The Urbanization Dilemma: Balancing Development and Food Security
Article written by the Sustainable Consumption and Food Production team at ThirdWay Partners.
The world has seen rapid growth in urbanization, including in low-income countries in South America, Africa, and Asia between the 1950s and 1990s. Since 1950, the world’s urban population has risen almost six-fold, from 751 million to 4.2 billion in 2018. In low-income countries, urbanization rose from 17% to 34%. This is due to a number of push factors, such as the lack of services in rural areas, and pull factors, such as the promise of jobs and prosperity in urban areas. While urbanization can potentially bring numerous benefits (e.g. economic growth and improved living conditions), it also poses significant challenges to global food security.
The rapid pace of urbanization worldwide has significant implications for global food security. As cities expand and populations concentrate in urban areas, the demand for food escalates, putting increased pressure on agriculture systems and supply chains. The effects encompass various interconnected factors, including land use changes, limited access to nutritious food, etc. Addressing these challenges necessitates an approach that integrates sustainable urban planning, and innovative agricultural practices in less urbanized regions to ensure that the benefits of urbanization do not outweigh its downsides.
One of the primary impacts of urbanization on food security is the loss of agricultural land. The expansion of urban areas comes at the expense of fertile farmlands, which are converted into settlements, industrial zones, and other infrastructure developments. This decreases the overall capacity to produce food, posing a threat to global food security. Furthermore, urbanization has adverse environmental effects, such as water scarcity and pollution. These changes can impact agricultural productivity, causing reduced crop yields and degraded soil quality. Urbanization also adds significant logistical costs due to the increased distance between production land and urban markets, and increased demands for quality logistical infrastructure, such as cold chains in order to store foods for longer periods of time.
In the pursuit of global food security, investments in agriculture in countries with large cropland in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, could play a pivotal role. Directing resources and expertise towards agricultural development in these regions can unlock the immense potential to enhance productivity, promote rural livelihoods, and provide an enduring solution to the urbanization and food security dilemma. There is a need for investments in agricultural services, technology development, and plant and livestock gene banks to boost agricultural productive capacity in developing countries. The agricultural land area available in Africa further supports the need for more investments within the continent. For example, South Africa has the most arable land totalling up to 96,341 hectares, followed by Nigeria with 69,450 hectares, and Sudan with 69,405 hectares, etc.
In this regard TWP has undertaken due diligence of public and foreign direct investments in countries like Mozambique and Zambia, that aim to increase the competitiveness of the local Agri MSMEs by facilitating and promoting job-creating, inclusive, sustainable investments in agricultural production, processing and related infrastructure. For such investments to materialize at scale across the continent, national governments need to create the right enabling policy and regulatory environment, connecting the lines between favorable land policy and legal regime, clear investment pathways, tailored taxation regime for sectors, such as agriculture, aquaculture, green energy, and access to finance and inputs. All these need to be underpinned by investments in literacy, education, and nutrition.
