The recent spike in food prices has led to a renewal of interest in agricultural issues and in the long-term drivers of food prices. Urbanisation has been mentioned as one possible cause of higher food prices.
This paper examines some of the links through which urbanisation is considered to be contributing to higher food prices and concludes that in most cases urbaniation is being conflated with other long-term processes, such as economic growth, population growth and environmental degradation, which can more fruitfully be seen as related but separate processes.
The authors discuss long- and-short term factors affecting food prices, and conclude that the one important way in which urbanisation in poor countries may affect food prices, at least potentially, is that it increases the number of households who depend on commercial food supplies, rather than own production, as their main source and hence are likely to hoard food if they fear future price increases.
The best policy option for managing this is larger food reserves. Attempts to curb urbanisation, on the other hand, would be ill advised.
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