Member profile
Carla Mejia
Organization:
UN World Food Programme
Country:
Thailand
I am working on:
I try to assure the quality and safety of the food distributed by WFP. Additionally, I help establish the feasibility of new projects focused on the development of special nutritious foods in the context of humanitarian logistics.
Carla Mejia
Thanks so much Edward for bringing up this topic.
The UNDP report that summarizes the food security policy context in Brazil, has a good summary of the three elements that have been found to be basic for the development and implementation of programs that target food security and nutrition of indigenous groups: 1) policy frameworks and subsequently budgets that enable programs to be created, 2) multi-sectorial participation that allows input and discussion of the guidelines and priorities and 3) adequate monitoring and evaluation of the programs and/or policies (ref: http://www.ipc-undp.org/pub/IPCCountryStudy22.pdf).
This type of approach has served to the development of various initiatives that have in fact applied technology and practices typical of the indigenous populations like the program that assessed the use of terraces recuperation in Peru (http://www.iadb.org/en/projects/project-description-title,1303.html?id=pe-t1165#doc), and has also prompted the characterization of various crops traditionally used by indigenous communities in the Andean region (http://www.rlc.fao.org/es/agricultura/produ/cdrom/contenido/libro10/home10.htm , http://www.fao.org/docrep/017/aq287s/aq287s.pdf). However, the long term effects of these initiatives has been proven to be not as successful as expected as chronic malnutrition and water and food borne diseases are still highly prevalent in indigenous populations of Latin America, especially in children. Moreover, the focus has been on 1) primary production 2) characterization solely at a gastronomic level (http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/aiq2013/res/es/recetarioandino.pdf), and 3) transformation of the crop at the semi industrial scale through the development of processed foods that could be consumed by a majority (http://www.rlc.fao.org/pt/projetos/forsandino/). The actual indigenous preparation practices and its effects on the subsequent potential nutritional value has not been well characterized nor assessed; nor has been assessed the meaning of these preparations for the populations identity and preservation.