In Bukavu and other Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) cities, food security faces significant challenges due to rapid population growth, war-driven immigration, and a governmental orientation towards the mineral sector. These issues are exacerbated by the exodus from farming communities, low agricultural yields, and poor infrastructure limiting access to farming inputs and local markets. Consequently, local communities rely heavily on food imports, often becoming vulnerable to accessing only highly processed, nutrient-poor foods. This study examines how these factors, combined with reduced local food production and poor infrastructure, impact food security in the city. First, a literature review was conducted to map relevant actors and existing research on food security, nutrition, and health policies. Focus group discussions were then conducted with nutritionists, urban planners, policymakers, local authorities, private sector actors, academics, and consumers, as well as key informant interviews with users and providers of both formal and informal food services, to gain a deeper understanding of these factors. Our analysis reveals that Bukavu’s history is deeply intertwined with extractivism, marked by conflict and resource exploitation, shaping its economy, infrastructure, and governance, often at the expense of local communities and the environment. This dynamic has had lasting impacts on key food security drivers and contributed to social instability. We consider implications for improving food security in Bukavu, taking into account pressures from extractivism, the demographic boom, and ongoing conflict. This study aims to better understand food security in conflict-affected regions and offers insights for policy and intervention development.
Agricultural support payments represent a substantial transfer from taxpayers while having considerable influence on the food system. Against a backdrop of increasing scrutiny on agricultural subsidies, devolved governments of the United Kingdom (UK) are amid the greatest policy overhaul in five decades as they reform a system of support payments previously administered under the European Union’s (EU) Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). But successful and legitimate policies require insight about the public’s preferences, for which evidence is substantially lacking. We explore public prioritisation of a large set of objectives for a future agricultural support scheme in Scotland using the Best-Worst Scaling approach and a novel modified balanced incomplete block experimental design. The survey reveals that a representative sample of the Scottish public have coherent, internally consistent visions for agricultural policy. With 92.5 % of the sample supportive of subsidies in general, the most important objective at the sample level was the production of high quality and safe food. But substantial preference heterogeneity exists; we identified three groups of citizens who backed strategies focussed on rural livelihoods, land sharing, and farm specialisation. This largely mirrors ongoing academic and policy debates around multifunctional agriculture and broad food system transformation targeting rural livelihoods and environmental objectives that map onto land sharing versus land sparing principles.
Federal food distribution programs aim to address food insecurity while supporting farms and food businesses. Many of these programs include small business set-asides designed to improve outcomes for participating firms, yet little evidence exists quantifying their impact on small business performance. We study the Farmers to Families Food Box (FFFB) program, a temporary initiative operated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture from May 2020 to May 2021 that contracted vendors to assemble and deliver food boxes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using vendor shipment records linked to firm-level employment data from the National Establishment Time Series, we evaluate whether participation in the program affected employment levels of participating small businesses. We estimate a Dynamic Two-Way Fixed Effect Difference-in-Difference model with matched treatment and comparison groups to test for effects on 2020 and 2021 employment levels while accounting for contemporaneous effects of the Payment Protection Program (PPP). Results show that FFFB participation was associated with higher employment among small businesses, with particularly robust evidence for positive effects in 2021. These findings provide some of the first quantitative evidence linking participation in federal food procurement programs to improved small business employment outcomes.
