Indigenous food systems, biocultural heritage and agricultural resilience

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The world's 370-500 million indigenous peoples are amongst the poorest and most food insecure. IIED and partners have been conducting research on indigenous farming systems and traditional knowledge in Kenya, India and China, without humanities inputs or training. This project aims to expand this existing partnership of agriculture and sustainability researchers and NGOs to include humanities and interdisciplinary academics. The new partnership will develop novel interdisciplinary approaches to explore indigenous food systems, past and present, from farm to plate, including crops, processing and cuisine. It will design new research methods that use ethnobotany and oral histories alongside agricultural surveys, as well as information from historical and archaeological sources. The areas of research are: (i) the Rabai community, Mijikenda tribe in coastal Kenya; (ii) the Lingsey and Lingseykha communities (Lepcha and Limbu people) in the Himalayas, West Bengal, NE India; (iii) the Naxi people in the Stone Village area of Yunnan, SW China. These areas have a rich diversity of traditional crops which are adapted to local conditions and hence important for agricultural resilience; but many of these crops have declined in recent decades, becoming minor, and associated traditional knowledge is rapidly disappearing. A key driver of change is the spread of modern high-yielding varieties promoted by agricultural research and extension services. The new research is expected to generate evidence of the long-term use of certain traditional crops which suggests suitability for local agricultural contexts, to inform agricultural researchers and policy makers, and community crop choices.The project will also establish a wider global network on indigenous food systems bringing together the new partnership, other UK humanities and agriculture experts, FAO, and international and indigenous experts working on indigenous food systems. The network will connect researchers working largely in disciplinary and sectoral silos and using very different approaches, to jointly identify and develop new areas of interdisciplinary research critical for addressing the food systems challenges of indigenous peoples in developing countries.The project has 3 main objectives, each of which forms a work package: 1. Establish a new cross-sector research partnership and network on indigenous food systems, linking interdisciplinary academics with agricultural and sustainability researchers and policy makers in the UK and LMICs and globally (FAO). A workshop will be held in the UK to bring together these actors, take stock of research to date on the role of indigenous food systems in resilience, nutrition and sustainability, and identify key areas for further interdisciplinary research. The workshop will also begin to develop interdisciplinary approaches for research on indigenous food systems in the study communities in Kenya, India and China.2. Co-design new interdisciplinary research approaches and develop interdisciplinary capacity to explore indigenous food and farming systems past and present, and from farm to plate. Local workshops will be held in each country to develop new approaches tailored to each local context in collaboration with indigenous communities, agricultural researchers and policy makers and local humanities experts. Ethnobotanical questionnaires will be developed collaboratively and tested by local partners.3. Advocate the importance of using traditional agricultural knowledge, crops and landscapes to create strategies for agricultural resilience. The results will be used to prepare workshop reports in English and local languages; a journal article; and a project proposal for future in-depth research in the 3 sites. The results will also be presented at international policy meetings on sustainable development, biodiversity and culture, and at DFID. They will be disseminated more widely through a blog and a news story.