DOI: 10.65398/DQGF6897
Tania Eulalia Martínez-Cruz, Universidad Intercultural Maya de Quintana Roo, Mexico; and Adelman Levi
New Wine into Old Wineskins: Indigenous Peoples’ Food and Knowledge Systems as Key for a Sustainable Planet
Abstract
Food insecurity has predominantly been addressed as a problem of food production; since the times of the Green Revolution, miracle seeds, pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, and irrigation have been promoted to maximize yield. However, this model has proven to be unsustainable as it causes 30% of the Greenhouse Gas Emissions, accounts for 70% of freshwater withdrawals, is responsible for 80% of the world’s deforestation, and has had many disastrous social impacts, affecting many Indigenous Peoples, among others. As an alternative model for food insecurity, Indigenous Peoples’ food and knowledge systems form the basis of the most time-tested models for stability and sustainability. Although Indigenous Peoples represent only 6% of the world’s population and face ongoing systemic marginalization, discrimination, and criminalization, they protect 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity. In this paper, we present some key data on the unsustainability of the current food systems; then, we present some key features of Indigenous Peoples’ food systems and the lessons that we could learn for food systems transformation. We then examine the questions of what a right to food for Indigenous Peoples means and what other rights and requirements are implicated in that process, and finally, we make some specific recommendations for food systems transformation while ensuring that we use a rights-based approach.
New Wine into Old Wineskins: Indigenous Peoples’ food and knowledge systems as key for a sustainable planet
1. Food insecurity: a prevailing problem disproportionately affecting Indigenous Peoples’
Despite many national and international efforts, food insecurity remains a critical issue. According to the 2023 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI), approximately 737 million people faced hunger in 2022, which is 122 million more than those facing hunger in 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic (FAO et al., 2023), and nearly one in every ten people. By 2030, 600 million people will be chronically malnourished, which is 25% or 119 million more than the initial projections before COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine (FAO et al., 2023). Just due to the war in Ukraine, food insecurity increased by 23 million people, a 5% increase (FAO et al., 2023). To understand and address rising hunger and food insecurity issues, we must think beyond individual examples of disruptive events and instead think of the systemic violence built into food systems as part of the global economy, such as how dominant regimes and regulations have created a dependency and extractivism that has made some people more vulnerable (Fakhiri, 2022).
Food insecurity does not strike all people equally and disproportionately affects women and children. In 2022, 148.1 million children under five years old were stunted, 45 million experienced wasting, and 37 million were overweight. These figures show the double burden of food security and why the focus should not only be on food but also on how to access healthy food (FAO et al., 2023).
Stunted growth emerged from food insecurity and broadly from poverty (Black et al., 2013). Poverty too does not affect all people equally, and Indigenous Peoples are disproportionately affected, as they account for 19% of the extremely poor despite being only 6% of the world’s population (World Bank 2024), and they are 2.7 more likely to face poverty than their non-Indigenous counterparts (Pero et al., 2024). Food insecurity among Indigenous Peoples is being exacerbated by climate change, COVID-19, conflict, land grabbing (Martinez-Cruz, 2023), and historical and institutional discrimination from colonization until the present (Kuhnlein and Chotiboriboon et al., 2022). For example, in Canada, Indigenous households face 2-6 times more food insecurity than non-Indigenous households (Tarasuk and Mitchell, 2020). The situation for Indigenous Peoples is even worse for those confined to reservations where 28.2% face food insecurity compared to 12.7% in Canadian households (Deposition, 2016). Similarly, in Ecuador, Indigenous children face twice as much stunting compared to their non-Indigenous counterparts (Pero et al., 2023).
2. Purpose of this paper
One of the main challenges faced by Indigenous Peoples[1] is the systemic and institutional discrimination that they have suffered since colonization, and the ongoing violence that affects their livelihoods, undermining some of their fundamental rights, such as their right to food. In this paper, we will begin with the language of food security in our narrative in the first sections where we address the limitations of the dominant model and how an alternative model based on Indigenous Peoples food and knowledge systems can inform transformative food systems; later on, we expand the discussion to incorporate the right to food and food sovereignty. Our choice to use food security was a deliberate one, as this term is widely used in mainstream policy and agricultural research and development. Later in the discussion, in the second section, more emphasis will be placed on the right to food and rights as we advance to the end of the paper, with recommendations and conclusions on how we can do better.
In section three, this paper aims to highlight issues with the current dominant food systems as opposed to the Indigenous Peoples’ food and knowledge systems and address some of the root causes of these issues. Section four describes the key features of Indigenous Peoples’ food systems that make them game changers. In section five, we address the main differences between the right to food, food security, and food sovereignty and position ourselves on a rights-based approach. In section six, we discuss some important aspects of Indigenous Peoples’ rights that should be included in the conversation on food security and the right to food. In section seven, we conclude with some specific recommendations to support Indigenous Peoples’ rights and food systems.
The authors of this paper are an interdisciplinary team that has worked on Indigenous Peoples’ issues. One author self-identifies as Indigenous, the other does not; and we all have experience collaborating with Indigenous Peoples over the years. Our narratives, therefore, sometimes reflect both Indigenous voices and the voices of non-Indigenous allies as we both have played the role of experts or scientists in universities, research centers, or in our work as practitioners. In other instances, the voice portrayed is of the Indigenous author, especially in the section on recommendations, as some of them are better voiced when she embedded herself in the process. This paper is a reflection paper, so the quotes and stories that are brought into it aim to show the different experiences that the authors have had as experts working on Indigenous Peoples’ issues and as reflections of their work that have emerged over time.
