A/HRC/25/57 levels, with a view to creating an enabling international environment – rewarding and supporting domestic efforts towards the realization of the right to food rather than obstructing them. At each of these levels, the right to adequate food has a key role to play to guide the efforts of all actors, to ensure participation of those affected by hunger and malnutrition, and to establish appropriate accountability mechanisms. A. Rebuilding local food systems 36. The modernization of food supply chains, together with the implementation of agricultural policies focused more on the production of commodities than on food, has led to the marginalization of local food systems over recent years (A/HRC/13/33, paras. 6–9). This trend must be reversed. Small-scale food producers must be provided with greater opportunities to sell on the local markets, which they can more easily supply without having to be dependent on large buyers. Furthermore, the poorest consumers, who now often rely on large retailers or fast food outlets to feed themselves, must have the possibility to purchase food that is fresh and nutritious, and therefore healthier. These include the urban poor, but in developing countries they also include many small-scale farmers, who often are net food buyers and combine other activities with their role as food producers.34 Local food systems can be rebuilt through appropriate investments in infrastructure, packaging and processing facilities, and distribution channels, and by allowing smallholders to organize themselves in ways that yield economies of scale and allow them to move towards higher-value activities in the food supply chain. This would support rural development and the reduction of rural poverty, and slow down rural-to-urban migration. 37. The strengthening of local food systems would also improve the resilience of cities. By 2050, when the world population will have reached 9.3 billion, about 6.3 billion of these inhabitants, more than two in three, will be urban, at current rates of rural-to-urban migration. Under a business-as-usual scenario, the rural population is expected to decline globally after 2020: there will be 300 million fewer rural inhabitants in 2050 than there were in 2010.35 As the competition increases between putting land to urban or to industrial use in the urban and peri-urban perimeter, and as increased food supplies create unprecedented logistical challenges for food distribution and transport systems, it is vital that cities assess their food dependencies, identify weaknesses and potential pressure points and, where possible, develop a variety of channels through which they can procure their food.36 Urban and peri-urban agriculture, as well as the development of short food chains connecting cities to their local foodshed, will therefore play an increasingly important role. 38. A wide range of social innovations have emerged in recent years to support the rebuilding of local food systems, primarily by reconnecting urban consumers with local food producers. In Canada, the Special Rapporteur learned about a number of initiatives that seek to support relocalized food systems (A/HRC/22/50/Add.1, paras. 17 and 26–32). In Montreal, for instance, urban agriculture initiatives include a community gardening programme managed by the City, and collective gardens managed by community organizations, with impacts that go beyond improved food security and nutrition, 34 35 36 See World Bank, World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development (Washington, D.C., 2007), p. 109 (showing that in countries such as the Plurinational State of Bolivia (based on 2002 data), Bangladesh (2001), Ethiopia (2000), Viet Nam (1998) or Zambia (1998), the proportion of smallholders who are net food buyers is larger than the proportion who are net sellers). World Urbanization Prospects: The 2011 Revision (United Nations publication, ESA/P/WP/224). See “Food, agriculture and cities: Challenges of food and nutrition security, agriculture and ecosystem management in an urbanizing world” (FAO, 2011). 15