From Farm to Landfill: How Rome Tackles its Food Waste

In the last decades, cities have come to the fore as new crucial actors in national, regional and global food security. For a long time, urban environments had not been considered important food security players, as food was meant to be produced exclusively outside of them. Urban citizens – either those involved in the distribution or consumption phases – were considered marginal within the entire food supply chain. However, several studies (Deakin et al., 2015; Mendes, 2008) have demonstrated the role that urban food policy governance can play in creating a more sustainable agri-food system. This is particularly true for the Mediterranean region, where social, political and economic factors will inevitably make cities the new frontier in the new geography of food security (Sonnino, 2016). There are several reasons for this.