Redefining the Food component of U.S. foreign policy

The Rural Urban Food Systems (RUFoS) project is a two-part technical project, sponsored by the Office of Global Food Security at the U.S. Department of State (SGFS), which aims to evaluate different strategies for integrating urban food security into United States global food security foreign policy, and develop a methodology for choosing an appropriate test site for the RUFoS concept. This project is conducted for the SGFS under the State Department's Diplomacy Lab program. The project will compare and rank rural, urban, and RUFoS-focused initiatives based on the criteria of food security, livelihoods, sustainability, and value chains. The ultimate ranking will help determine which food system policies and strategies most successfully alleviate poverty and food insecurity along the continuum of settlements from rural villages to urban centers, while building capacity for improved and sustainable livelihoods. Five countries - Ethiopia, Zambia, South Africa, Nepal, and Cambodia - were selected for evaluation of food security strategies in different local contexts. Through our analysis, we concluded that the RUFoS strategy has the greatest potential for positive impact on food security as it improves livelihoods and food security across the entire rural-urban continuum. Next, at the request of the client, we evaluated countries and subsequent cities in Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa to create a methodology for identifying an optimal RUFoS test site. We recommend that United States Global Food Security policy pursue the RUFoS strategy and implement it using the methodology we developed to select the test country and city.