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Indigenous food systems documented

FAO has a book out called Indigenous Peoples’ Food Systems, published with the Centre for Indigenous Peoples’ Nutrition and Environment (CINE). There’s an informative interview with Barbara Burlingame, senior nutrition officer at FAO and coordinator for the book, on the FAO InTouch website. Unfortunately, this is only available internally at FAO, for reasons which elude me. Here’s a few of the interesting things Dr Burlingame had to say.

We wanted to showcase the many dimensions of these traditional food resources, breaking them down by nutrition, health, culture and environmental sustainability. So much knowledge of early cultures is contained within traditional foods and their cultivation, and they have a direct impact on the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual health of indigenous communities. Indigenous foods can have important nutritional benefits, for example. For instance plant foods are generally viewed as good sources of carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals. These foods also provide important economic benefits, such as helping create self-sufficient communities and establishing a strong foundation of food security.
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We believe the information can be a help to those in nutrition, agriculture, environmental and health education, and science, including policymakers. Nutritionists can use the information to try and correct imbalances in certain regions. For example, we discovered in research that the Pohnpei district community in the Federated States of Micronesia was severely deficient in vitamin A, despite the fact that a species of banana rich in vitamin A beta-carotenes was indigenous to the region. Once we determined the nutritional composition of the banana, we were able to educate the people about its benefit and encourage them to eat the local fruit, which helped reverse the deficiency.
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Yes, another book is under way that focuses more on nutrition and public health. It will look at policy dimensions, stemming the tide of obesity in indigenous peoples, the value of indigenous weaning foods for babies, and a ‘go local’ campaign in Micronesia encouraging communities to eat local food items. We will also continue in our efforts in integrating elements of biodiversity into all aspects of nutrition.

“Go Local” of course refers to the campaign to promote traditional foods in the Pacific spearheaded by Lois Englberger and her colleagues at the Island Food Community of Pohnpei, who have appeared frequently on these pages. It’s great to see my old friends from the Pacific getting this kind of international exposure for their efforts, and making a difference beyond their immediate region.

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Cuba: the goods

We asked Julia Wright, author of the study on Cuba, if she would set us straight on the various interpretations of her work that are floating around. She agreed. Thanks Julia.

Jeremy has summarized the situation pretty clearly, as I saw it. I was in Cuba from 1999 to 2001 collecting field data, during which time I interviewed over 400 people mainly from the farming sector, across the country. It was difficult to get hold of secondary hard data, partly because of paper shortages — stats weren’t being printed — but also because some just weren’t being collected, and also because I was a foreigner. I undertook this work because I had heard that Cuba was or might be organic, and I wanted to see how they did it — how their production and support systems were operating, and also the implications of this in terms of human health. So the research was curiosity driven, and I got funded through the EU Training and Mobility of Researchers programme (Marie Curie) to undertake research at Wageningen Uni in the Netherlands (I used the ‘laboratory glassware’ part of the funds to cover the flights to Cuba…).

Basically urban agriculture is mainly organic and successful – so much so that the State has maintained support for it to this day. But in rural regions, it took longer for the positive impacts of the shortfalls in fuel and agrochemicals to manifest — some farmers estimated that after about 5 years they could detect an increase in biodiversity and improvements in livestock health — and before organic could prove itself Cuba had the opportunity to start importing more industrial inputs. The sector had been forced into a low-input situation; it was not an attitudinal change. Nevertheless, much learning took place, and everyone agreed that they would not go back to the old ways of the 1980s. The same would happen in this country (England), and we can learn a lot from what worked and what didn’t.

About specific figures, well urban agriculture supplies mainly salad vegetables — lettuce and tomato, which isn’t a very popular part of the Cuban diet. Peri-urban agriculture could, according to researchers in that field, one day supply up to 70% of Havana’s food needs, so there’s an area of great potential. In terms of national self sufficiency, I’ve heard various figures being bandied about. Official international sources (often from US) estimate that 90% of foods are imported. Cuban contacts say about 50%, because of the large amount of informal campesino production that is just not being documented. In recent years, Cuba has had relatively more choice over whether to import or aim for self sufficiency, and it has tended toward the former (as has the UK). This may however be changing again with the current economic crisis.

I go back there most years, as work allows, and for the past 4 years have been supporting a project in the east of the country on drought mitigation. Industrial agriculture can’t cope with drought aside from digging deeper wells, and in fact neither can temperate organic methods, so we draw from Australia’s permaculture expertise for innovative, low-cost rainwater harvesting approaches.

I’m sorry that the book is so expensive, but if there’s sufficient demand, Earthscan will publish a softback. In the meantime, I do have some discount copies…

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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.

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Apples and pears around the Big Apple

If you were intrigued by Cary Fowler’s reference during his TED talk to the book “The Apples of New York,” you’ll be pleased to hear that it is online in a variety of formats. You can download it, or read it online at Google Books. Incidentally, there’s also a similar book on the pears of New York, though by a different author, “the sixth in a series of monographs on fruits, all of which have become classic references on the fruit cultivars of the period.” The pear book mentions a specific tree, the Endicott Pear Tree at Danvers, Massachusetts. That tree, which may have come to America from England on the Arbella in 1630, is still there. It is said to be the “oldest living fruit tree in North America,” although I’m pretty sure the word “exotic” should be in there too, and I do wonder about Mexico.