3. A need to transform food systems
The modern food system is in crisis: while there have been many technological advancements to support food security and achieve Sustainable Development Goal #2 of ‘Zero hunger’, we are experiencing the collapse of our current dominant food systems. While we have made progress in improving food security in the immediate present, with growing populations and other challenges we face, by 2050 it is anticipated that food demands will rise between 30-70% (Van Dijk et al., 2021), and pressure will be increased on the land, water, and natural resources needed to support our food system.
The current food system model relies on three main crops – wheat, rice, and maize – which make up 50% of the caloric intake of the world’s population (Awika, 2011). One of the risks of relying on so few crops is reduced resilience, as individual extreme events can affect the availability of these significant crops and, therefore, the food access and security of billions of people. For example, due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with both countries being major wheat suppliers, price and market volatilization impacted over 38 countries that imported 30% of their wheat from Ukraine and Russia. Concerningly, the loss of wheat production during the first year of the invasion was less than 1%, suggesting that the main driver of the price and market volatilization around wheat was mainly due to fear, which strongly affected some of the poorest and most vulnerable countries (Fakhiri, 2022). This raises the specter of far worse consequences when such regional production shocks affect not only supply fears but the supply itself. Additionally, with Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus playing key roles in the supply of fertilizers, a supply disruption on the chemical fertilizer supply chain also affected crop production (Fakhiri, 2022).
Another side effect of the current food systems is that the intensive farming methods they are based on account for 30% of the greenhouse gases contributing to climate change (Fanzo, 2021), consume 70% of the world’s freshwater supplies (OECD, 2018), and are responsible for 80% of global deforestation (FAO, 2017). Additionally, 30% of the produced food also gets wasted from field to fork (FAO, 2022).
The obvious unsustainability and instability of the dominant food systems raises two key questions: What drove us to develop such unsustainable systems? And what can we do differently to achieve the SDG2 ‘Zero hunger’ and ensure the sustainability of the planet?
3.1. The legacy of the Green Revolution and the productivity-oriented approach
For many years, technological advancement and agriculture intensification have been promoted to improve food security and lift farmers out of poverty (Martinez-Cruz, 2020). This paradigm, based on technology and productivity, dates from the so-called Green Revolution, which emerged in the 1960s with the promotion of the so-called High-Yielding Varieties or ‘miracle seeds’, chemicals, and irrigation, among other technologies, when there was a need to feed a world recovering from the Second World War (Harwood, 2009). The goal was to increase food production as several regions of the world were facing chronic food insecurity (Pingali, 2012 and Shiferaw, 2013). At the heart of the approach was producing more food per unit of input, e.g., water, land, money, and the means of technology advancements. The environment was not in the equation, nor were the questions of who the primary beneficiaries of such a system were and who the people most negatively affected by introducing these technologies.
While we cannot deny that the Green Revolution contributed to improving food security in some regions of the world (Pingali, 2012), yet we also cannot deny the harmful socioeconomic, cultural, and environmental impacts that it had (Pingali, 2012), primarily hitting smallholder farming and Indigenous Peoples (Griffin, 1979 and Conwall, 2019), and only benefiting the few farmers who had access to irrigation or technological advancements. For example, reflecting on agricultural irrigation, 80% of the cultivated land in the world is rainfed and produces 60% of the world’s food, while the 20% that uses irrigation produces 40% of the food (OECD, 2028). If the only goal of agriculture is in terms of productivity, land with irrigation is more than 2.5 times more productive than non-irrigated lands. This singular drive for productivity has also provoked soil erosion, pollution, and health issues besides deforestation. In 2017, 192 million tons of synthetic fertilizers were used in agriculture (an increase of 37% since 2012), and the use of chemical pesticides also increased in 34% since 2022 (Tang, 2022). Indigenous children are said to be six times more likely than non-Indigenous children to die from the use of pesticide poisoning (FAO, 2022b), and people of color, in general, face disproportionate risks of pesticide exposure (Donley and Bullard, 2022).
Although new paradigms, technologies, and approaches have been promoted over the years as a means to improve food security, reduce environmental impacts, and increase social inclusion, the extent to which these are successful remains contested (Patel, 2012; Sumberg and Woodhouse, 2013; Martinez-Cruz, 2020). In some instances, new technologies or approaches are proposed, e.g. conservation tillage, conservation agriculture, or sustainable intensification (Anderson and Giller, 2012; Martinez-Cruz, 2019), and in others there are broad promises of a new Green Revolution that will be greener or more sustainable, such as the African Green Revolution or the Sustainable Modernization of the Traditional Agriculture program in Mexico. A special focus for many of these approaches is converting rainfed agriculture to intensive crop producing lands, as 80% of the agriculture is still rainfed, and we could produce twice as much food as we need if all rainfed lands were converted to irrigation.
Yet, these paradigms have not been sufficient in addressing the two problems of food security and food sustainability, and the need to change business as usual is imperative. The productivity-oriented paradigm, with its narrow focus on productional maximization to the exclusion of other values of a good system, has left out many other actors and their actual and potential contributions. It operates on a logic in which a few fit and others are left out, denying their agency and contributions to food security and climate change. For example, Fox and Height (2010) show how, in Mexico, the government has subsidized inequality through food policy because it has designed a bimodal food policy, in which one type of farmer, the big industrial farmers that have the potential to fit the productivity approach, can benefit and have access to subsidies and potentially contribute to food security issues. The rest of farmers, small-holder peasants and Indigenous Peoples, are seen as passive people, not actors, who cannot contribute to the food security issues and, therefore, should be supported through social development programs. This dichotomy, which would be expected push farmers toward industrialization in order to access government subsidies, emphasizes a curious reality. Despite many decades of a bimodal policy, many peasants and Indigenous Peoples are choosing to self-exclude or remain at the boundaries of such a system, and are protecting their native seeds, food and knowledge systems that continue to be essential for their livelihoods and survival.
