URBAN NUTRITION: Jane Battersby, SA’s champion for urban food systems
Associate Professor Jane Battersby spoke to Daily Maverick about how hunger is concentrated in our cities, why the informal food system should not be hyper-regulated, and how a ‘convenience’ diet is a response to the triple threat of income poverty, time poverty, and energy poverty in South Africa.
Jane Battersby, an urban food security and food systems expert in South Africa, discusses the concentration of hunger in cities and the challenges faced by the informal food system. Despite the perception that supermarkets are offering more affordable and healthier options, people continue to buy from informal traders. Battersby's interest in this topic stems from the underutilization of urban agriculture and the low uptake of urban agriculture projects.
She emphasizes the importance of considering spatial inequalities, access to resources, and culture and identity when examining urban food security.
Battersby has worked on various projects, including the Nourished Child Project and the Living Off-Grid Food and Infrastructure Project. These projects have helped her understand the factors that shape our eating habits, such as infrastructure access and how it impacts food habits and security. She argues that hunger is an urban issue, with 76% of the world's food insecure population living in urban and peri-urban areas.
However, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization's flagship report still portrays food insecurity as predominantly a rural problem.
South Africa is more than 60% urban, yet there is a focus on small-scale agriculture as the solution to food security. Battersby points out the failure to recognize the role local government plays in shaping food systems and the conditions that make them operate. The right to food, as a constitutional right, should be upheld alongside other human rights.
South Africa has provided social grants and school feeding programs, but there is a lack of proactive actions to respect and protect the right to food. This includes facilitating or providing for informal traders, creating access to affordable, nutritious food, and protecting consumers from unsafe food.
Written by urgent.news from Daily Maverick's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
