Paper short abstract:

This paper studies interactions of climate, population, economic development, social unrest, and finite resource limitations on food systems; offers anthropological electronic MOOC education; and presents field trials data to accelerate shared food system problem solutions among small indigenous farmers.

Paper long abstract:

With climate change, population growth, economic development, political competition, and finite resource limitations all impacting the world food system, anthropology has a key role to play in catalyzing sustainable solutions to world food problems. Our emphasis on evolutionary models, holistic bio-cultural perspectives, and sensitivity to socio-cultural diversity at local and other levels makes anthropology particularly suitable to help clarify the many questions, strategic decisions and alternative solutions that will be necessary to achieve food security, safety and sustainability. This paper clarifies key problems, analyzes the potential solutions that we are now encountering, and lays out a set of potential means to dramatically increase the anthropological expertise that could help address the problem. It proposes the development of MOOC-like macro electronic educational programs and presents our latest data on field trials to accelerate the development and sharing of solutions, while simultaneously increasing the numbers of trained anthropologists to transfer and exchange knowledge necessary to solve food system problems among small and indigenous farmers.

Paper short abstract:

A number of recent disasters have impacted global food systems. While much has been examined of these disasters from the food security perspective, little disaster theory has been utilized. Examined here are the effects of these disasters on worldwide food from the anthropology of disaster studies point of view.

Paper long abstract:

In recent decades, a number of so-called "natural" and technological disasters, including melt-down, typhoon, drought, flood, earthquake, and fire, have impacted not only lives and health of effected communities but have involved major impacts on their food consumption, production, and viability of land. Quite critically, the repercussions of many have extended far beyond the local to involve worldwide implications, most significantly on global food systems. Since the inception of the field, anthropological concepts and constructions have been and remain at the core of the development and implementation of disaster theory and understanding. Yet, while much has been examined about the impacts of these recent disasters on both local and global food systems from the food security perspective, little disaster theory has been utilized to illuminate the development and unfolding of these calamities, and in particular on their global consequences. In the belief that it is crucial at this point to apply comprehensive disaster and anthropological understanding on these catastrophes, especially in light of future implications, this paper examines the worldwide effects of numerous disasters on global food systems from the disaster studies point of view. Included will be such concepts as construction and perception of risk, vulnerability, and the complex issues of recovery and reconstruction.

Paper short abstract:

Genetically modified (GM) crops are likely to impact on food production in developing countries. This paper gives an ethnographer's perspective on GM’s potential contribution to sustainable farming. It considers impacts of GM crops on farm management skill, using examples from India and the Philippines.

Paper long abstract:

Genetically modified (GM) crops have not played a significant role in recent food crises and have had only narrow impacts on food production in developing countries. However there is the potential for GM crops to have significant direct and indirect impacts on food production in the decade. This paper first gives an ethnographer's perspective on the types of modifications that would be beneficial to sustainable farming. It then assesses the extent to which such modified crops are likely to be developed, given the current political economy of biotechnology. It then considers likely indirect impacts of GM crops, including effects on farm management skill and indigenous technical knowledge. These assessments are illustrated with ethnographic material from India and the Philippines.

Paper short abstract:

Enset cultivation/culture is a successful, environmentally friendly and risk-free system, and yet it is arbitrarily stigmatized as a ‘poor’ food. This paper provides an emic approach to hunger, food security, and poverty, and reflects upon the destiny of socio- and bio-diversity of rural communities.

Paper long abstract:

The enset is the least studied domesticated plant in Africa. Only as recently as 1997 did the Ethiopian Ministry of Agriculture recognize it as a source of national wealth. Yet, in terms of food and economic security, this tree has been described as a kind of 'bank'. The crop is an important staple for over 20 millions people in south-central Ethiopia, where it is mostly grown by smallholder farmers. These populations have never starved, even during the tragic drought of the 1970s and '80s. The enset and its cultivators represent examples of resilience in challenging situations: the former as a sustainable food against hunger, the latter as a potential breaking point in mainstream politics of development.

The production of this ancient crop is greatly threatened by a bacterial wilt disease which attacks all its varieties, as scientists have failed to find any genes of resistance after over 30 years of research. Enset has always been an orphan tree and has received less attention from policymakers as compared to cereals and cash crops. The history of enset sheds light on a case of intersection between the policy of a military conquest, land management, and a cultural campaign, when the élites' need of publicly acceptable, representative foods has resulted in the manipulation of specific tastes. Each time I meet the Hadiya farmers they ask me to save their dying enset; this paper aims at bringing to the fore this case of sustainability, as well as the social and political aspects of an alternative food system.

