Territorial Food Systems: Protecting the rural and localizing human rights accountability

Thomas Forster and Emily Mattheisen
The terms ‘rural-urban linkages’, ‘city-region food systems’, and ‘territorial food systems’ are often used interchangeably in international policy fora, academia, and other discussions on how rural and urban spaces relate to each other in food systems. However, the issue of what can be considered ‘uniquely rural’, and the rights of rural communities tend to be omitted. The long held urban-rural dichotomy reinforces an inequitable development model, which puts industrial and ‘urban growth’ pressure on rural areas and on small-scale food producers to feed increasingly urban populations. The development model itself, however, is not questioned.