In this paper, we want to argue that Indigenous Peoples, who are retaining time-tested technologies, knowledge, and science, which has made them resilient and champions of adaption, despite systemic and institutionalized discrimination, have a lot contribute to food security. Yet if we are to collectively benefit from their technologies, knowledge, and science, they need to be supported in many different ways. This process begins with recognizing Indigenous Peoples and rights- and knowledge-holders.
4. Indigenous Peoples as rights-holders and knowledge-holders that can support food systems transformation
While the multiple challenges to our goal of ensuring stable and sustainable food systems may seem overwhelming, we believe that Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge and food systems offers essential direction for a positive transformation of our food systems. We can learn from some of the oldest and most sustainable food and knowledge systems in the world. We can learn from the food systems developed by Indigenous Peoples, who despite facing multiple challenges over centuries and ongoing discrimination and marginalization, has proven to be innovators, champions of adaptation and protectors of the planet’s remaining biodiversity.
There are 476 million Indigenous Peoples, inhabiting more than 90 countries on less than 28% of the world’s land surface (Sovrevila, 2008), distributed across seven socio-cultural regions[2] (ILO, 2019) They speak 4,000 of the 6,000 existing languages. Despite representing less than 6% of the world’s population, they are the guardians of 80% of its remaining biodiversity (Sovrevila, 2008).
Indigenous Peoples have adapted to a broad range of conditions, from the cold lands of Siberia to the arid lands of the Mixtec region in Mexico (Martinez-Cruz et al., 2024), and in all of the locations they inhabit, they have innovated and developed food systems which provide healthy, stable, and sustainable sustenance. Although Indigenous Peoples have been shown to be crucial for global resilience, current dominant agricultural practices and policies, such as monocropping or those linked to the productivity paradigm, are displacing Indigenous Peoples’ food systems and causing environmental damage and loss of biodiversity (Jacques et al., 2012). These harmful and displacing policies are destroying native biodiversity, such as the case of the native bees in the Mayan Indigenous regions of Mexico (Vides-Borrell et al., 2019), and are also destroying the lives of Indigenous Peoples themselves, as suggested in earlier sections on the effects of toxics and pesticides on Indigenous children.
In this section, we will describe critical features of Indigenous Peoples’ food systems from a rights-based perspective on Indigenous Peoples’ food and knowledge systems.
4.1. Indigenous Peoples’ food systems are diverse, nutritious and sustainable
While mainstream policy and research have focused on monocropping and agricultural intensification as methods to address food insecurity, this approach has ignored many other food systems and knowledge systems because experts have failed to understand the potential of these systems (Martinez-Cruz, 2022). For example, in 2012, one of the authors was part of a project in Mexico that aimed to increase maize and wheat production using sustainable technologies, which assumed that the project would lead to more food security and improve the livelihoods of farmers. According to the logic of the program, both big farmers who used monocropping and irrigation technologies and also smallholder Indigenous farmers would be included and would benefit from the program; however, as the experts learned when visited an Indigenous community in the state of Chiapas, their approach to achieving food security needed to be changed.
Scientist 1: Why do farmers use such low planting densities? Why do they plant maize every 2 meters? If we aim to increase crop yields as part of the MasAgro Program, the answer is easy: change the planting density and change the maize varieties.
Scientist 2: Because it is a milpa, our method of intercropping to provide our needs.
Hours later, at the end of the day…
Scientist 1: A milpa, now I get it. A farmer needs potatoes, pumpkin, squash, beans, and other things he uses throughout the year. I also see that they keep their seed from one cropping cycle to the other, so they do not need to buy seeds.
(Adapted from Martinez-Cruz, 2020, p. 21).
At the end of the field visit, the scientist, who did not know what a milpa system (intercropping of maize, beans, squash, among other crops depending on the region where it is implemented) was, understood that simplifying the issue of food security to just one crop such as maize did not make sense for Indigenous Peoples in this region, as they required more than just maize for their diets. And why would they choose to become less self-sufficient? This example portrays a common issue in agricultural and food research and policy, where it neglects the richness of Indigenous Peoples’ food systems, to the detriment of finding solutions to the many challenges.
Indigenous Peoples have a deep knowledge of their territories, which has allowed them to adapt to a broad range of environments, even to lands that many call hostile and in which many of the technologies of the Green Revolution, for example, could not fare well, given that they did not meet the ideal conditions of fertilization, irrigation, and climate that most of these technologies and approaches require. This ability to adapt and learn about the cycles of their territories is what has allowed Indigenous Peoples to know what to harvest, gather, fish, or hunt according to the seasonality of their territories, how to protect the land’s sustainability, and how to rely on diverse foods. For example, according to FAO and Biodiversity International (2021), Indigenous Peoples’ food systems can contain over 250 edible and medicinal plants which are collectively used for health and sustenance as compared to the main three crops that most of the world uses for 50% of its caloric intake.
Indigenous Peoples’ food systems are nutritious; which is something also often neglected by mainstream science. Indeed, more research is needed to understand the nutritious role of the foods in Indigenous Peoples’ food systems, and, most importantly, to respect the cultural adequacy or preference of Indigenous Peoples when designing nutrition interventions. For example, in the Solomon Islands, a study by FAO (2021) reported that Indigenous Peoples’ food systems contain 238 foods, including 127 different species, and the banana fe’i which they eat are much richer in vitamin A than a conventional banana from the supermarket. Another example is how Indigenous Peoples in the Arctic get diets rich in Vitamin D from what they hunt or fish (Kuhnlein 2018), a critical nutrient for people who often face days with very few hours of sunlight. As another example, during the colonization of the Americas, maize was recognized by the colonizers as a very useful crop which could be the basis of a food system and grew relatively easily, and they brought it to Africa. However, the assumption that merely eating maize would reproduce the nutritious diet among Africans as among the Indigenous Peoples of America turned out to be incorrect. The nutritional value was not only about eating maize itself but also the more than 600 ways to cook it and combine it with other foods and crops as practiced by Indigenous Peoples of the Americas (El Poder del consumidor, 2017). For this reason and others, its adoption in Africa did not yield the expected nutritious outcomes.
