TY - JOUR
T1 - Diets, Food Miles, and Environmental Sustainability of Urban Food Systems
T2 - Analysis of Nine Indian Cities
AU - Boyer, D.
AU - Sarkar, J.
AU - Ramaswami, A.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the National Science Foundation: (Partnership in International Research and Education award PIRE-1243525 and Sustainability Research Network award SRN-1444745). D. B. was responsible for the implementation of the methods in all cities, data analysis, and writing; J. S. contributed the supply chain data drawing upon his involvement in the government study; A. R. developed the overall systems framework applied to the nine cities and reviewed data analysis. Data: All data used in this study are publically available online, either for free or purchase, with the exception of the freight data. This was obtained through contact with RITES Ltd, where the authors purchased the data underlying this study. Specific sources of data are included in section 2 and associated references.
Publisher Copyright:
©2019. The Authors.
PY - 2019/8/1
Y1 - 2019/8/1
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
KW - food-energy-water nexus
KW - sustainable urban systems
KW - urban food systems
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U2 - 10.1029/2018EF001048
DO - 10.1029/2018EF001048
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85070493479
SN - 2328-4277
VL - 7
SP - 911
EP - 922
JO - Earth's Future
JF - Earth's Future
IS - 8
ER -