Diversified Agroecological Farming: A Game-Changing Solution to Access to Safe and Nutritious Foods

Access to Safe and Nutritious Foods

Food may be available, but lack of access to it may be a challenge among certain communities. Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen once said that people in food-rich environments experience hunger because they lack access to food. Access to nutritious food goes beyond food security by defining the nature of food to which people should have access. Mostly arise a question of what is meant by nutritious foods. The world health organization WHO answers this by giving a guideline of what dietary elements are needed by a human body by age, sex, and level of activity. Access to safe and nutritious foods for all can be broken down into three areas of focus which are zero hunger, access to nutritious foods, and food safety. The systemic game-changing solutions to each of these areas should be considered contextually to address the challenge of access.

Game Changing Solution: Towards an integrated systemic approach

The game-changing solution must be systemic encompassing the production, knowledge generation, and institutional framework dimensions. Under the production dimension, agroecologycal farming offers a diverse production of safe and nutritious foods as reaffirmed by FAO and WHO. Hence, the IPES-Food talks about “Diversified Agroecological Systems”. This type of farming incorporates a mix of livestock, tree, crops, and landscapes. Crop production includes crop rotation, inter-cropping and mixed farming, making available a variety of nutritious foods, and other non-nutritious foods that have antioxidant and anti-cancer properties. Trees give both indigenous and exotic fruits and livestock give the much needed high protein from meat, milk and eggs. Such a model of farming exists among smallholder farmers in developing countries, but the productivity is low as reported by IPES, Food.

This means reinvestment in agriculture to transform it towards diversified agroecological farming. Both subsistence and industrial agriculture should make a shift from formality to diversified agroecological farming, with each aspect of the agroecological farming fitted to the specific context. This will help build industrialized agriculture through vast specialized and productive global agriculture.

The knowledge generation dimension should include empowerment of the mind. The community should be convinced that the present situation is not serving the hunger and nutrition situation in the affected regions. Knowledge on agroecological farming should be adequately shared with the smallholder farmers and involve them in the planning and implementation of projects. Community involvement increases the chances of adoption of initiatives, promotes active engagement, and smallholders feeling like part of the solution in the project.

The institutional framework dimension should include public policies which should address the underlying conditions. They should set economic incentives as described by IPES-Food, for multifunctional agriculture and sustainable nutritious food supply. This should include a well-functioning trading system that allows access to affordable foodstuffs. Medium and small-sized food enterprises should be supported in vulnerable communities to enhance markets, and the inclusion of social safety nets to enhance access to nutritious food.

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This means that low-income communities will have the opportunity to access markets with affordable food.  

References:

FAO & WHO, 2014. Rome Declaration on Nutrition. Second International Conference on Nutrition. Rome, 19-21 November 2014

FOOD, I. 2018. Breaking away from industrial food and farming systems: Seven case studies of agroecological transition. International Panel of Experts in Sustainable Food Systems Brussels.

FRISON, E. & CLÉMENT, C. 2020. The potential of diversified agroecological systems to deliver healthy outcomes: Making the link between agriculture, food systems & health. Food Policy, 96, 101851.

FRISON, E. A. 2016. From uniformity to diversity: a paradigm shift from industrial agriculture to diversified agroecological systems.

SCHNEIDER, K. & HERFORTH, A. 2020. Software tools for practical application of human nutrient requirements in food-based social science research. Gates Open Research, 4, 179. VAN BERKUM, S., DENGERINK, J. & RUBEN, R. 2018. The food systems approach: sustainable solutions for a sufficient supply of healthy food. Wageningen Economic Research

TRANSFORMING THE FOOD SECTOR FOR A BETTER TOMORROW

Circular Economy

The use of resources has increased during the industrialization period. This maybe due to the growing economies and the demand from the increasing population. If business as usual continues, the natural resources may fail to give to the future generation the needed goods and services.

Hence, an opportunity for the urgent creation of a circular economy where waste and pollution are designed out, materials and products are kept in use, and natural systems are regenerated to have a more resilient economy.

Why A circular economy for the food sector

Despite food being essential for human health and survival, the environment, and the economy, its production has greatly contributed to the increase in the use of the world’s resources. The current food system is not efficient, resulting in wastage, use of more resources, and environmental pollution.

Food production takes up most of the fertile land on the farm, the water resources for irrigation, encroaching the natural forestry to expand agriculture, and even use of fossil fuel for processing, yet according to research, a third of the food produced ends up being lost and wasted, leaving over 800 million people hungry. Statistics show that if food waste and loss were a country, it would be the third from the USA and China in terms of GHG emissions. Hence, a circular economy for the food sector is important for the sustainability of the environment (reducing emission from food loss and waste), and natural resources (reducing agriculture land expansion and water use for irrigation)

Getting to the specifics of food

Bread is one of the foods which are mostly wasted across the world, mainly at the household level. The process of decomposition of the product produces methane, which is a GHG, contributing to environmental degradation and climate change.