4.2. Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge and food systems are based on time-tested science and knowledge
One common misconception about agricultural research and development, as well as food policy, is that Indigenous Peoples have nothing to contribute, especially when it comes to knowledge creation and science. Despite the growing recognition of their role in conserving biodiversity, Indigenous Peoples are constantly required to prove that their knowledge systems and values are relevant to addressing the multiple crises we face, including food security.
Yet, Indigenous Peoples’ food systems may hold the key to a sustainable transformation of our food systems. For example, some studies show how milpa systems (an intercropping system that relies on native maize beans and squash, among other crops depending on the region) support nutritious diets and are more sustainable from an ecological perspective. Lopez Ridaura (2021) found that farmers in Guatemala prefer milpa systems over maize monocropping because milpa provides them with a more diverse and nutritious diet. They show how milpa systems perform better than maize monocropping on the Potential Nutrient Adequacy (PNA) index, used to evaluate the recommended nutritional intake for a person per day. From an ecological perspective, intercropping systems can also help to compensate for the nitrogen needs of the system in a sustainable and healthy way. This argument about the benefits of intercropping for nitrogen supports the three sisters model: maize can be used to provide structural support to bean plants, beans fix nitrogen which can be used by other plants, and squash is used to reduce erosion.
According to Martinez-Cruz and Rosado-May (2024), generally, experts in mainstream research and development assume that Indigenous Peoples work on ‘trial and error’ basis to develop knowledge. However, this does not explain nor do justice to the complexity of Indigenous Peoples’ ways of producing knowledge. Some researchers have tried to explain some of the processes they see in Indigenous Peoples’ food and knowledge systems, in a way trying to validate Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge in their own language and systems of knowledge development. According to Camacho-Villa et al. (2020), it would make more sense to treat Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge as a system of knowledge to itself which can be used to address justice, epistemic violence, and appreciate Indigenous Peoples’ systems and contributions. Instead of seeking to validate their knowledge through a different prism, we should instead recognize it for its own value to add knowledge which can be used not only as source material to bring into the science systems that we are familiar with, but as a knowledge system which can itself inform how we develop knowledge systems, which will be discussed at more length in the next section. It is therefore essential to open more discussions to create avenues for common understanding among different knowledge systems and acknowledge Indigenous Peoples as innovators in the past and present (Martinez-Cruz et al., forthcoming) and that Indigenous Peoples have contributed a great deal to the advancement of society (for example, through pharmaceutical discoveries and other knowledge that have revolutionized what we commonly call science; PAS and PASS, 2024).
4.3. Indigenous Peoples’ food and knowledge systems are holistic, linked to their cosmogony, and surrounded by relational values
Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge and food systems are amongst the oldest ones still surviving today. One reason these systems have persisted is that they are tied to Indigenous Peoples’ cosmogonies, beliefs, and values that cannot be commodified or valued in conventional ways, i.e., cost-evaluation models that seek to create a numeric value of costs and benefits of any system, as has been shown in the case of water by Martinez-Cruz et al. (2024). For example, when scholars debate how native maize systems in Mexico survived decades of policies trying to replace them with intensive monocropping systems, they agree that cultural identity, cosmogony, and sovereignty played an important role in protecting the native maize systems (Fitting 2011 and Mullaney, 2014).
Indigenous Peoples take a holistic view on life and their role in the world. As a result, they reject a perspective in the world focused on benefiting only themselves, and instead retain a holistic appreciation for the entire system. For example, in Yucatan, a young Mayan man places his beehives near his milpa system, so if fruit trees do not flower on time, the bees can feed themselves from the milpa flowers. He explains that bees are an important part of his system, thus, ensuring they are okay will not only protect the bees but also support other ways of income from the honey he harvests from them (Martinez-Cruz and Rosado-May 2022). For the Zapotecan people of Oaxaca, looking after their forest, even when they do not seek immediate benefit from it, ensures that there will be water available for their milpa systems and, therefore, food for them (Martinez-Cruz et al., forthcoming).
For the Ëyuujk people of Oaxaca, native maize is sacred and is used for the spiritual guidance of the community; thus, ensuring these seeds are maintained through the generations is essential to keep the culture and identity of the community alive (one of the authors is Ëyuujk), and many foods and rituals involve maize dough figures that have important meanings in the lives of the Ëyuujk people.
Therefore, due to Indigenous Peoples’ holistic understanding of their place in the world, in nature, and in their cosmology, Indigenous Peoples’ food and knowledge systems cannot be described in conventional value systems or reduced to a mathematical equation, but must be appreciated in their holistic completeness, which appreciates the complexity of the environment and the interplay between humans and all other life.
4.4. Indigenous Peoples’ food systems reduce waste, promote circularity, and adapt as seasons unfold
Another critical element of Indigenous Peoples’ food and knowledge systems is how they promote circularity and reduce waste. For example, Martinez-Cruz and Rosado May (2022) explain how, during rituals, the different elements used for the offerings and rituals can be turned into different plates and dishes for the next week. This richness in turning every single component involved in the ritual into something else reduces waste. Even the elements that are not used for humans are turned into food for animals or composting that returns to nature. In the same paper, the authors show the richness of Indigenous Peoples in how they find food where others see empty fields; this is true of the Mirliton squash, or chayote, that Ëyuujk people dig out when all the milpa fields are empty, and when many others would not expect to find roots that can feed them in the dry season.
