Beyond the food desert: finding ways to speak about urban food security in South Africa
OUTPUT TYPE: Journal Article
PUBLICATION YEAR: 2012
TITLE AUTHOR(S): J.Battersby
KEYWORDS: FOOD SECURITY, SOUTHERN AFRICA, URBAN COMMUNITIES
DEPARTMENT: Developmental, Capable and Ethical State (DCES)
Print: HSRC Library: shelf number 9903
HANDLE: 20.500.11910/11175
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11910/11175
If you would like to obtain a copy of this Research Output, please contact Hanlie Baudin at researchoutputs@hsrc.ac.za.
Abstract
Urban food security is a significant development challenge in sub-Saharan Africa. However, the field is currently under-researched and under-theorized. Urban food insecurity, where it is considered, has been viewed through a development studies lens that views food insecurity as a household-scale problem. There has been significant focus on food deserts in developed countries as one way of engaging with such insecurity. The food deserts research views food insecurity through a social exclusion and food justice lens. This article introduces the food desert concept to provide a conceptual tool to begin to understand the spatial determinants of urban food insecurity, which are not well captured by the existing framings of food security in the region. Using data from a 2008 household food security survey conducted in Cape Town, the paper highlights gaps in the food deserts approach, most significantly its neglect of non-market sources of food and of household decision-making processes. The paper therefore concludes by suggesting a new approach which takes the household???s assets, abilities and decision-making as the starting point and overlays this with the market and non-market foodscapes accessed by these households.-
Related Research Outputs:
- Food security in southern Africa: causes and responses from the region
- Food security in southern Africa: causes and responses from across the region: workshop report
- The underlying solutions to the food crisis in the southern Africa region
- Towards identifying the vulnerability of HIV/AIDS affected households to food insecurity: the RVAC-UNAIDS experience: challenges and opportunities
- Crisis in southern Africa no longer just about food
- Food security and HIV/AIDS in southern Africa: case studies and implications for future policy
- Food security definitions, measurements and recent initiatives in South and southern Africa
- Contributions of decadal climate information in agriculture and food systems in east and southern Africa
- Food security in Southern Africa: causes and responses from across the region
- Food security and sustainable development in southern Africa
- Micro-finance in rural communities in Southern Africa: country and pilot site case studies, policy issues and recommendations
- PRODDER: the Southern Africa development directory 2000
- DFIDSA poverty workshops and seminars
- Toward a sustainable transport and communication sector in Southern Africa
- On global security: a suggested interpretation for Southern Africa
- PRODDER: the Southern Africa development directory 2001
- Sector strategies for employment creation: construction, social services and food
- Food security in South Africa: key policy issues for the medium term
- What went wrong?: a perspective on the first five years of land redistribution in South Africa, with homily for the next five
- Migration in southern Africa: theoretical, methodological and policy issues