This piece originally appeared on Agri-Pulse. 

Editor's note: Agri-Pulse and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs are teaming up to host a monthly column to explore how the U.S. agriculture and food sector can maintain its competitive edge and advance food security in an increasingly integrated and dynamic world.

Today, more than 53 percent of the global population lives in cities. In 1900, this was only 13 percent. In a little over a century, we've gone from a largely rural world, in which most people were engaged directly in farming or related rural activities, to one where most people buy their food quite far from the farm gate where it is produced.

Consider the enormous logistics feat that occurs each day around the world to unite rural food supply with urban food need; for most, it's taken for granted. Here in the US, our strong infrastructure, logistics sophistication, and broad networks of retail outlets ensure the sweat equity put in by farmers translates to food on your plate that is affordable, diverse, and bountiful. But it wasn't always this way in the US. And in many parts of the world, it still isn't. 

This year's Council report on food security explores how the pressures of swelling urban populations have previously transformed food supply chains across the globe and how this trend is unfolding even now, particularly looking at South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

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