Browsing by Project "108458"

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Open Access
African food systems in transition and the triple burden of malnutrition
(2019) Battersby, Jane
The presentation provides a nutrition profile from African data that indicates the prevalence of adult overweight and obesity. There is a fundamental need to extend food security policy and thinking beyond the household and community scale, including reframing urban planning to integrate local food systems.
Open Access
City of Cape Town food systems scenario analysis : final report
(2019-03-18) Charles, Andrew; Battersby, Jane
The study focuses on potential impacts on the food system of Cape Town and identifies opportunities to enhance its resilience. Cape Town has identified food insecurity as a key stress for poor and vulnerable Capetonians, particularly those living in informal settlements, in addition to climate change related shocks. For instance, drought is a further challenge to food security and is critically important to Cape Town’s overall resilience. The report provides an overview of the current food system in Cape Town, how Capetonians interact with this system and a discussion on the role of the City within the food system. This provides context for the scenario analysis and opportunities/recommendations.
Open Access
Eating in class : notes on nourishment and decolonial pedagogy
(2020) Truyts, Carina
The article aims to reflect on themes and questions that potentially advance decolonial teaching tactics tactics – via the gut. The author designed and taught a course for anthropology students at Sol Plaatje University in 2019 (one of two post-Apartheid South African Universities). The article describes the course and some of its outcomes. Scholars have tended to underestimate the power of nourishing food to help us understand how death is arranged socially and spatially, and how the political and social are knit together.
Open Access
Fault lines in food system governance exposed : reflections from the listeria outbreak in South Africa
(Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group, 2018-09) Hunter Adams, Jo; Battersby, Jo; Oni, Tolu
South Africa experienced the largest ever recorded outbreak of listeria (Listeria monocytogenes), with almost 1049 confirmed cases and 209 deaths between January 2017 and June 2018. The outbreak provides an opportunity to interrogate the relative power of the state and the private sector in shaping the food system and to re-evaluate issues of traceability and broader governance. The health sector is still largely considered the sole policy sector responsible for the health of the population. This siloed thinking results in policy incoherence, with policies in the trade and food sectors, for example, antagonistic to health policies and targets.
Open Access
Food insecurity in African cities : the necessity and challenge of food sensitive planning in Cape Town
(2019-07-03) Battersby, Jane
In Cape Town food policies locate food security as the responsibility of the provincial government. Legal provisions clearly target the most vulnerable of subsistence traders who reside in informal settlements and are therefore automatically disqualified from trading. The presentation argues for better urban planning that includes a mandate for food security in line with the right to food. The Spatial Planning and Land Use Management Act (2013) must include a concept of spatial justice along with provisions that are flexible and appropriate for the management of disadvantaged areas, informal settlements and former homeland areas.
Open Access
Food insecurity in relation to obesity in peri-urban Cape Town, South Africa: Implications for diet-related non-communicable disease
(Elsevier Ltd, 2019-03) Hunter Adams, Jo; Battersby, Jane; Oni, Tolu
Choice was framed as a driver of diet-related non-communicable disease (NCD) in the study participants' encounters in clinical settings. Yet participants lacked economic access to food, particularly at the end of the month. The objective of this paper is to explore peri-urban residents' perspectives of changing food environments, framed by the Food Aid Organization (FAO) definition of food security. It demonstrates the interconnectedness of dimensions of food security. The study included in-depth interviews with 21 participants and nine focus group discussions, in a peri-urban township and informal settlement outside of Cape Town, South Africa.
Open Access
Health care providers’ perspectives of dietrelated non-communicable disease in South Africa
(Springer Nature, 2020-02) Hunter Adams, Jo; Battersby, Jane
Eight key informants central to the primary care service for 40,000 people living in a low-income neighbourhood of Cape Town, South Africa, offered insights into tensions and commonalities between individual, neighbourhood and health systems perspectives. In particular, the rising prevalence of diet-related Non-Communicable Diseases (dr-NCD) is alarming. Diet is a significant factor driving diabetes and high blood pressure. Given the high burden of NCDs in South Africa, supporting health care providers in understanding context while strengthening both health and social services is vital.
Open Access
How food secure are South Africa’s cities?
(2019-07) Battersby, Jane; Haysom, Gareth
This chapter in a forthcoming book describes the state of food insecurity in South Africa’s cities and highlights the specific nature of urban food insecurity. It argues that food insecurity is the result of poorly framed and mandated policies, that food insecurity is driven by changes in the food system, and that spatial and structural issues drive food insecurity. When the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) dimensions of food security are considered, South African cities are largely food insecure places, with nodes of extreme food insecurity in many areas within the urban fabric of the country.
Open Access
Integrating food into urban planning
(UCL Press, 2018) Battersby, Jane; Watson, Vanessa; Cabannes, Yves; Marocchino, Cecilia
Urban planners typically pay little attention to food systems, emphasising ‘traditional’ urban priorities such as public transportation and decent housing. This book aims to provide a guide for food system planning that pulls together urban planning and food system expertise, bridging these two fields. It is the result of an extensive search to identify the best examples from across the world. Research continues to show the important role played by small and informal food outlets in cities, where they are able to provide food nearer to poorer urban residents at competitive prices.
Open Access
Looking backward to go forward
(University of California Press, 2020-01) Battersby, Jane
Street food vendors play an integral role in the food security and nutrition of urban Africans, even in areas where modern food retail abounds. In addition to the planning and legal apparatuses of the state that cast street vending as informal and in opposition to formally mandated food retail, the departmental competencies of local government regarding food have further perpetuated the idea of street food as problematic. The article advocates for street activity and alternative framings of street vending - invisible to officials acting in their official capacity, despite their use of street vendors in their personal capacity.
