Food chains, agrobiodiversity conservation, and the kitchen: a political ecology approach

Much of my talk is about how structures constrain choice – including consumer choice in the developed world, and choices related to the conserva=on of agrobiodiversity and maintenance of food security in the developing world. The structures that I discuss can be seen as ‘the elephant in the room’ – what we know is there but do not easily acknowledge -‐ and have everything to do with the global expansion of the capitalist food system.

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In the USA, aIer the war, the number of farms decreased drama=cally, with people moving out of agriculture and rural areas. The amount of agricultural land remained about the same, so there was increasing farm size – land was concentrated in fewer hands.

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Agricultural yields increased very rapidly star=ng in the mid-‐1950s – leading to overproduc=on – especially of corn but also of other crops and of animal products – which were increasingly incorporated into the feed and food industry as cheap inputs.

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Women were also moving into the labour force where, by the 1980s, a two-‐income family became the norm: two full-‐=me wage earners were now necessary to maintain the average US family, compared to one in the 1950s.

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These phenomena together triggered the rise of the processed food industry – urbaniza=on, women’s labour force par=cipa=on, and cheap raw materials. Reflected in the trend to eat processed foods away from home – the fast food and restaurant industries.

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At the same =me, the global economic power of a few firms that dominate the agricultural input industry increased drama=cally. Among these are the crop seed and biotechnology industry, whose rise in Europe and the US signaled the dras=c decline in crop species and varietal diversity. Farms became wholly dependent on the use of chemical inputs to achieve high yields. This data reflect only the period from 1994-‐2009, when concentra=on increased at an accelerated rate.

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What is going on in the household? As women’s labour force par=cipa=on increased, they sought to reduce the amount of =me spent preparing meals, in the 1950’s s=ll based mainly on raw materials. Then ready-‐prepared ‘packaged’ meals appeared in the marketplace. The ‘modern’ career woman is told to purchase ready-‐made meals, heated in the microwave

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By the late 1990s, the health effects of the modern diet are apparent and now women are dealing with =me constraints, their own and their children’s obesity, diets, bulemia and anorexia, nutri=onal composi=on of food, food addi=ves, fats, sugar, costs, etc. Ea=ng has become less of a pleasure and more a major source of tension, worry, and frustra=on.

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The graph shows a very limited =me period – from 1975 to 2000 – but even in this very short period, less than one genera=on, =me spent preparing food at home decreased substan=ally – largest declines in France, by about 28%, in Norway by 42%. In the USA, food prepara=on =me is shortest – only about 38 minutes per day, or an average of 12.2 minutes per meal.

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No longer producing food, or storing and processing it at home, and with less =me devoted to food prepara=on, women lose most of the knowledge and skills associated with food produc=on and provisioning. Deskilling in leads to increased reliance on the modern industrial food system, and contemporary problems with food, diet, nutri=on, and health.

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Let’s go now to where there are no supermarkets…or fast food restaurants. Where people depend on their own ‘low input’ subsistence produc=on and on local natural resources for their well-‐being – according to the FAO, about 2 billion people across the planet. These are also the systems where the majority of agrobiodiversity is harboured, so it is these systems that are the most cri=cal to maintain in terms of global crop diversity.

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Humans adapt to nature and adapt nature to meet our needs – human cultures and local ecosystems thus co-‐evolve. Food is central to survival and hence to culture. Food culture involves cosmology and religious beliefs, rituals, technologies, and knowledge for food produc=on and procurement, harves=ng, storage, processing, and prepara=on, as well as culinary tradi=ons and foodways and food (re)distribu=on within and between households. This slide illustrates the maize culture of Mesoamerica, where maize domes=ca=on occurred, and which is the centre of maize diversity. Historically, the Maya considered that man is ‘made of maize’ and there was a maize god. Maize figures prominently in the milpa, the produc=on system, in food rituals and celebra=ons, and the greatest maize diversity is also found in this region.

This slide illustrates rice culture, which is pervasive across much of Asia – in this case, it focuses on rice in Bali where rice terraces are irrigated by complex systems regulated by water temples and priests. People worship and pay homage to a rice goddess, Dewi Sri, and rituals in her honor are carried out throughout the food chain – from plan=ng to harves=ng to rice storage, where graneries are sacred places, to ritual food offerings and meals. Rice diversity, of course, has been very great.

