Diets, Food Miles, and Environmental Sustainability of Urban Food Systems: Analysis of Nine Indian Cities

Abstract

With ever-growing populations, cities are increasingly interested in ensuring a well-functioning food system. However, knowledge of variation between individual city food systems is limited. This is particularly true in countries such as India, experiencing significant issues related to food security and sustainability. This paper advances the understanding of urban food systems, by analyzing the unique food systems of nine cities within India, through the integration of multiple city-specific data sources including demand of residents, visitors and industries, and commodity-specific supply chains to assess nutrition, environmental impact, and supply risk. This work finds a large degree of intercity food system variability across multiple food system characteristics. Specifically, levels of undernutrition vary, with the percentage of city populations who are underconsuming protein ranging from 0% to 70%, and for calories 0% to 90%. Environmental impacts (consumptive water loss, land use, and greenhouse gas emissions) of urban food demand also show variation, largely influenced by differing composition of residential diet. Greenhouse gas emissions are also largely influenced by location of production and spatially informed energy intensity of irrigation. Supply chain distance ("food-miles") also vary by city, with the range of 196 (Pondicherry) to 1,137 (Chennai) km/Mg-shorter than more industrialized nations such as the United States. Evaluating supply chain risk in terms of water scarcity in food-producing regions that serve city demand finds production locations, on average, to be less water-scarce than the watersheds local to the urban environments. This suggests water-intensive agriculture may at times be best located at a distance from urban centers and competing demands.

Urban Food Systems: A Bibliometric Review from 1991 to 2020

“…Food security is defined as the condition in which all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for a healthy and active life [ 42 ]. Whether in developed or developing countries, food security is predominantly an urban issue related to a city’s sustainability (132) [ 43 , 44 ]. It requires action on multiple aspects, such as efficient production [ 22 ], healthy eating habits [ 45 ], and well-planned governance [ 46 , 47 , 48 ].…”

Urbanization, processed foods, and eating out in India

“…In any case, even though the fraction of people that it out on payment is still relatively low (cf. Table S2), it becomes increasingly important to capture what is being consumed away from home and from which type of food service outlet it is bought (Boyer et al 2019).…”

“…How these multiple dimensions of urbanization affect food consumption, individually and collectively, is not well understood. As urbanization is not a uniform process, it is highly likely that there are differences in consumption between different urban areas, as confirmed by other studies (Boyer et al 2019;Law et al 2019). When analyzing determinants of consumption, there is a need to account for the fact that urbanization will affect consumption in multiple ways and differently.…”

Food Security and Sustainability: Discussing the Four Pillars to Encompass Other Dimensions

“…In any case, the farming sector and the associated dimensions are determinants for sustainable food security [33], including animal welfare [34], and the new technologies open new opportunities [35], including for monitoring [36] and assessments [37]. The population growth is particularly worrying in countries such as India, for example [38], but other specific contexts also deserve special attention [39], including those from Africa [40].…”