The cities facing to agriculture and food: which strategies? Case studies in the Mediterranean

The Mediterranean region is one of the areas in the world most exposed to urban growth and increasing food insecurity. The population should continue to increase (from 446 million in 2000 to 570 million in 2025) and remains concentrated in cities and on coastlines, strongly depending on food imports. Within this context, some cities in the Mediterranean begin to develop food and agricultural strategies that aim to renew and strengthen the links with the local agricultural production: these strategies involve short supply chains and alternative food networks, urban agriculture, land preservation for agricultural purpose, local procurement for schools meals or farm-to-school initiatives. Milan, Barcelona or Lisbon for example create and develop ambitious and creative policies that address food and urban agriculture issues. Do these examples tend to reveal a transition era towards agricultural and food strategies in the Mediterranean? Why do these cities come to worry about food and agriculture issues and take action on them? What food and agricultural practices are conceived, adopted and implemented through these innovative urban strategies? This paper will discuss these questions using three perspectives. First it focuses on the motivations that can lead or not Mediterranean cities to seize food and agricultural issues. From the DAUME project and the partnerships that were established through it, we describe what happens in 6 cities in the Mediterranean: Constantine (Algeria), Athenes (Greece), Montpellier (France), Lisbon (Portugal), Meknes (Morocco) et Pisa (Italia). This panel underlines the various drivers of the agriculture and food urban policies: land and urban planning priorities, food security, social or environmental issues, etc. Secondly we analyze the specific role of either urban or agricultural public policies in the raise of agricultural and food issues at a local scale. More specifically we analyze how urban policies, focused on the necessity to deal with urban growth, face difficulties in interacting with sectorial approaches of agriculture and food related issues. Finally we focus on the case study of Montpellier (France). Montpellier is currently elaborating a food and agricultural municipal policy, part of it involving changes toward more sustainable social practices. The analysis of this policy elaboration, which our research team was a part of, helps revealing the agricultural and food practices of the local authorities, the levers for potential action and the dialogue process. (Résumé d'auteur