Integrating Sustainable Food System Planning to Regional Land Use Planning: A Case of Pune Metropolitan Region, India.

Abstract

For an agrarian country like India, with a large population, land and water resources have become the most crucial resources for development. While per capita availability and accessibility to resources continue to be the determinant of the degree of human development, practices in exploiting resources become the determinant of sustainable development. With the food security act in place and rapid urbanization, it is very important to study the problems arising due to these complexities. In India, very few policies feed into a comprehensive regional sustainable development approach. Initially, India stressed on planning districts to achieve spatial development for balanced regional growth. The Maharashtra Regional Town Planning Act of 1966 marked a milestone in regional planning efforts. The Pune Metropolitan Region (PMR) with a geographical area of 7,256.46 Sq. km. was identified for regional planning in 2015. The PMR consists of 9 counties with a mix of 845 villages, 13 census towns, 8 municipal councils and 2 municipal corporations with a mix of the urban-rural population as 42%-58%. PMR was earlier known for its highly fertile land and quality of produce especially vegetables but in recent years it has been known for its haphazard urbanization and constrained resources. The overall population of PMR is 7.27 million as per the 2011 census which has grown to 7.75 million in 2018 (growth rate 6.54%). If the urbanization continues at same pace, PMR will have an addition of >200 municipal councils by 2050. PMR has lost 112 hectares of agricultural land under cereals cultivation and 9 hectares under pulses cultivation, that is around 80,000 people have lost their source of land for cereals production and around 9000 people have lost for pulses production to urbanization in just last three years. This aspect of land use conversions due to urbanization and its impact on regional food system is not addressed in the ongoing regional planning practices in India. This paper focuses on how to build a systematic food production planned land use system. To establish this development nexus, data related to non-agricultural conversions, demography and land use and land cover change matrix were obtained from various government sources and from field insights. In this research, a regional food system framework comprising of pre-production, production, post-production or pre-consumption, consumption and post-consumption phases is derived for PMR. The results have shown that average distance food travels is 30km for PMR which on studying the urbanization trend has further helped in identifying the vulnerable belt in the region. This belt comprises clusters of villages with favourable conditions for diverse agriculture and vulnerable to urbanization. More deliberate planning efforts in sustaining this identified belt will ensure sustainable urbanization. An integrated comprehensive planning framework for the Pune Metropolitan Region is the outcome of this research paper.

Keywords: Sustainable urbanization, Land use, Urban reslience, Sustainable supply chain, Sustainable behavior, Circular economy, Food and food waste