The COVID-19 outbreak forced governments to make decisions that had adverse effects on local food systems and supply chains. As a result, many small-scale food producers faced difficulties growing, harvesting, and selling their goods. This participatory research examines local small-scale farmers’ challenges as farmers but also as consumers and their coping strategies during the month of April and one week in June 2020. The study was initiated and conceptualized in collaboration with small-scale farmer members of an existing research network in selected urban and rural areas in South Africa, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Indonesia. Participants co-designed the research, collected and uploaded data through digital survey tools, and contributed to data analysis and interpretation. A common observation across regions is that the measures imposed in response to COVID-19 highlighted and partly exacerbated existing socio-economic inequalities among food system actors. Strict lockdowns in Cape Town, South Africa, and Masvingo, Zimbabwe, significantly restricted the production capacity of small-scale farmers in the informal economy and created more food insecurity for them. In Maputo, Mozambique, and Toraja and Java, Indonesia, local food systems continued to operate and were even strengthened by higher social capital and adaptive capacities.

Sustainable intensification promotes environmentally sound and productive agriculture. However, use of sustainable intensification practices (SIPs) is low in many sub-Sharan African countries. This study examined the adoption of SIPs in Kenyan rural and peri-urban vegetable production to understand the scale of and underlying factors in the use of SIPs. A multistage sampling technique was employed to randomly select 685 rural and peri-urban vegetable farm households. Household data was then collected and anaylsed for four practices namely improved irrigation, integrated soil fertility, organic manure and crop diversification using a pre-tested structured questionnaire. A multivariate probit model was run to model simultaneous interdependent adoption decisions. Adoption of organic manure and African indigenous vegetables (AIV) diversification was high in both rural and peri-urban areas. However, adoption of improved irrigation systems and integrated soil fertility management was low, and even significantly lower in rural areas than in peri-urban areas (p < 0.041). Similarly, adoption intensity of SIPs was lower in rural areas than in peri-urban areas. Furthermore, the findings also show complementarities and substitutabilities between SIPs. Market integration, the farm location and household income were the major factors heavily influencing the adoption of most SIPs. Policies and programmes that seek to build household financial capital base and integrate farm households into effective and efficient vegetable markets need to be formulated and implemented in order to enhance adoption of SIPs in AIV production.

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Many warning signs indicate that the food security goals formulated in 2015 will not be achieved. This situation is particularly true for the African continent. After substantial progress up to 2015, the situation has hardly improved or has worsened in many respects. In addition to the rapid population growth, the increasingly frequent long dry periods or sometimes erratic rainfall have contributed to this. In addition, current production systems have dysfunctional side effects due to increasing yield optimization and specialization. Thus, besides the associated resource degradation, it also leads to a monotonous food supply and the emergence of vitamin and mineral deficiencies (hidden hunger). A meaningful way to diversify the food supply is to cultivate and market previously underutilized species. However, they are characterized by not being known and traded globally and usually having only local importance. Accordingly, they have been widely ignored in research. Increasingly, however, there is a growing realization worldwide that these plants can make an essential contribution to food and nutrition security, especially for poorer segments of the population. Moreover, they are adapted to local conditions and are often produced with less resource input. This article aims to show how these species can be better utilized to provide nutritious food through sustainable production, using the example of African indigenous vegetables. In doing so, the impact of emerging social and ecological changes in Kenya will be considered. This source is an interdisciplinary collaborative research project, Horticultural Innovation and Learning for Improved Nutrition and Livelihood in East Africa (HORTINLEA), which was carried out in Kenya from 2014 to 2018. Many different disciplines were involved in the German-African cooperation project. The results will be brought together in this article with the help of a food-sensitive value chain approach, and the experiences gained from this project will be reflected.