Food sovereignty indexes of peasant farms during the COVID-19 pandemic in five cantons of the province of Guayas
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
Ecuador was one of the countries most affected by the health crisis and state of emergency during the COVID-19 pandemic, so the measures adopted to mitigate the spread of the disease endangered the food chain, where the urban sectors -marginal suffered food shortages, evidencing the importance of the agri-food sector at the local level, sustained to a greater degree by peasant and family agriculture. The aim of this study was to know the situation of ten peasant farms (PF) in the province of Guayas during the COVID-19 pandemic, based on the experience of family farming. Several challenges to face were detected, such as obtaining inputs, transportation, and distribution of production, hiring labor, uncertainty about prices and sales, little access to bank loans, among others. PFs with a high Food Sovereignty (FS) index showed greater resilience in the face of adversities caused by the pandemic, while those with the lowest index were strongly affected and with little recovery. Adversities, such as pandemics and climate change, could have unfavorable consequences for agricultural production, so strengthening the resilience of productive agroecosystems makes it possible to ensure adequate and culturally healthy food supply.
Downloads
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
References
Altieri, M. (2019). Agroecology: Principles and Practices for Diverse, Resilient, and Productive Farming Systems. En Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Environmental Science. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199389414.013.356.
Altieri, M., & Nicholls, C. (2020a). Agroecology and the emergence of a post COVID-19 agriculture. Agriculture and Human Values, 37(3), 525-526. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-020-10043-7.
Altieri, M., & Nicholls, C. (2020b). Agroecology and the reconstruction of a post-COVID-19 agriculture. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 47(5), 881-898. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2020.1782891.
CEPAL, N. (2020). Food systems and COVID-19 in Latin America and the Caribbean N° 10: Food consumption patterns and malnutrition. https://hdl.handle.net/11362/45795.
Dardonville, M., Urruty, N., Bockstaller, C., & Therond, O. (2020). Influence of diversity and intensification level on vulnerability, resilience and robustness of agricultural systems. Agricultural Systems, 184, 102913. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2020.102913.
FAO. 2020. FAO COVID-19 Response and Recovery Programme - Boosting smallholder resilience for recovery: Protecting the most vulnerable, promoting economic recovery and enhancing risk management capacities. Rome. https://doi.org/10.4060/cb0286en.
FAO. 2021. Hacia una agricultura sostenible y resiliente en América Latina y el Caribe - Análisis de siete trayectorias de transformación exitosas. Santiago de Chile. https://doi.org/10.4060/cb4415es.
FIAN Ecuador, Instituto de Estudios Ecuatorianos, Observatorio del Cambio Rural, Tierra y Vida y Fian Internacional (2020) De quienes nos alimentan. La Pandemia y los Derechos Campesinos en Ecuador. Mayo, 2019. https://porlatierra.org/docs/e18f86c219c1ea62f1777917227828c5.pdf.
Intriago, R. (2018). Aproximación metodológica para evaluar el aporte de los agroecosistemas a la construcción de la soberanía alimentaria. Estudio de caso de tres tipos de agroecosistemas en la provincia del Guayas-Ecuador.
King, S., McFarland, A., & Vogelzang, J. (2022). Food sovereignty and sustainability mid-pandemic: How Michigan’s experience of Covid-19 highlights chasms in the food system. Agriculture and Human Values, 39(2), 827-838. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-021-10270-6.
McGreevy, S., Rupprecht, C., Niles, D., Wiek, A., Carolan, M., Kallis, G., Kantamaturapoj, K., Mangnus, A., Jehlička, P., Taherzadeh, O., Sahakian, M., Chabay, I., Colby, A., Vivero, J., Chaudhuri, R., Spiegelberg, M., Kobayashi, M., Balázs, B., Tsuchiya, K., Nicholls, C., Tanaka, K., Vervoort, J., Akitsu, M., Mallee, H., Ota, K., Shinkai, R., Khadse, A., Tamura, N., Abe, K., Altieri, M., Sato, Y., & Tachikawa, M. (2022). Sustainable agrifood systems for a post-growth world. Nature Sustainability, 5(12), Art. 12. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-00933-5.
Salazar, L., Schling, M., Palacios, A., & Pazos, N. (2020). Retos para la agricultura familiar en el contexto del COVID-19: Evidencia de productores en ALC. https://doi.org/10.18235/0002453.
Stephens, E., Martin, G., van Wijk, M., Timsina, J., & Snow, V. (2020). Impacts of COVID-19 on agricultural and food systems worldwide and on progress to the sustainable development goals. Agricultural Systems, 183, 102873. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2020.102873.
Toro, P., Navarro, C., Ríos, D., Martínez, J., Uclés, M., Martínez, O., Muñoz, A., Obando, D., & Ramírez, J. (2020). Monitoreo de los efectos de la COVID-19 en la seguridad alimentaria: Hallazgos preliminares de encuestas de monitoreo sobre las implicaciones de la pandemia de la COVID-19 sobre las actividades productivas, la seguridad alimentaria y el riesgo sanitario de familias agricultoras, en tres países de América Latina. CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/110108.
Worstell, J. (2020). Ecological Resilience of Food Systems in Response to the COVID-19 Crisis. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, 9(3), Art. 3. https://doi.org/10.5304/jafscd.2020.093.015.
Zimmerer, K., & de Haan, S. (2020). Informal food chains and agrobiodiversity need strengthening—Not weakening—To address food security amidst the COVID-19 crisis in South America. Food Security, 12(4), 891-894. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12571-020-01088-x.