4.5. Indigenous Peoples’ food, knowledge and value systems are essential for resilience and food security
As we have explained in the earlier sections, one of the common misconceptions is that Indigenous Peoples’ food systems are incapable of providing food security. However, some instances prove otherwise.
“50 years ago, I remember that several events like rains and pests hit my town badly. However, my parents and grandparents back then, had many fields cropped, they had lots of maize, beans and crops. Thus, we did not feel it at all, we would manage to survive. All was different in 2010 when we were hit by a hurricane and strong rains blocked the entry to the mountains, and the stores run out from maize and food. We did not have food and the only solution we found was to go upper to the mountains to get maize from other Indigenous Peoples that were farming more than us. I was ashamed then, how come I could call myself a farmer if I could not cultivate what I needed to feed my family? I wondered how I let this situation happen and how come as a child I never faced a situation like this?” (Susana, Interview 2016, retrieved from Martinez-Cruz et al., forthcoming).
Martinez-Cruz et al. (forthcoming) show in an ethnographic work how food policy affected Indigenous Peoples in a Zapotecan Indigenous community in Oaxaca. The Indigenous woman from the quotation above explains how when she was a child, they had several extreme weather events strike her community, yet the fact that they had several fields planted at different locations and with different characteristics made them resilient. If one of the fields failed due to strong winds, flooding, or pests, they had other fields that ensured their food security. However, as time passed, migration became a central part of these Indigenous Peoples’ livelihoods. Many of the migrations were reinforced by the bimodal food policy in Mexico which assumed that Indigenous Peoples were better laborers than farmers. Thus, as time passed, Zapotecan families reduced their farming; they continued farming native maize for specific rituals and festivities, but no longer considered being self-sufficient to be a priority as they could buy maize cheaply from government stores. In 2010, their region was hit hard by Hurricane Matthew, and despite the fact they had money, they could not buy maize to feed their families. It was a combination of blocked roads, the boom of biofuels, the tortilla crisis in Mexico due to climate change, and a shortage of maize importations, that left these families without access to maize to feed themselves. These farmers did not forget the lesson from this incident and decided to restore their traditional milpas and adjust them to their current livelihood patterns through participatory native maize breeding, irrigation, organic fertilizers, and changing crop topologies, among others. Five years later, these Zapotecan farmers had tripled their milpa production and were self-sufficient again. When COVID-19 hit them in 2020, despite their decision to lock down their community and prevent outside people with possible infections from entering, they did not find themselves lacking food. They were once again able to supply themselves with the milpa and foods they needed and which they produced locally.
In support of this community’s story of self-sufficiency, during COVID-19, the World Bank surveyed 17 Indigenous communities, and 70% reported accessing food either through self-production or exchanges with other communities. Of these, five reported no food shortages or hunger at all in 2020 (Cord and Pizarro, 2021).
One of the other specific elements that make Indigenous Peoples resilient are their values such as collectiveness. The social organization of the communities also ensures that actions are taken not only to preserve the natural resources and entities living within territories but also to ensure the welfare of everyone in the community, ensuring that no one is left behind. Similar to the community mentioned above, several Indigenous communities performed collective lockdowns, and as they did, they ensured that everyone was cared for (Martinez-Cruz et al., 2020b).
The holistic perspective that makes Indigenous Peoples’ communities and food systems so resilient is sorely lacking in the commercialized and production-centered dominant narratives on food systems. Yet, it is this holistic perspective that enables Indigenous Peoples to engage in sustainable and stable practices which respect local environments, and can provide nutritious, diverse, and resilient food sources.
5. Indigenous Peoples and their right to food
5.1. The right to food, food security, and food sovereignty: key definitions
When we discuss food security, we rarely mention the right to food. However, both concepts exist, and the questions remains as to what the difference is between these concepts, and why they are relevant for the discussion here.
The right to food is recognized by international human rights law, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UNHR) notes, in the context of an adequate standard of living, that: “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, ...” (art. 25; UN General Assembly, 1948).
The right to food, according to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, is the ‘right to have regular, permanent and free access, either directly or by means of financial purchases, to quantitatively and qualitatively adequate and sufficient food corresponding to the cultural traditions of the people to which the consumer belongs, and which ensures a physical and mental, individual and collective, fulfilling and dignified life free of fear’ (UNHRC, 2010). This means that the right to food is inclusive; it is not about providing a minimum ration of calories or nutrients. Instead, it focuses on providing a person with the nutritional elements required to have a healthy and active life and ensuring they can access these foods.
The right to food recognizes three critical dimensions, and they are not exclusionary: availability (whether it is produced or generated directly or obtained through other means such as buying in the market, shops, barter, etc.), accessibility (meaning it should be accessible physically and economically without compromising different basic needs), and adequacy (satisfying individual’s needs which can depend on age, living conditions, cultural needs, among others).
In food and agricultural research, development, and policy, there are several misconceptions about the right to food, food security, and food sovereignty that are summarized in Table 1.
