23. Eco-anthropological tools to improve food self-sufficiency through the use of wild edible plants

In: Justice and food security in a changing climate
Authors:
L. Benoit L’Institut Agro – Agrocampus Ouest, Département d’Ecologie, 2 rue Le Nôtre, 49000 Angers, France.

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É. Olmedo Institute of Ethnic Studies (KITA), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, The National University of Malaysia, 43600 Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia.

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B. Chen Independent researcher, 40 rue Edouard Aynard, 69100 Villeurbanne, France.

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Food security, or ‘the ability for people to have at all times physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy lifestyle’ (United Nations Food & Agriculture (FAO), 1996) is an issue that has been historically associated with the global South (Ahmadi et al., 2018; Crush et al., 2020). Being historically global South-centric, the FAO definition does not cater for the hidden hunger phenomenon, nor for preservation of indigenous food systems. The authors posit that the macrosocial construct of food security reflects only one aspect of empirical reality, the part where national economies rely on conventional agri-food systems (Maye and Kirwan, 2010). The research objective of this paper is a first methodological step into the process of producing an alternative paradigm: in lieu of food security, we suggest a wild edible plants (WEP)-inclusive food self-sufficiency framing. This new paradigm endows food self-sufficiency with a well-being social function: well-being is here translated as benefiting from a balanced diet incorporating WEP, whose intake is measured through ingested quantification and nutritional analysis. The mobilised theoretical framework draws from a post-modern stance and incorporates locavorism and Alternative Food Networks (AFN) as key-concepts. One indigenous social group from Malaysia is selected as empirical field for a pilot survey. The food system of this indigenous community’s economy relies partly on foraged wild edible plants, thus legitimating an AFN framing. Targeted outcomes are scientific and social. Expected scientific outcome lies with the design of a methodological toolbox tentatively labelled as ‘eco-anthropological tools’. The suggested methodology is mainly ethnographic and qualitative: subsequent data collection would enable a comprehensive reconstruction of a given community food system, thus inducing the most optimal ‘toolbox’. The targeted social outcome is to identify ‘tipping points’ along the alternative food supply chain. Tipping points manifest a potential to activate individual and social change leading to new food consumption behaviour. Replicability and scalability tests of such an eco-anthropological toolbox are to be conducted in Europe with a population of gatherers. The use of comparison between population samples of both Europe and Malaysia enables us to qualify and quantify potential benefits and limitations of WEP systemic use within the framework of an alternative food self-sufficiency paradigm.

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