Paper short abstract:

30 years of non-gendered research barely remediate food security, while 10 years of gendered work have done so. Gendered interventions ameliorate constraints and empower women and help alleviate poverty and hunger. Examples from Africa, Asia, and Latin America are given.

Paper long abstract:

Anthropological data on non-gendered research and projects over the last thirty years show they barely remediated food security problems, while gendered work in the past decade showed improved poverty and hunger alleviation. Gendered research/interventions help ameliorate constraints to women's participation in remunerative productive activity which empower women and help alleviate poverty and hunger. Among examples from Africa, Asia, and Latin America, is Northern Ghana an initially non-gendered intervention that failed when it introduced conservation agriculture techniques (no tillage with mulch and cover crops) to women and land-owner men. Both sexes became research-trial cooperators. The headman and husbands gave women land, resulting in increased yields and decreased work hours using the new techniques. However, the next year the women dropped out when the men took the land back for their own production. Subsequent remediation by project staff employed gender-sensitive programming using local gendered norms to work with women's farmer organizations. Some women became adopters on family land; others purchased land outright using revenues from increased yieldsall leading to household and community food security. Gender-sensitive strategies and leadership development were keys to turn-around. In Cambodia, both sexes became adopters increasing yields and sales; some women purchased land and farm machinery, others became leaders in women's organizations. Gendered considerations expand women's independent and joint domains of control and benefits, taking different assets, needs, preferences, goals, and priorities of men and women into account, and leading to increased food security.

Paper short abstract:

This paper addresses the role anthropologists play in the making of Mexico policies related to food and agriculture. It shows how their actions illustrate farmers and urban groups' struggle against neoliberal policies and global food market, while promoting small-scale farming and the right to food.

Paper long abstract:

Mexicans are experiencing the decrease of their households' incomes and the rise of food prices. From 2008 to 2012, Mexico´s poverty index went from 49.5% to 53.3%. Indeed, those without food increased from 21.7% to 24.9%. Simultaneously, the right to food has become an arena in which distinctive actors -members of civil society (scholars included) and/or the State along with international organizations (FAO)—interplay. These fluid and dialogical encounters set in motion a variety of meanings, actions, and processes that aim to impact the making of public policy in regard to citizens' right to food, agriculture, health, inequality, the state to openly support socioeconomic inclusion/exclusion forms. This paper addresses the role that anthropologists play in the making of Mexico policies related to food and agriculture by examining workshops organized by them and other actors to discuss food, agriculture, and health. These are spaces for exchanging and discussing scientific, technical and local knowledge, experiences, strategies, and agendas. They are illustrations of farmers and urban groups' struggle against Mexico´s neoliberal policies and global food market instability, while promoting small-scale staple farming as a way to cope with the growth of Mexico´s food insecurity and poverty.

Paper short abstract:

In Brazil, where power is given to agrobusiness, anthropologists are contributing to making indigenous food systems more visible, valorizing them, defending them in government bodies. It is worth thinking of further actions to turn these food systems into models for a wider range of the population.

Paper long abstract:

Anthropological studies led on indigenous food systems in Brazil show they are based on a combination of different activities (agriculture, gathering, fishing, hunting) and a great diversity of plant and animal resources, providing a good nutritional balance. In a country where agrobusiness (mainly focused on GMO corn, soya bean and sugar cane monoculture) plays an important economic role and is highly valued, indigenous agricultural systems are widely ignored, although they are complex, sustainable and rich in biodiversity. They could be a model for the future, but so far are marginalized. Moreover, many indigenous lands have been encroached, what deprives the people of their resources, sometimes to the point of starvation. Public policies have incited some indigenous groups to change their modes of production, leading in some cases to dramatic health and nutrition results. More recently, many indigenous people have been involved in processes of urbanization as well as of monetarization, especially under assistencialist policies. They tend therefore to give up their traditional activities and consume more industrial rather than self-produced food. We will describe here the contributions, of anthropologists, engaged in collaborative research with indigenous people through NGOs or academic institutions, to make indigenous food systems more visible, valorize them, defend them in government bodies as well as supporting indigenous people acting at local or national level for the strengthening of their own food habits. Through this session we will try to find further actions to be led in Brazil or elsewhere in order to raise traditional food systems as models and prevent ill-nutrition.