Table 1. Some misconceptions on the right to food
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The right to food is not the same as the right to being fed · The right to food indicates that it is not only about getting access to food but the ability to feed oneself with dignity; this means that while governments play a supporting role in ensuring that everyone has access to food, it is the right of a person to be able to produce it, buy it, or obtain it in another manner but with dignity. This also means that if a person requires land, water or other resources to generate his own food, these conditions should be provided. The role of the government then is as enabler. In areas in conflict or where these conditions cannot be easily met, the state should provide food. |
The right to food is different from food security and food sovereignty · The right to food is not the same as food security or food sovereignty, even though they are interconnected. The right to food is a right recognized under international law, e.g., the UN Declaration of Human Rights, while food security is a pre-condition to the right to food. As FAO defines it, ‘when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life’. In the same way, food sovereignty provides an alternative way to sustainably fulfil the right to food and recognizes asymmetries in power in guaranteeing the right to food. Both food security and sovereignty are ways to achieve the right to food, but neither are universal; instead, some national regulations recognize one or both.2
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The denial of the right to food is not the result of the lack of food · One of the common misconceptions is that food insecurity or the inability to ensure the right to food is linked to a problem of ‘availability’ or, in other words, that there is not enough food. The problem goes beyond availability, and it is linked to distribution, causing some marginalized groups to not get access to food, e.g. climate change-displaced populations. It also entails a dimension of adequacy because one of the conditions of the right to food is that it fits people’s cultural preferences and contexts. |
The right to adequate food is not the same as the right to safe food · The right to adequate food refers to the idea of adequacy, food being nutritious, suitable for the person’s physical, cultural and socio-economic conditions. · The right to safe food entails a ‘safety’ dimension, e.g., that food is free from chemicals, bacteria or contamination. This might refer, for example, to areas where food is produced with high levels of polluted water with chemicals or wastewater, as it will be presented later in this document. |
Food security focuses on people’s access to food without considering the implications of the origin or source of that food. Food sovereignty, on the other hand, emphasizes that people should have control over what they eat and how they get what they eat. The second positioning assumes that a level of control might reduce hunger issues (Fakhri, 2019).
While this paper mainly addressed food security within its narrative, this was a deliberate choice, as this term is widely used in mainstream policy and agricultural research and development. Rather than aligning with the concept of food sovereignty, we will, from now on, include the right to food to elaborate on some of the discussion elements that come forward in this paper.
1.1. The need to create adequate diets that are culturally adequate
An often-ignored dimension in food policy and research is the adequacy of diets in accordance with the right to food, food sovereignty, and security. While these three indicate that food must be culturally appropriate and adequate, this is not often the case when interventions are externally planned, and Indigenous Peoples’ food systems are often seen as unimportant or inferior.
“One day, I was invited to meet the minister of social development of my country, so I thought I could get her some lovely presents. I decided to take her Suri, a worm that we eat in my region. As I gave the present to her, she screamed, and she told me, ‘What do you want me to do with them?’ I told her, ‘This is how we feel when you get us food that we do not like. Imagine, they bring food to our children that is not healthy, and they do not like it, through School Meals Programs’” (Awajun leader 2022, Personal Interview).
The displacement of diets has occurred for centuries since the times of colonization, and it has been reinforced by current dominant policies, causing effects on Peoples’ cultures and identities, health issues, and even worse, violating a fundamental right as the right to food. As indicated by the Awajun leader in the quote above, Indigenous Peoples wish to have adequate diets that respect their food preferences, are culturally sensitive, and are conscious of the negative effects of other diets on their well-being. Kuhnlein (2018) has documented how displacement of diets negatively affects and has affected Indigenous Peoples’ health; this displacement is usually driven by insensitive and culturally inappropriate policies, migration, assimilation processes, low incomes or forced displacement of Indigenous Peoples, among others. For example, in a study conducted in Canada, with Inuit people, younger generations present diseases that older generations do not have due to diet changes (Kuhnlein, 2009), also signalling that Indigenous Peoples that are living closer or in their communities can have better access to healthier and adequate diets. In another study, bison-reliant Indigenous Peoples from the US who were forced to transition to non-Indigenous diets following the mass slaughter of the American Bison had 10% higher infant mortality rates and lost nearly three centimeters of average height (Feir, Gillezeau, & Jones, 2024).
An assessment study performed by Pero et al. (2023) indicates that 30% of food in School Meals Programs gets wasted. However, they show how designing culturally appropriate diets can reduce waste and better support the program’s goals. If Indigenous children do not consume the food, the issues of infant malnutrition or stunting will not be overcome.
2. Indigenous Peoples as Right and Knowledge Holders: innovation and self-determination are keys to a resilient planet
2.1. Indigenous Peoples are right holders, not an adjective[1]
Despite the growing importance and recognition of Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge and food systems to tackle global challenges, popular dialogue on Indigenous Peoples still tends to treat Indigenous as an adjective, using terms such as ‘traditional Indigenous knowledge, Indigenous knowledge, Indigenous languages, Indigenous lands’. This language and this narrative is a problem as it sidesteps the question of rights held by Indigenous Peoples. By using ‘Indigenous’ as a descriptor of knowledge or a food system, we erase the Indigenous Peoples who create and own that knowledge. On an even more worrying note, several researchers working on Indigenous Peoples’ issues might not be aware of a declaration of Indigenous Peoples’ rights or even understand the nature of the struggle and why ‘naming us’ using an adjective becomes problematic.
For example, in my case, I self-identify as an Ëyuujk woman before I identify as Mexican. Acknowledging us as Indigenous Peoples is also acknowledging that we come from distinct and unique nations, in a way, recognizing that modern states were, in most instances, built as a layer that overlaps with our internal lands; this is why we also have many Indigenous Peoples that live in transnational borders, forcing them to deal with different national or local legislations.
The UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues has recommended the use of Indigenous Peoples as terminology to acknowledge that we are rights-holders, and these rights are also recognized in the ILO (International Labor Organization and Tribal Peoples) Indigenous and Tribal Convention 169 (ILO, 1989), to mention a few. We should not forget that the fight for rights is an important one that Indigenous peoples lead and has had success; for example, several countries have recognized and even set policies to support Indigenous Peoples’ rights. However, in both countries recognizing and not recognizing Indigenous Peoples’ rights, violations of Indigenous Peoples’ rights continue. Thus, as academics or policymakers, we should also learn to educate ourselves on basic frameworks and understand why specific terminology is necessary, engage in conversations that help us improve our understanding, and, through this, support more meaningful processes.