Open Access
Malls, markets and malnutrition : food in/sensitive planning in African cities
(2019) Battersby, Jane
Open Access
No looking back : [food]ways forward for healthy african cities in light of climate change
(Springer Nature, 2020-03) Battersby, Jane; Hunter Adams, Jo
The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) “Climate Change and Land Report,” states that transformational change will require integration of resilience and mitigation across all parts of the food system including production, supply chains, social aspects, and dietary choices. This paper argues for an explicitly urban lens to be brought to the IPCC’s call for food system transformation. For the African context there must be a re-imagining of the urban development trajectory. More specifically, it is essential for urban governments to proactively shape their food systems. The paper suggests some food specific interventions.
Open Access
Perceptions of weight in relation to health, hunger, and belonging among women in periurban South Africa
(Taylor & Francis Group, 2019-02) Hunter Adams, Jo
Aware of public health obesity messaging, participants in this study had tried to lose weight, yet stress and food scarcity impacted weight gain. Whereas public health interventions focus on behavior, responses to non-communicable diseases (NCD) must recognize the role of food systems and poverty in shaping risk profiles. Drawing on in-depth interviews and focus groups, in this article the intersections between health, hunger, and belonging are explored by drawing on the experiences of women in one periurban neighborhood of Cape Town, South Africa. Rather than experiencing chronic hunger, participants described lack of dietary diversity, acute hunger, and missing meals.
Open Access
Planning for and against street vending in African cities
(2020-05) Battersby, Jane
The Chisokone food market in urban Kitwe (Zambia) occupied zoned land that could be used for a mall and was relocated to make way for “development.” This presentation by African Food Security Urban Network (AFSUN) reviews the urban planning framework within which food markets operate. Anti-informality is entrenched through Master Plans and zoning schemes; conflicting practices illustrate no clear mandates for local governments, with decisions about markets informed by a set of actors made powerful by historic planning frameworks (marketeers, large scale private sector, donor agencies). AFSUN advocates for integrating food security into urban planning practices.
Open Access
Right to food and the right to the city : local and international advocacy challenges
(2020-04) Battersby, Jane
The policy framing of food security must alter to consider food supply as a municipal function. Urban zoning laws that discriminate against small traders are highlighted. The presentation defines concepts regarding availability of food and food security. Availability is not just about having enough. It’s about the balance of types of food made available within the food system, and why certain types of food are more available than others. It also means accessibility, and in urban spaces this often means sacrificing food security and market stalls to meet other urban planning needs. Stability of supply can refer to both accessibility and availability.
Open Access
School vegetable gardens as a site for reciprocity in food systems research : an example from Cape Town, South Africa
(Community Literacy Journal, 2019-09) Hunter Adams, Jo
The garden creates a space in which to “talk around” the problem of diet-related non-communicable disease, and allows for the co-construction of “food choice.” In the school context, and at home, food is about labor: the same women hauling water were cooking food at school and at home. On the other hand, teachers and students discovered that spinach tasted noticeably better when freshly harvested, even when there was insect damage. The consumption of greens at school was inevitable rather than shaped by willpower or desire for health. The children did not have to disavow their appreciation of pizza. This research stumbled upon the tenets of “slow research.”
Open Access
South Africa's lockdown regulations and the reinforcement of anti-informality bias
(Springer, 2020-05-11) Battersby, Jane
The South African State’s attempts to “flatten the curve” of Covid-19 include a set of regulations that demonstrate a limited understanding of how poor people access food, and an ongoing bias towards large scale, formal food system actors. These reflect historical biases against informality, the Africa-wide modernization agenda, and the power of large-scale food businesses to self-identify as partners-in-development. This brief one-page article provides insight into current conditions.
Open Access
Sustainable food system assessment : lessons from global practice
(Routledge-Taylor & Francis Group, 2020) Blay-Palmer, Alison; Conaré, Damien; Meter, Ken; Battista, Amanda Di; Johnston, Carla
This chapter from the book “Sustainable Food System Assessment: Lessons from Global Practice,” addresses missing data that could help inform food systems governance. The ways in which the food security issue has been framed has shaped what data are gathered and how these are disaggregated and interpreted (knowledge effect); the data, in turn, reinforces policy and programmatic focus of the state (governance effect). The chapter highlights challenges, and suggests alternative approaches to data, reflecting on the potential impact of global data reporting processes, such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the 100 Resilient Cities programme.
Open Access
Tomatoes and taxi ranks : running our cities to fill the food gaps
(African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town, 2018) Joubert, Leonie; Battersby, Jane; Watson, Vanessa; Opiyo, Paul; Toriro, Percy; Muramba, Fadzai; Bowden, Robyn; Park-Ross, Robyn; Pulker, Alison; Hunter-Adams, Jo; Siyanga-Tembo, Fridah
“Tomatoes and taxi ranks” provides an intimate account of what poor urban Africans eat; where they source their food; how their diets and nutritional intake changes with urbanisation; and the corrosive capitalist logics that drive much of these processes. It reveals urban living as marked by a soulless ‘convenience.’ The book suggests that international trade policy must connect with local regulations in order to alter the course of urban livelihoods and wellbeing for the urban poor. It demands a fundamental remaking of governance, and calls for new forms of urban citizenship.
Open Access
Towards food sensitive planning in South Africa
(2019) Battersby, Jane
This presentation by African Food Security Urban Network (AFSUN) reviews the institutional framework within which food systems have to operate. The planning system is one of the most important tools for government to influence society. However, local governments do not believe that they have a food security or food systems mandate; support for farming and food production is viewed primarily as a rural problem. Global development needs to reframe urban agendas to include local food systems.