Understanding the regional food security situation is of great importance to maintaining China’s food security. To provide targeted information to help regional policymakers monitor food security status, based on the differentiated foci during the phased development of food security, this paper was conceived from the perspective of the need for early warnings and proposes a framework for regional integrated food security that incorporates food quantity security, food quality security, and sustainable food security. In this framework, an indicator system is proposed, (...) and the calculation of these indicators, as well as their warning thresholds and warning ranges, is discussed. To test this approach, a case study was conducted in one of China’s major grain-producing areas, the Dongting Lake area. The results showed that the overall integrated food security situation in this area was generally in the low-alarm range between 1986 and 2011; the primary causes of this status were food quality security, generally in the low- or medium-alarm range, and sustainable food security, which in 14 of the 26 years was in the low-alarm range. The government should establish a more robust system for monitoring the quality of agricultural products, controlling waste discharge, and guaranteeing poor individuals access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs. Policies on pesticide and fertilizer application should shift from actively encouraging more use to controlling excess application. (shrink)

Urban agriculture (UA) is spreading within the Global North, largely for food production, ranging from household individual gardens to community gardens that boost neighborhood regeneration. Additionally, UA is also being integrated into buildings, such as urban rooftop farming (URF). Some URF experiences succeed in North America both as private and community initiatives. To date, little attention has been paid to how stakeholders perceive UA and URF in the Mediterranean or to the role of food production in these initiatives. This study (...) examines the promotion and inclusion of new forms of UA through the practice of URF and contributes to the nascent literature on the stakeholder and public perceptions of UA. It seeks to understand how those perceptions shape the development of new urban agriculture practices and projects. Barcelona (Spain) was used as a Mediterranean case study where UA and URF projects are growing in popularity. Through semi-structured interviews with 25 core stakeholders, we show that UA is largely perceived as a social activity rather than a food production initiative, because the planning of urban gardens in Barcelona was traditionally done to achieve leisure and other social goals. However, several stakeholders highlighted the potential to increase urban fertility through URF by occupying currently unused spaces. As a result, the positive valuation of URF depends on the conceptualization of UA as a social or food production activity. In turn, such conceptualization shapes barriers and opportunities for the development of URF. While most UA-related stakeholders (e.g., food co-ops, NGOs) preferred soil-based UA, newer stakeholders (e.g., architects) highlighted the economic, social and environmental opportunities of local and efficient food production through innovative URF. (shrink)

In this paper, we explore the entrepreneurial leadership strategies and routine work of actors located across a diverse array of organizational settings that combine to shape and sustain the Southern Arizona local food system. We use the theoretical principles of institutional entrepreneurship and logic multiplicity to show how the strategies and routine work of local food actors at the organizational level combine to negotiate system-level meaning and structure within and across the Southern AZ LFS, which is an otherwise seemingly fragmented (...) and contentious social space. We illustrate how the entrepreneurial work performed within multiple organizations and organizational types converge to form a hybrid local food logic. Implications are discussed and recommendations for practice are proposed. (shrink)