Using Indigenous as an adjective is denying our cultures, diversity, and uniqueness. In the examples referred to in the previous sections, we referred to a broad range of food and knowledge systems, from the ones of the Ëyuujk people in Oaxaca to the Indigenous Peoples in the Arctic, Awajun in the Amazon, or other regions. Naming these systems or cultures as distinctive is relevant because ‘Indigenous’ alone cannot enclose the richness of these different and unique cultures nor respect their right to self-determination.
More importantly, recognizing Indigenous Peoples as rights-holders also acknowledges their agency, their contributions to policy and science processes, and the fact that they must have a voice and meaningful participation in processes that affect their lives, the right to decide and self-determination.
2.2. Indigenous Peoples are knowledge holders whose languages do not die, ‘they are killed.’
We cannot discuss Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge without discussing Indigenous Peoples’ languages in which that knowledge and the cosmologies that support it are maintained. Thus, it is worrying to hear about the death of Indigenous Peoples’ languages.
But this is another problem. Despite many statements about Indigenous Peoples languages dying, especially now that the UN is running the International Decade on Indigenous Languages, there is something crucial to remember: languages do not die, it is Indigenous Peoples who die or whose livelihoods are affected or rights violated, causing the disappearance of a language.
We have argued that Indigenous Peoples' knowledge is essential for Indigenous Peoples’ resilience, as their languages are the means through which Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge can be shared and enriched. Indigenous Peoples speak 4,000 out of the 7,000 thousand languages in the world, and some researchers have shown the importance of linguistic diversity and their relationship with biodiversity. For example, Gorenflo et al. (2011) indicate that there is a positive association between linguistic diversity and biological diversity and that 70% of the languages spoken in the world cover 24% of the world’s surface, and these regions are known as the most biologically diverse.
While the UN Decade of Indigenous Languages should be celebrated for recognizing the role of Indigenous Peoples’ languages for their right to self-determination, it is also essential to recognize and address why these languages are being killed, for example the education systems that force assimilation, systemic discrimination and racism, the ongoing effects of colonization, land grabbing and forced displacement, not recognizing the role of Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge in policy or their potential contributions to global challenges, among others (Martinez-Cruz, 2022).
2.3. Respecting Indigenous Peoples’ tenure rights and Free, Prior and Informed Consent
I like to think of land and territory as a bubble that is interconnected and that allows Indigenous Peoples to keep their languages, plants, water, sacred places, identity, and social ties, among other things. As we take care of the land, we also know that the land takes care of us. Our knowledge systems are often maintained through practices, and what has made us the champions of adaptation is precisely getting to know the seasonality of our lands, the deep knowledge of the processes in them, and our connection to them.
For the Ëyuujk People, land is a crucial element of our cosmovision; we are known as the ‘never conquered people’, and part of the narrative in our community links to how nature and sacred elements have always come to defend us in the face of conflict or potential displacement or submission during colonization. Similarly to the Ëyuujk peoples, the Awajun or Zapotecan peoples also have stories about land and life working to protect humans and mother nature (Martinez-Cruz et al., 2024 and Martinez-Cruz, forthcoming).
Indigenous Peoples continue to struggle to protect their rights, having established several mechanisms that recognize their rights. Yet, even when some countries have ratified these mechanisms and have even implemented policies on Indigenous Peoples at national levels, this has not been sufficient, as Indigenous Peoples’ rights continue to be violated in the name of development and even in the name of green transitions or just transitions. The UNDRIP and Convention ILO 169 indicate that Indigenous Peoples should be consulted and that they have the right to Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC; not only consultation), yet their rights continue to be subject to violation, and in some fields, these rights are not yet even considered.
Tens of millions of Indigenous Peoples have been displaced in the name of development-caused armed conflict and forced migration. In 2021, 358 land and environmental defenders were killed in 35 countries, with one-third being Indigenous Peoples defending their territories, forests and rivers against climate-destructive industries (Global Witness, 2021), and 75% of these land defenders were killed in Central and South America (ibid.). There are estimates that there were more than 200 killings of land and environmental defenders in 2022 (Global Witness, 2022). Furthermore, there is no precise data on how many have been imprisoned for defending their land and natural resources.
2.4. Free, Prior and Informed Consent and the right to food
Generally, it is easier to acknowledge consultation and FPIC when there is something tangible, such as a road, a dam, or a forest to be cleared. However, on issues such as education, the right to food, and the right to linguistic diversity, FPIC has become a grey area. When a food program or policy is implemented, consultations are rarely conducted, and therefore, a violation of FPIC and the rights of Indigenous Peoples occurs. In some instances, FPIC has been violated in agricultural programs; yet FPIC and the right to self-determination have also become tools to fight back against these policies that affect Indigenous Peoples. This is the case with the Mayan beekeepers who fought against permission granted to Monsanto to cultivate transgenic soy and won the battle. The cultivation of transgenic soy and associated practices was causing adverse effects on Mayan peoples’ health, their bees, and the environment (Torres-Mazuera and Ramirez-Espinoza, 2022), and the people fought back using legal frameworks based on their right to self-determination and the right to a healthy environment.
In an ideal world, rather than relying on the courts and lawsuits, Indigenous Peoples should be consulted on the best way to fulfill their right to food and not have to fight back against the adverse effects after many policies or projects have been implemented because, as it has been seen, attempts to increase food security through displacement of diets or not policies without a culturally sensitive approach, can lead to unintended harmful consequences and end up causing more problems to Indigenous Peoples.
