Working Papers

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https://hdl.handle.net/10566/21

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Browsing by Subject "Agency"

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    Alternative food networks and food insecurity in South Africa
    (Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, 2016-06) Haysom, Gareth
    Food security remains a persistent global challenge. Inequality means that food insecurity is disproportionately experienced. Despite positive shifts in the state of food security at a global scale, recent reports from the Food and Agricultural Organisation suggest that in Africa the total number of undernourished people continues to increase. The paper argues that there is a certain “stuckness” in food security responses. The mutually converging transitions of the urban transition, food regime shifts and the nutrition transition demand different ways of understanding the food system, food security and the components thereof, including value chains. The paper reviews efforts designed to respond to these mutually reinforcing challenges but argues that generalisations are problematic. Borrowing concepts from the North is equally problematic. Using the concept of Alternative Food Networks (AFNs), the paper interrogates these networks and asks how such alternative networks manifest in the context of food insecurity in South African cities. AFNs evident in Northern cities and regions are generally privileged and present a perspective of the food system that prioritises sustainability and a deep green and often local ethic, embodying aspirations of food system change. In Southern cities, food system engagement is less about engagement for change, but rather, engagement to enable food access. Traditional value chain parlance sees a value chain extending from producer to consumer. The food access value chain present within poor urban communities in South Africa reflects more than just financial transactions. Transactions of reciprocity and social exchange are embedded within food security strategies, and are often informed by the enactment of agency. Using the term “the food access continuum” this paper calls for a far more expansive view of food access strategies and networks. Understanding these networks is essential to effective food and nutrition security policy and programming.
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    Lusaka’s local food geographies: A gendered reading of everyday food insecurity in Mtendere, Lusaka
    (Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, 2016-08) Davies, Frances
    Little is known about how individual abilities and food security determinants - at the scale of everyday life - connect to formal and informal value chains, and broader urban structural systems in which daily processes are embedded. Structural inequalities in urban systems make it difficult to translate economic development into improved food security at different city, household or individual scales. Exploring current a-scalar and anti-urban food security policies and practice in Southern Africa, the paper argues that everyday food security strategies - which enable food access and sharing in food communities - are enmeshed in local food system structures. Everyday food strategies are a critical source of livelihoods and are also deeply relational processes, tied to power, identity and agency. The paper also looks at how contextualised food security outcomes are affected by place, space and negotiations of everyday life. The aim is to challenge narrow value chain theories that do not recognise the ‘other’ - currently invisible networks and interactions - in and between local food value chains, such as what and who constitutes value, and who holds the power to assign value in local food networks. The paper draws on a wide literature review and in-depth qualitative work conducted in Lusaka, Zambia. The paper concludes arguing that deeper nuances affect everyday food security outcomes, and this paper purposefully furthers the current (limited) conversation and empirical understanding of food security within value chains analysis.