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Culture and food traditions: by supporting healthy, diversified and culturally appropriate diets, agroecology contributes to food security and nutrition while maintaining the health of ecosystems

Agriculture and food are core components of human heritage. Hence, culture and food traditions play a central role in society and in shaping human behaviour. However, in many instances, our current food systems have created a disconnection between food habits and culture. This disconnection has contributed to a situation where hunger and obesity exist side by side, in a world that produces enough food to feed its entire population.

Almost 800 million people worldwide are chronically hungry and 2 billion suffer micronutrient deficiencies. Meanwhile, there has been a rampant rise in obesity and diet-related diseases; 1.9 billion people are overweight or obese and non-communicable diseases (cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes) are the number one cause of global mortality. To address the imbalances in our food systems and move towards a zero hunger world, increasing production alone is not sufficient.

Agroecology plays an important role in re-balancing tradition and modern food habits, bringing them together in a harmonious way that promotes healthy food production and consumption, supporting the right to adequate food. In this way, agroecology seeks to cultivate a healthy relationship between people and food.

Cultural identity and sense of place are often closely tied to landscapes and food systems. As people and ecosystems have evolved together, cultural practices and indigenous and traditional knowledge offer a wealth of experience that can inspire agroecological solutions. For example, India is home to an estimated 50,000 indigenous varieties of rice – bred over centuries for their specific taste, nutrition and pest-resistance properties, and their adaptability to a range of conditions. Culinary traditions are built around these different varieties, making use of their different properties. Taking this accumulated body of traditional knowledge as a guide, agroecology can help realise the potential of territories to sustain their peoples.

Database

Modality: Self-learning | From 15-12-21 to 31-12-22 This course provides a guide on how to evaluate agroecology using the Tool for Agroecology Performance Evaluation  (TAPE) which enables a multidimensional diagnosis to be made in a variety of contexts. It explains how the analytical framework proposed by FAO was developed, what are its underlying principles, and what are its methodological components...
التعلّم
2022
This paper briefly discusses the progress and challenges brought by the integration of agroecological approaches into Brazilian institutions. It covers the struggles of rural social movements that work on the ‘agroecological fields’ of the country. The processes leading to the creation of the National Agroecology Articulation (ANA) and the Brazilian...
Brazil
مقال في مجلة
2013
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations defines Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS) as "remarkable land use systems and landscapes which are rich in globally significant biological diversity evolving from the co-adaptation of a community with its environment and its needs and aspirations for sustainable development"....
المادة
2012
The food system of Fez in Morocco faces many challenges: profession of devalued farmer and difficult living conditions leading to a significant phenomenon of rural exodus, significant use of chemicals for agriculture and water pollution, development strategy of agriculture contradicting the scarcity of water resources, transformation of diets. But at...
Morocco
فيديو
2019
This video presents the process through which 800 000 farmers in the southern Indian region of Andhra Pradesh cultivate their lands without any pesticides and how the agricultural region around Anantapur, one of the largest in the country, is in the process of converting to 100% natural agriculture. This is the largest agroecology project in...
India
فيديو
2021