Securing survivability for urban poor: a review on food accessibility and food affordability

There are multifaceted challenges, including poverty, international and domestic food supply disruptions, labor shortages, global economic crises, natural disasters, and burgeoning global population, precipitating a formidable food security predicament. This predicament manifests in the form of compromised affordability, unreliability in accessibility, and inadequacy of available nutritious sustenance. This study is part of a larger study exploring affordable food supply via accessibility, particularly for the urban poor in Malaysia. The purpose of this study is to analyze how policymakers could improve food affordability via food accessibility for the urban poor. This study reports a desktop survey using the systematic literature synthesis process based on the keywords "urban poor", "food accessibility", and "food affordability". The results found that urban poor could improve food security by utilizing their local supply chain (LSC) with a selective coping strategy (CS). The results led to the developing a proposed Urban Poor Secured Survivability Model. This study is significant because the results identified the limitations among the urban poor in accessing nutrient-rich, safe, affordable and quality local food. The benefits of this study include guiding potential local supply chain development with local food resources. It is recommended that future studies develop a local supply chain for urban poor food security and propose a management system to enable its successful implementation.