Systèmes Ingénieux du Patrimoine Agricole Mondial (SIPAM)

Introducing the GIAHS recipe cards at a side event during the 39th session of the Committee on World Food Security

Rome, Italy, 15 October 2012

On 17 October 2012, the GIAHS Secretariat will host a side event during the 39th session of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS).

Whilst the side event will feature dynamics and ingenious nature of GIAHS in ensuring food security and nutrition in a changing climate, panelists will discuss issues confronting small farmers and will look at concrete steps to empower them.

Food is central to at least another major event taking place this month: World Food Day, celebrated at FAO headquarters on 16 October 2012. Focusing on the theme of Agricultural cooperatives – key to feeding the world, World Food Day this year follows on the heels of The State of Food Insecurity in the World, released by FAO last week, and the news that some 868 million people continue to suffer from undernourishment.

Increasingly, more and more people are persuaded that a healthy food system ensures not only the survival of humankind, but of the entire planet.

In GIAHS sites, small farmers, peasants and indigenous communities, provide diversified and nutritious food. Through traditional agriculture, they conserve biodiversity and ecosystem services; ensuring soil fertility, clean air and water; safeguarding biodiversity and landscapes, whilst protecting health, knowledge and tradition.

Merging the best aspects of traditional culinary arts with hands-on instructions, the GIAHS recipe cards provide insight into how traditionally grown food contributes to food security, whilst preserving and celebrating local identity.

The GIAHS recipe cards are a way of celebrating the knowledge and ingenuity of small farmers and a means of giving recognition to the fundamental work they have been carrying out as stewards of biodiversity, who have maintained the basis of the planet's food supply for thousands of years.

Download recipe cards from below;