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• Ea=ng is essen=al, and the essence of ea=ng reflects the essence of culture, of the domes=c economy, and of the local biological environment. When culinary traditions change, demand for agrobiodiversity is lost, and culinary traditions are changing rapidly.

Food security and nutri=on are based on much more than agriculture – homegardens, pasture land, forests, wild areas as sources of proteins, vegetables, etc. There is greater species diversity in homegardens than in agricultural fields, and they are beginning to gain more ahen=on.

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Focus on crop diversity.

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Steps in the processing chain for one maize variety – two chains, depending on whether young maize or mature maize are used – first processing, then second processing, prepara=on steps – to make different end products. For example, mature ears are stored in the field or in homegarden containers, then ground, boiled with lime, milled into flour, which is fermented, hand shaped, toasted, to make tor=llas. While only men produce maize in milpas, women nego=ate with their husbands about which varie=es to plant, and how much to plant, based on their knowledge of what they will need to use to feed their families.

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• Only rarely is it considered that women, in their performance of domes=c tasks, sustain an in=mate rela=onship with plants and with agrobiodiversity • Domes=c tasks include, among many others, food prepara=on, preserva=on, storage, and processing, and they are most oIen assigned to women and girls. • Many highly complex, knowledge-‐intensive processes go on in the kitchen and pantry that are crucial to subsistence and also to the use, management, and conserva=on of plants. • In fact, the kitchen is quite possibly the most under-‐valued site of plant biodiversity conserva=on. Perhaps nowhere can this be seen so clearly as in the sphere of food storage, processing, and prepara=on. • READ SLIDE

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Without storage, people would go hungry – seed and staple crop storage must be designed in accordance with locally available materials and local environmental condi=ons – humidity, temperature, pests, etc. Storage facili=es are so important that they are considered in many socie=es, including in Portugal, to be sacred places.

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But food can be preserved for use in hunger periods in many different ways, each of which requires its own technologies and knowledge. Each species, or species part, must be treated in a different way and combined with other species or chemicals to avoid spoilage and produce good taste.

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Complementary foods – introduced to infants with weaning. Women’s knowledge of the importance of fermen=ng is very clear – it promotes children’s growth, enhances flavour, removes toxins, and improves the nutrient content

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Cooking technologies are also locally specific – based on available natural resources and environmental condi=ons – such as the availability of fuel. Women are oIen responsible for making their own cooking stoves.

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The use of wild plants and a wide diversity of domes=c species has been well documented for Swaziland, in South Africa. We know, however, that the use of these species and varie=es has been declining rapidly for at least the past two decades. However, the reasons for this decline are not to be found mainly in agriculture. Instead,…

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Beans, squash and maize – milpa triad – which complemented maize protein with a beher-‐quality bean to increase overall dietary protein to an acceptable level.

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Some of the products made from maize and maize diversity…Tor=llas, tamales, pupusas, and chicha – a beverage

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To make these products, corn must be reoved from the cobs, the kernels must be ground to make a dough. Technology for grinding corn is 10,000 years old. In spite of capitalist development over the past 150 years, the technology has not changed. Women’s domes=c labour is unpaid. There is no incen=ve on the part of capitalist firms or others (e.g. men) to increase the produc=vity of this unpaid labour. Women have the incen=ve, but no income with which to purchase technology to enhance their labour.

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In Honduras, NGOs, the UN, and Government programmes have stepped in, providing credit to women’s coopera=ves to purchase corn mills and perform the service for their communi=es at a profit. The average =me savings for 30 women / week = 840 hours or 105 work days.

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My research showed that women invested the =me saved principally in increasing household food security, especially through own food produc=on – home gardens producing high diversity of plant species, small livestock (e.g. chickens, rabbits), aqua=c species in ponds, without use of external inputs. An FAO programme, ‘woman-‐to-‐woman extension’ also brought women’s agronomic exper=se to other women who lacked the knowledge, and eventually to men, improving produc=on and food security sustainably. Food and nutri=onal security increased – some 60 species are grown in the average homegarden. -‐-‐-‐-‐-‐ Mee=ng Notes (30/10/14 21:50) -‐-‐-‐-‐-‐ 28 minutes

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Food chains, agrobiodiversity conservation, and the kitchen: a political ecology approach

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