Online discussion on traditional practices

The Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition is a forum “whose members share experiences, identify resources, provide peer coaching and support and find collective solutions to food security and nutrition (FSN) issues, focusing on FSN policies”. The latest discussion is called Looking back to effective rural practices … Did we miss something? and runs for three weeks from yesterday. I culled this from the host’s welcome document:

My name is Walter Mwasaa I am a relief aid worker with specific interest in food security in Sub-Saharan Africa, having worked in Somalia and currently in Sierra Leone.

I am often challenged by the widespread food shortages and livelihood insecurity in rural areas. Talking to the local populations in Sierra Leone, Somalia and Kenya, there are often recalls of times gone by when the same communities were able to provide enough for themselves.

I am doing a research project Kenya on changing livelihoods looking back at how the changes in food production and people’s way of earning incomes have evolved with a special interest in what could have been carried forward to ensure self-sufficiency.

It is certain that communities are practising modern systems of production that are geared to producing more food and improved living standards. I am however at a loss in looking at how many communities are still unable to produce sufficient food. Policies and structural systems are partly responsible for the situation.

Walter is inviting input, among other things, to see whether in the rush to embrace the future, we may be forgetting good things from the past, like the importance of agricultural biodiversity.

Maybe you have something to contribute. And maybe you, or someone else, could be willing to summarise the discussion back here? There’s a slightly cumbersome procedure for registering — you do so from the FSN home page — and I’ve no idea how the forum actually works, but we shall see.