Application of a circular economy means behavior change among consumers to restrict their shopping to table size amounts to avoid wastage and putting to use that which is discarded as waste. Circularity means waste will be treated as a resource and used inventively to generate manure or animal feed.

GLF BIODIVERSITY DIGITAL CONFERENCE: ONE WORLD – ONE HEALTH

Oct 28 – 29, 2020

A One Health approach for environmental, animal and human health

Thinking about one health as an approach into our landscapes!

How do we integrate environmental, animal and human health? How common is the topic? Well, a poll during the session showed that a good number of people have heard about it and few have worked on it. People think it is very important to integrate one health with the landscape approach. The reasons and the sense behind this discussion made it interesting to me and think its important approach to improving food systems globally. This is not to say that other discussions were less important, but because one health approach seems to be a good ingredient which can spice up the sustainable food systems recipe.

How is landscape connected to one health?

“We need to be proactive not react”, says Doctor Denis. He understood from research how viruses can spread from animals to human population. This is one among other challenges which calls for diversity in addressing it. Being proactive in this case means following up the viruses and find out why they leave their wildlife community to attach human population. What triggers these viruses? The answer is obvious, land use changes have moved greatly to wildlife species, making wildlife to cohabit with humans. The obvious example is the case of most vectors like bats and rodents.

Anything surprising?

To achieve one health, there is need to break the silos; entities should never work in isolation. Researchers were not surprised at the outbreak of COVID-19 for obvious reason cited above: humans’ invasion into animal territory, but what was startling to them was the failure of global community to act as a global community by working together. There seems to be so much focus on nationalism and populism. Drawing example from the global reaction to the outbreak of Avian influenza and H₁N₁ pandemic, the global community showed a good coordination and action in addressing the challenges; a reaction which is not showing during this COVID-19 crisis. It is therefore prudent to use COVID-19 crises as a teaching experience for the political and science communities to come together.

What is happening in other countries?

East Africa: Masai pastoralists use the ecosystems for livelihood and are exposed to multiple diseases. Years back, these people would have their animals graze in free ranges, but now, these areas are restricted. Attacks of wild animals on domestic ones has forced the communities to graze their animals on their small portions of owned land. They have since experienced more animal diseases. One health brings in biodiversity protection and health of humans. Animals which graze in a health environment are less exposed to diseases and thereby giving health meat to the people.

Latin America: in Brazil, IFIAD is making efforts to recover degraded areas, restore and conserve biodiversity. One way they are doing this is by the use of sustainable animal husbandry which includes rangeland management, livestock infrastructure, institution building, capacity building and animal health which is considered to be key for human health.

Sustainable management approach brings in the aspect of live fencing. The trees used give services such as: grazing control, biomass production, honey production and food for both humans and animals.

The project in Brazil work to empower women and youths by promoting backyard gardens and water harvesting technologies. Women empowerment renders the work of women to be visible and improve their mental health in that they able to meet and discuss in an interactive manner. Youth involvement promote capacity building for the future generation. Backyard gardens is a strategy to reduce human encroachment on ecosystems.

Agroecological approach which looks at the interaction between the environment, livestock and man contribute to one health phenomenon.

Asia: seeing that rangelands are the main source of food, Mongolia developed organizations looking at health food production and sustainable markets. Due to climate change, there is poor feed and more diseases in rangelands, giving raise to poor animal health and meat quality. Mongolia is working on meat control to ensure health food on the market. They are looking into mechanisms to upscale these efforts.

Voice from across the world.

The pan policy panel brings the voice from across the world:

• Coopt environmental and public health experts and break the silos of policies at all levels, without which, diseases which originate from poor management can become national issue and subsequently global issue because of trade movements.
• Working together to change mindset in the integrated landscape approach to address challenges of deforestation which come as a result of humans searching for good. Deforestation will increase disease risks. Therefore, care must be taken in look into the food systems; asking and answering questions (what are we producing? Where are we producing from?) to avoid encroaching across environments.
• Institutionalize one health like the case of Kenya where public and animal health have been brough together with efforts to now include environment.
• Nutrition aspects should not be hidden in all these efforts, because poor nutrition can increase poverty. Therefore, addressing hygiene in informal food (meat especially) markets should be part of the agenda.

What next?

After developing policies, how do we go about implementing them? One can cannot be an expert in everything, therefore, there is need to bring in experts from all angles to work together. More food and more consumption will bring changes in production. The challenge is to investigate which ones are suitable food systems. This means transforming the current food systems and scaling up.

Besides knowledge acquisition, implementation is important. Enhance one health and share resources among all players in the food systems. Use multisectoral approach and integrate issues of inequality.