PDF《THE STATE OF FOOD》

s rich tradition of research on urban poverty and food insecurity has recently shown signs of a revival.9 Beginning in 2003, there have also been various attempts to monitor the urban food security situation in Zimbabwe through household surveys. These surveys, conducted at regular intervals, promise to provide a

2 African Food Security Urban Network (Afsun) THE STATE OF FOOD INSECURITY IN HARARE, ZIMBABWE longitudinal perspective on urban food insecurity that is completely missing in other countries and cities in Africa. In theory, they should also show how food insecurity intensified in Harare as the country'

s political and economic crisis deepened. In practice, the changes in methodology from survey to survey make it difficult to track trends. There are also grounds for questioning the definition and measurement of food insecu- rity used in these surveys. For example, they seem to underestimate the extent of food insecurity and even suggest that there was a considerable improvement in urban food insecurity between

2003 and 2006. They also seem to suggest that food insecurity has never been a particularly serious problem for the majority of poor urban households in Harare. This paper begins with an assessment of these household surveys of urban food security conducted between

2003 and 2009. It then describes an alternative methodology for measuring urban foo........