers today can best be understood in terms of gambling and precarity. After four decades of neoliberal deregulation, farmers in Majes describe agriculture as a “lottery” where one can win or lose everything. Despite prospects of growth and progress, most farmers rely on low-income dairy farming or contracted crops for agro-industrial corporations. The freedom to take risks in the open market entails uncertainty and often results in loss, and farmers must negotiate the ambiguous relation between autonomy and dependency.

scholarly journals Making degrowth locally meaningful: the case of the Faroese grindadráp

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 504 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ragnheiður Bogadóttir ◽  
Elisabeth Skarðhamar Olsen
Keyword(s):  
Food System ◽  
Faroe Islands ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Economic Strategies ◽  
Economic Practices ◽  
The World ◽  
Global Food System ◽  
Food Procurement ◽  
Relational Ethic ◽  
Global Food

Abstract While the doxa of growth continues to dominate mainstream understandings of what constitutes a healthy economy, the concept and agenda of degrowth beg for theorization about how culture and power render some economic strategies more viable and meaningful than others. In this article we discuss the highly contested practice of Faroese pilot whaling, grindadráp. Through autoethnographic methods we identify and analyze forces challenging this deep-rooted practice, both within and outside Faroese society. Faroese resistance to abandon the practice, expressed in local pro-whaling narratives suggest that, in the struggle to legitimize the grindadráp as a sustainable and eco-friendly practice, Faroese people are simultaneously deconstructing central tenets of the global food system, and comparing grindadráp favorably with the injustices and cruelties of industrial food procurement. In this sense, we argue that the grindadráp not only constitutes a locally meaningful alternative to growth-dominated economic practices, but may also, in this capacity, inspire Faroese people to reduce engagement with economic activities that negatively impact the environment and perpetuate social and environmental injustices in the world. Keywords: Degrowth, whaling, Faroe Islands, relational ethic, noncapitalism.

The impact of COVID-19 on the world food system

2020 ◽  
pp. 66-72
Author(s):  
N. Shurakova
Keyword(s):  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
World Food ◽  
Global Food Security ◽  
Food Supply Chains ◽  
The World ◽  
Agricultural Imports ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Global Food

The article examines the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the world food system (WFS) through the prism of economic and social aspects. It is revealed that the paralysis of world trade caused by the coronavirus pandemic has had a devastating effect on the WFS and threatens global food security. It is proved that in order to prevent a food crisis in the foreseeable future, it is necessary to restructure food systems at the national and global levels, ensure their stability and continuity of operation. Some measures are proposed to prevent trade barriers, protect food supply chains and expand access to food. It is concluded that there is a need to expand domestic «food sovereignty», especially in countries that depend on agricultural imports and are involved in the global food trade system.

scholarly journals Introduction: Ethics and the Future of the Global Food System

2021 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-33
Author(s):  
Madison Powers
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Water Pollution ◽  
Dietary Patterns ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Food System ◽  
World Population ◽  
The World ◽  
Global Food System ◽  
Global Food ◽  
Freshwater Availability

The coming decades will present an immense challenge for the planet: sustainably feeding nearly ten billion people that are expected to be alive by 2050. This is no small task, and one that intersects with climate change, geopolitics, the increased globalization of agricultural markets, and the emergence of new technologies. The world faces a challenge of increased demand, propelled by an expanding world population and a global shift in dietary patterns toward more resource-intensive foods. Moreover, changes in demand occur in the context of declining soil fertility and freshwater availability, agriculture's growing contribution to water pollution and climate change, and the emerging threats to agricultural productivity caused by climate disruption.

scholarly journals Winning the War of the World

2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
John McMurtry
Keyword(s):  
Public Relations ◽  
Tax Evasion ◽  
Food System ◽  
Rapid Decline ◽  
Contagious Diseases ◽  
The World ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Large Animals ◽  
Global Financial System ◽  
Global Food

