Rural Realities
Featured A Rural Food Environment: Insights from a Developing Country
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Munashe Kurehwatira
The overlapping crises of climate change, conflicts, public health and economic downturns have exposed the fragility that already exists in the global and local food environments. Disruptions in the food environment have underscored the need to understand the food environments in various contexts to create conditions that enable and encourage rural households to choose healthy diets. However, there is a paucity of information on how much food households are accessing from local food environments as well as the characteristics of these food environments in developing countries. Therefore, this paper characterises the rural food in environment in Zimbabwe. Characterising local food environments provides a better understanding of the dynamics of a rural food environment and generates context-specific information that is important in enhancing local food environments to deliver healthy diets. The paper highlights the rural food environment typology during overlapping crises. This information is important for the formulation of context specific interventions, policies and strategies for building local resilience.
Co-innovation as a Promising Approach to Sustainable Agricultural Transitions: The Case of Organic Management in Reduced Tillage Systems on Uruguayan Family Farms
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Morgane Batkai
The impact of climate change and intensification of agricultural systems in Uruguay has led to a degradation of soil quality, increased soil erosion and poor water retention. Reduced tillage (RT) is a promising solution to addressing these problems, and is critical in supporting sustainable agricultural transitions. However, implementing RT remains challenging for family farmers due to higher labor demands and weed management, reducing the likelihood of adoption. A project led by the Universidad de la Republica Uruguay aims to explore organic management of RT systems using a co-innovation process. Local family farmers, agricultural technicians and research institutes are involved at all stages of the project that seeks to promote social learning by emphasizing information exchange and participation. The main research questions reflect Reed’s elements of social learning to explore how co-innovation impacts learning: to what extent have participants demonstrated knowledge and understanding of RT systems? And, has the change in understanding resulted from social interactions? 18 semi-structured interviews were conducted with key stakeholders, and a nominal group technique was applied to identify RT practices. Preliminary results indicate that participants are actively involved and demonstrate considerable knowledge regarding RT. Farmers are either implementing RT, or have future plans to do so, while agricultural technicians indicated that they share their knowledge to other networks. These findings reflect the potential of a co-innovation process, and further research will explore the diffusion of RT knowledge beyond this project to examine it’s impact on large-scale sustainable agricultural transitions in Uruguay.
