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How to buffer against an urban food shortage

There is widespread concern that the risk of food shocks — sudden disruptions to food supply — is increasing. It emerges that a city’s vulnerability to food shocks can be reduced by diversifying its supply chains.
  1. Zia Mehrabi

    1. Zia Mehrabi is at the Sustainability Innovation Lab at Colorado and at the Environmental Studies Program, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Colorado 80303, USA.

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More than half of the world’s population lives in urban areas, a proportion that is set to increase1 to 68% by 2050. These urban residents depend on supply chains to produce, procure, prepare and deliver food, and they are exposed to potential supply-chain disruptions and food shortages from changes in human activity and natural processes. There is growing recognition that food-system resilience needs to be improved, but how best to buffer against urban food shortages remains an open question for both research and policy. Writing in Nature, Gomez et al.2 assess how the flow of agricultural products to a city depends on the diversity of the city’s trading partners. The authors apply ideas from engineering — such as those used when ensuring infrastructure is protected from flooding — to inform the design of food systems that can buffer cities against food shortfalls.

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Nature 595, 175-176 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-01758-6

References

  1. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. World Urbanization Prospects: The 2018 Revision (United Nations, 2019).

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  2. Gomez, M., Mejia, A., Ruddell, B. L. & Rushforth, R. R. Nature 595, 250–254 (2021).

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  3. Lloyd’s. Emerging Risk Report – 2015 (Lloyd’s, 2015).

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  4. UK–US Taskforce on Extreme Weather and Global Food System Resilience. Extreme Weather and Resilience of the Global Food System (UK Global Food Security Programme, 2015).

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  5. Hwang, H-L. et al. Building the FAF4 Regional Database: Data Sources and Estimation Methodologies (US Department of Transportation, 2016).

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  6. Food Security Information Network (FSIN). Global Report on Food Crises 2020 (FSIN, 2020).

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Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

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