The global corporate experiment has failed. Existence on earth is in rapid decline on every level of life organization. The air, soil and water cumulatively degrade and disappear; the climates and oceans destabilize without connection; species become extinct at a spasm rate across continents; pollution cycles and volumes rise endangering life systems on all planes in synergistic despoliation; the world’s forests, meadows and fisheries are cumulatively destroyed by the profit drivers of globalization; food pollinators, songbirds, coral reefs and large animals crash in unconnected response; public sectors and services are defunded and privatized as tax evasion by the rich multiplies; the global food system produces more and more disabling junk and wastes; non-contagious diseases multiply to the world’s biggest killer; the global financial system issues money out of control while collapsing in productive investment; the vocational future of the next generations is erased across the world; official lies and corruption are normalized as public relations. All the trends are one-way, degenerate, and undeniable.

The Regulation of Agri-Food Safety by Regulations

2021 ◽  
pp. 85-107
Author(s):  
Surbhi Kapur
Keyword(s):  
Food Safety ◽  
Information Asymmetry ◽  
Food Supply ◽  
Food System ◽  
Management Tool ◽  
Food Supply Chains ◽  
The World ◽  
Global Food System ◽  
Risk Assessment And Management ◽  
Global Food

The majority of the nations around the world have become melting pots of civilization, leading to an increasing interconnectedness of the global food system. However, with the long-winded food supply chains there exists information asymmetry between the consumers and the food they consume, making them more vulnerable to the outbreaks of diseases caused by tainted food. As an assurance that food is acceptable for human and animal consumption, food safety averts any exposure to food frauds and foodborne illness outbreaks therefrom. For this reason, the law endows the food regulators and the food business operators (FBOs) with the “trace, alert, and recall” tools at all levels of a food supply chain to regulate the safety of both the domestic as well as the imported articles of food. As a risk assessment and management tool, traceability furthers the mandate of law enforcement in facilitating and targeting the recall or removal/withdrawal of articles of foods.

Decolonizing Food Systems: Food Sovereignty, Indigenous Revitalization, and Agroecology as Counter-Hegemonic Movements

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 173-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonardo Figueroa-Helland ◽  
Cassidy Thomas ◽  
Abigail Pérez Aguilera
Keyword(s):  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
World System ◽  
Open Spaces ◽  
The World ◽  
Global Food System ◽  
Critical Approaches ◽  
Global Food

Abstract We employ an intersection of critical approaches to examine the global food system crisis and its alternatives. We examine counterhegemonic movements and organizations advancing programs of constructive resistance and decolonization based on food sovereignty, indigenous revitalization and agroecology. Food system alternatives rooted in intersectional critiques of the world-system open spaces for materially-grounded, commons-based socioecological relations that make just, sustainable, and equitable worlds possible beyond a civilization in crisis.

scholarly journals Arguments for Well-Regulated Capitalism, and Implications for Global Ethics, Food, Environment, Climate Change, and Beyond

2021 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-98
Author(s):  
Mark Budolfson
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Food Environment ◽  
Food System ◽  
Food Ethics ◽  
Global Ethics ◽  
The World ◽  
Global Food System ◽  
The Future ◽  
Global Food

AbstractDiscourse on food ethics often advocates the anti-capitalist idea that we need less capitalism, less growth, and less globalization if we want to make the world a better and more equitable place. This idea is also familiar from much discourse in global ethics, environment, and political theory, more generally. However, many experts argue that this anti-capitalist idea is not supported by reason and argument, and is actually wrong. As part of the roundtable, “Ethics and the Future of the Global Food System,” the main contribution of this essay is to explain the structure of the leading arguments against this anti-capitalist idea, and in favor of well-regulated capitalism. I initially focus on general arguments for and against globalized capitalism. I then turn to implications for the food, environment, climate change, and beyond. Finally, I clarify the important kernel of truth in the critique of neoliberalism familiar from food ethics, political theory, and beyond—as well as the limitations of that critique.

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