Image Source: City Region Food Systems
City Region Food Systems (CRFS) is an international initiative that was established by a range of international organizations* to improve rural-urban connectivity in sustainable food systems work.
City region food systems encompass the complex network of actors, processes and relationships to do with food production, processing, marketing, and consumption that exist in a given geographical region that includes a more or less concentrated urban centre and its surrounding peri- urban and rural hinterland; a regional landscape across which flows of people, goods and ecosystem services are managed.
The term ‘City region’ refers not only to megacities and the immediate, proximate rural and agricultural areas surrounding them, but also to small and medium-sized towns that can serve to link the more remote small-scale producers and their agricultural value chains to urban centers and markets in developing countries.
A city region food system approach recognizes that there is great diversity between contexts, the nature of urbanization, sizes of urban centre (from small and intermediate towns to megacities), types of food systems, and nature of ties with the surrounding countryside and rural populations.
Join the Call for Global Action!
The strengthening of city regional food systems can play a key role in helping to feed an increasingly urbanized world in ways that are sustainable, resilient, fair and healthy and that help to create the Future We Want. Human settlements from villages and small towns to cities are expanding. The importance of territorial or landscape approaches to food systems development is increasingly recognized, but city regions, and the rural urban linkages that they represent, are not yet prominent in international dialogue on the future of food and nutrition security. A concerted effort is therefore required to enable these approaches to help shape the future of our food security and the healthy rural urban linkages upon which future well-being depends. This joint effort will require co-operation between subnational and local authorities associations, civil society and producer organizations in both rural agriculture-based and urban communities, the private sector, international organizations and the donor community. This multi-sector and multi-stakeholder effort will also need to collaborate with all levels of government, integrating economic, ecological, territorial and rights-based approaches.
Join the Call for Global Action for stakeholders across the world to engage in a concerted global effort in order to:
1. Increase awareness of the value and importance of CRFS
2. Develop and exchange knowledge on how to protect, support and further develop CRFS
3. Catalyze further action on the ground
Sign-up to today, by filling out the form on this webpage: http://cityregionfoodsystems.org/get-involved/.
For more information about CRFS, visit http://cityregionfoodsystems.org/.
*This collaboration was initiated with the support of FAO Food for cities initiative, Global Food Security Cluster/Urban Working Group, Habitat International Coalition (HIC), ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability, ILO, International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), International Urban Food Network (IUFN), International network of Resource Centres on Urban Agriculture and Food security (RUAF), UN-Habitat, United Nations Capital Development (UNCDF), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), World Food Programme (WFP) and Prince of Wales’ International Sustainability Unit (ISU).
APA FOOD 