COVID-19: A Turning Point for Urban Food Security

Caitlin Welsh

Abstract

Today’s global food security crisis is not about food production—global harvests remain high—but lost incomes. The urban poor are hardest hit. Poverty and food insecurity in urban areas are expected to grow; the UN predicts the world’s rural population will peak in 2021 and decline thereafter, with all of the world’s future population growth happening in cities. Addressing food security during the COVID-19 pandemic and after will require a comprehensive agenda that improves food security among the urban poor by: targeting food-insecure populations working outside the agriculture sector, improving food safety in cities, recognizing the importance of water and energy to food security in poor urban settlements, expanding social safety nets to cover urban populations, and locating agricultural production—particularly of fruits and vegetables—near population centers.

Beyond its toll on human health, one of the direst effects of COVID-19 is on food security. This is true in the U.S. — nearly 11 percent of American adults reported food insecurity in October 2020 — and around the world. ¹ The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) estimates the number of chronically hungry to increase by as much as 132 million this year, while the UN World Food Programme (WFP) predicts the pandemic could push 270 million into acute food insecurity, an 80 percent increase over 2019. ^2,3 No matter how you measure it, 2020 will set records — of the wrong kinds.

In low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), the urban poor are the hardest hit by the food security impacts of coronavirus. ⁴ The International Food Policy Research Institute estimates that due to coronavirus, poverty will increase by 15 percent in rural areas but 44 percent in urban areas in sub-Saharan Africa. ⁵ According to World Food Programme (WFP) USA, “When we think of hunger, we often think of rural communities and subsistence… But COVID-19 is an altogether new threat, affecting the urban poor in great numbers.” ⁶

The global food security community has, for decades, defined food insecurity as a uniquely rural problem. Covid-19 may be a turning point in this regard, resulting in a global food security agenda that embraces the realities of urban food insecurity and tailors interventions to meet city residents’ unique needs.

Crisis in Context

The present global food crisis is the first in a dozen years. The last was the global food-price crisis of 2007-08, when low harvests, high energy prices, and poor policy decisions caused a surge in prices of staples, pushing tens of millions into acute hunger. ⁷ What differentiates this crisis is that it is not driven by a lack of food. ⁸ Today’s crisis is about incomes. ⁹ The WFP based its 2020 estimates for acute food insecurity on the International Labor Organization’s predictions about lost wages and jobs and the World Bank’s predictions about remittances lost from coronavirus-related lockdowns. ^10,11

While today’s crisis is not linked to agricultural productivity, the predominant approach to global food security still focuses on increasing agricultural productivity and the rural poor. COVID-19 impacts, on top of long-term demographic trends, are causing a much-needed reassessment.

Today’s Trends

Today, urban populations are increasing as rural populations decline: the world’s rural population is expected to peak in 2021 and fall thereafter. ¹² If UN projections prove true, then all the world’s population growth between now and 2050 will be in cities. ¹³ In LMICs, climate change, food insecurity, water insecurity, and conflict have conspired to eliminate rural livelihoods and push people to cities in search of jobs. ¹⁴ The informal-sector jobs that the poor hold in cities are the jobs most affected by lockdown measures to contain the pandemic.

Some donors may address the needs of this population on the periphery, but there is no large-scale program to improve urban food security. A comprehensive framework for global food security should embrace solutions specifically targeted at the urban poor.

A Food Security Agenda for the Urban Poor

First, food security interventions should support food-insecure people where they are, often low-wage industrial jobs. A 2014 pilot program by the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) in Bangladesh, where the presence of anemia among female workers in garment factories was 77 percent, used this logic. ¹⁵ GAIN provided hot meals with fortified rice and iron supplements to factory workers, observing reductions in anemia and improvements in nutrition knowledge.

Next, recognize the importance of food safety in urban areas. ¹⁶ In LMICs, many consumers buy nutrient-dense foods in informal markets with limited infrastructure to manage pathogens; they also rely on street-food vendors when lacking time to prepare food themselves. In response, GAIN and the U.S. Agency for International Development are partnering to improve food safety by incentivizing informal markets and their vendors to implement better food-safety practices. ¹⁷ In informal settlements, a secure supply of energy is also needed to refrigerate and cook food, and safe water is necessary to clean and cook. ¹⁸

Furthermore, social safety nets should be expanded to city residents. A World Bank study of over 100 LMICs showed that poor urban residents are less likely than poor rural residents to be covered by social safety net programs. ¹⁹

In 2019, over 3 billion people worldwide were unable to afford the cheapest version of a healthy diet. ²⁰ The most expensive elements of healthy diets are fruits and vegetables. ²¹ The UN FAO suggests that an agriculture agenda for the urban poor would involve producing fruits and vegetables near population centers to increase supply and lower costs. ²²

Fundamentally, policymakers should demand better data on urban areas. Today, global poverty data is based on national census data that are outdated, not capturing record-setting human mobility in the past five to ten years, and inconsistent, with each country applying a different definition of rural and urban areas. ^23,24 Nor do national-level data adequately reflect the unique characteristics of poverty in cities; in this regard, the World Bank itself admits “much work is yet to be done.” ²⁵

To promote progress toward the UN’s Zero Hunger target — and to promote stability and prosperity in LMICs — the global food security community cannot ignore the food security needs of the urban poor. A renewed global food security agenda for the post-COVID period should not supplant today’s rural-based agenda with an urban one; instead, it should consider ways to improve food security among poor city-dwellers, rural residents, and everyone in-between.

About the Author

Caitlin Welsh is the director of the Global Food Security Program at Center for Strategic and International Studies, where she provides insights and policy solutions to global and U.S. food security challenges. She has over a decade of U.S. government experience and most recently served in the National Security Council and National Economic Council. Ms. Welsh spent over seven years in the Department of State’s Office of Global Food Security, including as acting director. Ms. Welsh received her B.A. from the University of Virginia and M.P.A. from Columbia University’s School of International Public Affairs.

References

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13. Ibid.
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