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  • Title: Urban nutrition: motor or brake for rural development? The Latin American case.
    Author: Arnauld J.
    Journal: Ceres; 1983; 16(2):34-9. PubMed ID: 12338815.
    Abstract:
    The most spectacular backlash of growth of developing countries is the migration of the rural population to the cities, where many families live in deplorable conditions with income below the poverty line. To deal with this situation, most governments have embarked on a policy of subsidizing consumer prices for basic commodities. This policy has proved unfavorable to small farmers, thereby accelerating the migration to cities. Thus we are witnessing an inexorable growth in the labor shortage in rural areas and a surplus of mouths to feed in the urban areas. The problem facing governments is to discover how to reprime the internal food pump and thus reestablish a balanced distribution of the population, and food self-sufficiency for the country. This implies a need for the rehabilitation of food crop production to meet the new and specific requirements of urban consumers, and a need for a thorough knowledge of urban consumption and the factors influencing it. Where budgets are inadequate to meet minimal needs, programs that improve public transportation or housing, could, by reducing the relevant budgetary items, correspondingly increase the food purchasing power of certain socioeconomic groups. Eating habits change with migration to a city. Although in certain countries traditional foods lend themselves to the urban way of life, like the tortilla in Mexico, this is not so with cassava and coarse grains. These basic foods, the only ones that can be produced economically in local ecological conditions, can be processed and packaged to make them acceptable to urban consumers. To reverse the decades-old trend of the rush to the cities will require a sustained political will and the coordination of activities of all kinds.
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