Developing countries warned over food insecurity

Eric Kabeera in AllAfrica.com via New Times (Rwanda): Developing countries have been criticized for focusing much on increasing food production in rural areas and forgetting to come up with policies to ensure food accessibility in urban areas. According to a report released by International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), this has increased food insecurity in urban areas and poverty among citizens.

IIED is a global and international development and environment policy research organisation that deals in research, advice and advocacy. It warns that climate change would only make this policy gap worse because the impact of climate change would affect not only harvests but also systems that are used to transport, store, buy and sell food.

"Food security is back on the agenda thanks to rising prices and the threat that climate change poses to agricultural production," says the report's author Dr Cecilia Tacoli. "But policies that focus on rural food production alone will not tackle the rising food insecurity in urban areas. We also need policies that improve poor people's ability to access and afford food, especially in urban areas."

Most people in urban areas, unlike their counterparts in rural communities, buy their food. And any climate-induced disruption to food production, transport and storage - either in the urban area itself or in distant farmlands - could affect food supply and prices in urban areas," it says....

On the street in Huye/Butare in Rwanda, shot by Rytc, Wikimedia Commons,  under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license