We know that the City Regions Food Systems approach makes an important contribution to the economy and sociology in integrating small, medium and large cities into the debate on food security and territorial development. However, there remains an important issue to be discussed which is 1) "how to integrate different instances of rural and urban governance into a single process that guarantees the autonomy of planning and action of both spaces?" 2) "how to ensure that rural producers, even with their pluriactivity, do not become mere instruments of demand and organization of urban actors?"
Sir, this sounds like a philosophical question as much as an administrative sort of question. If consumers don't desire a food product, only desperation (from starvation, for instance) can drive demand for that product.
There are methods for stimulating increased demand on desirable products via marketing methodologies, such as the 1980-90s USDA & dairy farmer association funded ad campaigns encouraging people to eat more cheese (so the fat skimmed while making lowfat milk could become more marketable). That was a very successful set of ads because they had a great jingle and appealed to the senses, overwhelming healthier habits.
On the supply end, farmers want to provide for their families and they are willing to work hard to earn their way towards a few luxuries. After assessing what consumers need and want, the habits of farmers to repeat prior performance might need to be overcome. Demonstrate to the farmer that he can replace his tractor in 3 years with "x" crop or in 9 years with "y" crop based upon market factors minus cultivation expenses.
In general terms, those are your two primary answers without affecting autonomy, stimulate demand or alter production, to better match the demand. I hope that was helpful.
Dear David, thank you for your answer. First of all I'd like to clarify that my first question deals with or was linked to integration of governance instances (beyond issues related to endogen/exogen local development). So, for both approaches (rural and urban), there is a need of knowledge related to how to integrate governance procedures in order of building optimal (pareto) relationships between these fields (rural and urban, from the point of view of political economy). Regarding to the second, due to a lack of power between rural actors (vis a vis) urban ones, the question is how to build a fair relationship among them avoiding a "single/dependent demand-drive position" from rural regions.
Yes we have Green Belts around each city to meet the food needs of the city. Most fresh vegetables are supplied from this Green Belt.
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