Diversity from farm to plate : nutrition and food relationships among agroecological farmers in Ecuador
Concerned with agricultural practices that harm human and environmental health, networks of farmers in Ecuador have organized around agroecology as a more sustainable alternative. This comes at a time in which a nutrition transition has driven Ecuador’s rural population to unprecedented levels of overweight and obesity, even while micronutrient deficiencies persist, thus creating a double burden of malnutrition. Through agroecology-based alternative food networks (AFNs), farmers and their allies have increasingly recognized the linkages between healthy agricultural practices and healthy food consumption. A breadth of literature explores how agriculture interventions can improve nutritional outcomes, such as by promoting production diversity, increasing incomes and empowering women. Agroecology has much potential to act on these pathways. However, because agroecology often spreads as a social movement rather than as a systematic intervention, empirical research assessing linkages between agroecology and farmers’ dietary practices is lacking.   This thesis explores how the production practices and social capital promoted through agroecological AFNs may be associated with unique dietary practices that hold potential to support nutritional health in the face of both obesity and micronutrient deficiencies. To do so, this research implemented a participatory approach and sequential, exploratory mixed method design including ethnography, key informant interviews, focus group discussions and a cross-sectional survey comparing agroecology AFN participants and their non-participant farming neighbours. Findings show that AFN participants out-performed their neighbours on multiple indicators of dietary nutrient adequacy and moderation. Analyses further suggest that agroecological AFNs support these dietary outcomes by strengthening production diversity and social capital, which in turn promote the consumption of foods from own-production and from the social economy (e.g. barter) as well as promote the consumption of traditional foods.  These results empirically demonstrate how agroecology can act on agriculture-nutrition pathways to enable healthy diets. Given the largely self-spreading nature of the global agroecology movement, agroecology may present an endogenous resource for supporting rural nutritional well-being.
agroecology nutrition Ecuador Indigenous populations agriculture alternative food networks health agrobiodiversity social capital dietary diversity Autochtones