3. Some final remarks to transform food systems and include Indigenous Peoples in a meaningful way
We have analyzed why the current food systems need a transformation and what Indigenous Peoples can bring to the table. Here, we offer a summary of recommendations on how we can support Indigenous Peoples as we learn to create a transformed, stable, and sustainable food system.
a) Emphasizing the right to food more than food security/sovereignty, ensuring FPIC for Indigenous Peoples, and setting guidelines for all the institutions dealing with food security and related issues.
Shifting the conversation to the right to food and ensuring Indigenous Peoples’ right to food means meaningfully including them in food systems and food policy processes. While FPIC is not a common practice in food systems, it is recommended that food-related institutions have protocols or guidelines on how to work with Indigenous Peoples and respect their right to food and self-determination. This recommendation is applicable to the ONE CGIAR, one of the biggest consortiums on food security and policy, as well as to their member organizations and donors, such as the Rockefeller Foundation and Bill and Melinda Gates, among others. Also, at the national level, if states do not have safeguards that know how to address food security in accordance with the right to food, they should create guidelines that allow them to respect Indigenous Peoples’ rights.
b) Investing in Indigenous Peoples’ food and knowledge systems to promote innovation and ensuring these resources are allocated to Indigenous Peoples directly
Policy and research processes, in general, have failed to embrace and include Indigenous Peoples in a meaningful way, in some instances because they have failed to understand the complexity of Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge systems (Martinez-Cruz, 2022 and Martinez-Cruz et al, 2024) and livelihoods. For example, von Braun and Martinez-Cruz (2023) indicate that on the national pathways developed as part of the United Nations Food Systems Summit, among the 118 countries that submitted one, only 36% mentioned Indigenous Peoples. While this is an accomplishment, though falling woefully short of what is required, even here, it still remains to be seen how these pathways will actually work with Indigenous Peoples. As we analyzed in this paper, food policy in Mexico and other regions has denied Indigenous Peoples the opportunity to develop their food systems fully. It would be interesting to see if and how the 36% of countries committed through national pathways to support Indigenous Peoples truly support Indigenous Peoples’ food systems.
Similarly, some suggest that despite money being allocated to Indigenous Peoples for Climate Action, only 2% of these funds actually reach Indigenous Peoples. Thus, mechanisms should be set in place to ensure that these resources truly directly support Indigenous Peoples.[2]
a) Supporting Indigenous Peoples’ food systems research and Indigenous-led research
Many gaps still need to be addressed in terms of the contributions of Indigenous Peoples to food systems transformation. However, this research, to be more in line with ethical guidelines and accordance with the right to self-determination, should be led by Indigenous Peoples. An example of a successful project and model for this is the Arramat Project[3] in which all the principal investigators are Indigenous and connected directly to Indigenous communities. This project, besides addressing climate change, loss of biodiversity and planetary health, also seeks to contribute to social justice, healing and reconciliation processes in countries where the project is being implemented.
b) Investing in School Meals Programs that support Indigenous Peoples food systems
School Meals are one of the oldest approaches to reduce food insecurity. However, as presented earlier, when adequacy is not considered in the equation, food is wasted, and therefore, the goals of the program are not achieved. Pero et al. (2023), through the experiences of Colombia and Brazil, show that it is possible to achieve the goals of supporting the nutrition and development of children while also respecting their right to food, reducing waste and logistics costs, and even better, supporting the local economy of Indigenous Peoples’ and ownership of the process when the government buys food locally and invests in technology and innovation to improve Indigenous Peoples’ food systems. This approach also helps reduce the impact of climate change. More such projects should be implemented in other regions of the world.
c) Supporting financial Indigenous Peoples in situations of displacement
Most of the research and work done is with settled Indigenous Peoples, but little has been done on Indigenous Peoples who have been forcibly displaced. The lessons and work to be done with displaced communities is crucial for justice and for an increasingly unstable world and multiple conflicts.
d) Directing climate change funding to all Indigenous Peoples, not only in rainforest areas
With the pledge of COP26 at Glasgow, growing attention has been given to rainforest areas. However, Indigenous Peoples are distributed in more than 90 countries and throughout seven regions. Many of these regions are facing alarming desertification rates, and they should also be targeted, as they are also a key element of the world’s sustainability. The planet is a single cohesive and holistic entity, and if we silo our support to individual regions, we cannot protect life, sustainability, and biodiversity anywhere.
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[1] This section is written by the Indigenous author and therefore, the narrative here will be in first person.
[2] https://news.mongabay.com/2023/12/despite-progress-small-share-of-climate-pledge-went-to-indigenous-groups-report/
[3] https://arramatproject.org/
[1] There is not a generic definition of Indigenous Peoples, but the United Nations recognizes that Indigenous Peoples, communities, and nations are “those which, having a historical continuity with pre-invasion and pre-colonial societies, developed in a given territory and consider themselves distinct from other sectors of the societies now prevailing on those territories, or parts of them. They form at present non-dominant sectors of society and are determined to preserve, develop, and transmit to future generations their ancestral territories and their ethnic identity as the basis of their continued existence as peoples, following their cultural patterns, social institutions, and legal system” (ONU, 2004:2).
[2] The seven Indigenous Peoples’ sociocultural regions were determined following broad consultations with Indigenous Peoples during the process to establish the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, a subsidiary body of the United Nations Economic and Social Council established by its resolution 2000/22. There is no definition of these regions stating which Member States belong to which region as the lands of Indigenous Peoples pre-date modern states and their geopolitical limits. The seven regions are determined so as to give broad representation to the world’s Indigenous Peoples and these seven regions are: 1) Africa; 2) Asia; 3) Central and South America, and the Caribbean; 4) the Arctic; 5) Central and Eastern Europe, the Russian Federation, Central Asia and Transcaucasia; 6) North America; 7) the Pacific (EMRIP, 2016).