The Analysis of Iran's Development Policies and Programs with Emphasis on Sustainable Urban Food Security

Food has become both a central issue in development and a vision for integrating and addressing a wide range of contemporary global challenges, attracting high-level attention in international policy debates among global, national, and local actors. Also, food is a political issue that raises debates about how to form and change food systems and the nature of power relations between different actors. Meanwhile, the policies of the government, as the strongest actor in food systems, have an irreplaceable effect on achieving sustainable food security and realizing the right to food for urban and rural residents. In terms of methodology, the current research is among the qualitative researches, carried out with the method of content analysis of the development programs of the Islamic Republic of Iran, with an emphasis on sustainable urban food security. The themes were structured using MAXQDA 2020 software. Themes related to food security are categorized in the form of four indicators of availability, accessibility, benefit, and stability. The results show that the approach of development programs to food security is still rural-based, and cities are more prominent as consumers of rural products, and the planning of sustainable food systems in the context of these programs has not been seriously pursued. Therefore, realizing food security as an output of sustainable food systems and realizing the right to food of urban residents is facing a problem. In this regard, the approach of development programs should be based on the integration of food policies and the sustainability of production and a coordinated approach to food challenges. It is suggested that in the process of establishing development laws, the integration of sustainable food policies and the role of urban planners in urban food policy should be on the agenda.