ABSTRACT

This research investigates the linkages and interactions between urban food security and rural agricultural production. Specifically, the project evaluates the impacts of environmental variability on rural agricultural production and how this affects urban food security, and, in turn, how urban population growth affects the demand for local and regional agricultural production, as measured through food trade and other flows. Future challenges lie ahead in terms of meeting urban food demand due to population growth, the changing nature of food consumption patterns, and the vulnerability of both local and regional food production to environmental variability. Globalization and international flows and trade of food and commodities are key aspects of how urban areas will meet future food demand. But urban areas exhibit different levels of connectivity to international, regional, and local food systems. Given complex patterns of urbanization and their differential engagement with global, regional, and local food supply chains, new research is needed to understand what types of urban places are most vulnerable to impacts of local and regional crop production, and what type of urban agglomerations can mitigate those impacts through food imports from distant areas. This project produces a new and transformative understanding of the challenges of maintaining future urban food security and how local, regional, and global food flows affect urban food security under different socio-environmental conditions. This has implications for national security issues and is of concern for economic development. The project includes educational and stakeholder engagement and disseminates academic and policy relevant materials.

The project uses a novel spatial network approach to model the flow of food within regions and across international borders by analyzing rural food production under recent and projected urban food demand scenarios. This spatial analysis is linked to household survey data collected in urban areas of different sizes and within different geographic contexts to understand how shocks in rural agricultural production affect urban food flows. Household level information is linked to food demand and production information, as well as pricing information. While there has been a considerable amount of research focusing on the drivers and outcomes of rural food insecurity, less work has been done to understand the drivers of urban food insecurity. Additionally, most urban food security research has focused on large metropolitan areas, mostly primate cities, despite the reality that significant numbers of urban residents live in small to moderate sized urban places. This project will make important theoretical advancements in integrated socio-environmental systems research and will make methodological contributions by modelling urban-rural feedbacks and integration and by developing ways of understanding the increasingly important small-to-moderate urban dimension of food security. The research will be conducted in a variety of settings, but the application of the findings is relevant to many urban areas undergoing socio-environmental change, and how this impacts urban food security.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

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