Multistakeholder collaborative research to advance food system transformation in Latin America and the Caribbean
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Resumen
Current food systems are unable to meet the needs of millions of people who experience hunger, miss key micronutrients or suffer from diet-related chronic diseases.Más información
Current food systems are unable to meet the needs of millions of people who experience hunger, miss key micronutrients or suffer from diet-related chronic diseases. Food systems are highly vulnerable to environmental stressors, the impacts of which are borne disproportionately by members of poor households, notably women and girls and Indigenous peoples. In 2020, 267 million people in Latin America (40% of the population) experienced moderate or severe food insecurity. Unsustainable food production practices have resulted in harmful effects on climate and biodiversity conservation and aggravated poverty among smallholder farmers.
This project will adopt participatory research methods to involve civil society and research partners from selected countries from Latin America and the Caribbean in identifying critical research questions for food systems transformations from the grassroots perspective; limitations and conditions for the successful scaling of agroecological models/solutions to specific territories; and strategies to increase grassroots organizations' capacities to influence agri-food transformations in research and public policy design and implementation.
It will build collaboration between grassroots organizations and academic researchers to generate robust evidence on the potential of agroecology to contribute to more resilient, equitable and healthy food systems. It will also strengthen the capacity of civil society and academic institutions to contribute to national policy discussions and decisions regarding food system transformations.
This project is part of a cohort of seven projects supported under IDRC’s Transforming Food Systems Initiative in the regions of Central and South America and the Middle East and North Africa. This initiative aims to foster transformation toward equitable, sustainable and diverse food systems that build the resilience of communities vulnerable to climate change, pandemics and other critical pressures and shocks by understanding mechanisms through which equity-seeking groups can benefit from and drive the change process, both at the local level and at scale.