Tania Eulalia Martínez-Cruz, CASAS’ members, & Adelman Levi have published a book chapter in the book Indigenous Peoples’ Knowledge and the Sciences: Combining Knowledge and Science on Vulnerabilities and Solutions for Resilience.
Abstract: Food insecurity has predominantly been addressed as a problem of food production; since the times of the Green Revolution, miracle seeds, pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, and irrigation have been promoted to maximize yield. However, this model has proven to be unsustainable as it causes 30% of the Greenhouse Gas Emissions, accounts for 70% of freshwater withdrawals, is responsible for 80% of the world’s deforestation, and has had many disastrous social impacts, affecting many Indigenous Peoples, among others. As an alternative model for food insecurity, Indigenous Peoples’ food and knowledge systems form the basis of the most time-tested models for stability and sustainability. Although Indigenous Peoples represent only 6% of the world’s population and face ongoing systemic marginalization, discrimination, and criminalization, they protect 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity. In this paper, we present some key data on the unsustainability of the current food systems; then, we present some key features of Indigenous Peoples’ food systems and the lessons that we could learn for food systems transformation. We then examine the questions of what a right to food for Indigenous Peoples means and what other rights and requirements are implicated in that process, and finally, we make some specific recommendations for food systems transformation while ensuring that we use a rights-based approach.
Read the full article here: https://www2.ifsc.usp.br/portal-ifsc/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/LIVRO-VATICANO.pdf
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CASAS
The Collective of Agrarian Scholar-Activists from the Global South (CASAS) is a community of Scholar-Activists working in critical agrarian studies.