Agroecology and Health: Lessons from Indigenous Populations

Suárez-Torres, José; Suárez-López, José R.; López-Paredes, Dolores; Morocho, Hilario; Cachiguango-Cachiguango, Luis Enrique; Dellai, William

doi:10.1007/s40572-017-0146-z

Cited by 21 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…These practices need to be supported and upheld through community-based programming and ensuring that the environmentally healthy habitat needed for Native plant and animal species is available. International development research has also established that TEK and agroecology are viable approaches to improving nutrition and access to food for Indigenous communities (Suárez-Torres et al. 2017).…”

Section: Discussion: Native American Perspectives On Traditional Ecolmentioning

confidence: 99%

Native American Perspectives on Health and Traditional Ecological Knowledge

Isaac

Finn

Joe

et al. 2018

Environ Health Perspect

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Background: Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) is a conceptual framework that highlights Indigenous knowledge (IK) systems. Although scientific literature has noted the relevance of TEK for environmental research since the 1980s, little attention has been given to how Native American (NA) scholars engage with it to shape tribal-based research on health, nor how non-Native scholars can coordinate their approaches with TEK. This coordination is of particular importance for environmental health sciences (EHS) research exploring interdisciplinary approaches and the integration of environmental and human health. Objective: Our perspective on TEK arose from a series of Health and Culture Research Group (HCRG) workshops that identified gaps in existing EHS methodologies that are based on a reliance on Euro-American concepts for assessing environmental exposures in tribal communities. These prior methods neither take into account cultural behavior nor community responses to these. Our objective is to consider NA perspectives on TEK when analyzing relationships between health and the environment and to look at how these may be applied to address this gap. Discussion: The authors—the majority of whom are NA scholars—highlight two research areas that consider health from a TEK perspective: food systems and knowledge of medicinal plants. This research has yielded data, methods, and knowledge that have helped Indigenous communities better define and reduce health risks and protect local natural food resources, and this TEK approach may prove of value to EHS research. Conclusion: NA perspectives on TEK resulting from the HCRG workshops provide an opportunity for developing more accurate Indigenous health indicators (IHI) reflecting the conceptualizations of health maintained in these communities. This approach has the potential to bridge the scientific study of exposure with methods addressing a tribal perspective on the sociocultural determinants of health, identifying potential new areas of inquiry in EHS that afford nuanced evaluations of exposures and outcomes in tribal communities. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP1944

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Section: Discussion: Native American Perspectives On Traditional Ecolmentioning

confidence: 99%

Native American Perspectives on Health and Traditional Ecological Knowledge

Isaac

Finn

Joe

et al. 2018

Environ Health Perspect

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“…In Latin America, certified organic foods are export-oriented, and thus many actors in the region are more aligned with agroecology, which includes organic farming principles but employs non-conventional certification mechanisms, so it may be more affordable [15,18,30]. The link between alternative food procurement practices and the economic circumstances of consumers remains unclear [26,27].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characteristics and Motivations of Consumers of Direct Purchasing Channels and the Perceived Barriers to Alternative Food Purchase: A Cross-Sectional Study in the Ecuadorian Andes

et al. 2020

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Modern food systems generate social inequalities in the access to healthy food, but some families maintain behaviors that provide an alternative to these systems. Agroecological consumers (ACs) and non-agroecological direct market consumers (DMCs) are key actors in alternative food systems. We assessed the characteristics of ACs and DMCs using data from a representative sample of households in Ibarra, Quito and Riobamba (n = 2914). We also deepened the exploration of motivations for adopting these practices through mini-ethnographies with families who were identified as ACs or DMCs (n = 15). We found motivations related to personal health problems, food quality (e.g., taste, freshness), and safety (e.g., avoiding pesticides) to be key. Other motivations were price and community solidarity with farmers. Barriers included inconvenience, lack of awareness, and insecurity of market location. Using Chi-square tests, we found differences between ACs and DMCs on place of residence, education, employment, health, and diet. Controlling for socioeconomic and health variables using logistic regressions, we found DMC dietary habits to be similar to the remainder of the study population, except that they were less likely to eat processed foods less frequently (adjusted odds ratio (AOR) 0.6, 95% confidence interval 0.4–0.9). In contrast, ACs were more likely than the remainder of the study population to control their salt intake (3.2, 1.9–5.2) and have greater knowledge of nutrition labels (2.8, 1.7–4.6). They were more likely to eat traditional foods frequently (1.9, 1.1–3.3), fruit and vegetables daily (1.6, 1.0–2.8), and processed foods less frequently (2.7, 1.5–4.8). Hence, these two types of alternative food provisioning practices (AC and DMC) were adopted by different types of consumers, with heterogenous motivations and food consumption practices. These findings have implications for public health initiatives aiming to scale up the nutrition and ecological potential of alternative food systems.

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“…This indignation, rooted in heteropatriarchy and coloniality, has inspired a revision of the history of agroecology itself. While agroecology's story told through settler lenses typically emphasizes twentieth century trailblazers like Germany's Wolfgang Tischler and US tropical biologist Dan Janzen, agroecologists are now beginning to affirm a different genealogy (Suárez Torres et al 2017;Giraldo 2018;. Indigenous people are easily the world's first agroecologists, having anticipated 'systems thinking' with complex and relational accounts of ecosystems and their co-evolving constituent parts (Vandermeer and Perfecto 2013;Marya and Patel 2021).…”

Section: Epistemic Foundations Of Science and Technologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Can agroecology and CRISPR mix? The politics of complementarity and moving toward technology sovereignty

Wit

2021

Agric Hum Values

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Can gene editing and agroecology be complementary? Various formulations of this question now animate debates over the future of food systems, including in the UN Committee on World Food Security and at the UN Food Systems Summit. Previous analyses have discussed the risks of gene editing for agroecosystems, smallholders, and the concentration of wealth by and for agro-industry. This paper takes a different approach, unpacking the epistemic, socioeconomic, and ontological politics inherent in complementarity. I ask: How is complementarity understood? Who is asking and defining this question? What are the politics of entertaining the debate at all? I sketch the epistemic foundations of science and technology that organize different notions of evidence used in agroecology and genetic engineering. On this base, I offer 8 angles on the compatibility question, exploring the historical contradictions that complementarity discourses reveal and the contemporary work they do. I work through questions of (1) technological neutrality, (2) “root cause” problems, (3) working with nature, (4) encoding racism, and dilemmas of (5) ownership and (6) access. These questions, I argue, require a reckoning with (7) ontologies of coloniality-modernity, which help us get underneath—and beyond—the complementarity question. Finally, I offer (8) a framework for thinking about and working toward technology sovereignty.

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Agroecology and Health: Lessons from Indigenous Populations

Cited by 21 publications

References 30 publications

Native American Perspectives on Health and Traditional Ecological Knowledge

Native American Perspectives on Health and Traditional Ecological Knowledge

Characteristics and Motivations of Consumers of Direct Purchasing Channels and the Perceived Barriers to Alternative Food Purchase: A Cross-Sectional Study in the Ecuadorian Andes

Can agroecology and CRISPR mix? The politics of complementarity and moving toward technology sovereignty

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