AUTHOR=Sarapura–Escobar Silvia , Hoddy Eric T. 

TITLE=Safeguarding the land to secure food in the highlands of Peru: The case of Andean peasant producers

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems

VOLUME=Volume 6 - 2022

YEAR=2022

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sustainable-food-systems/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2022.787600

DOI=10.3389/fsufs.2022.787600

ISSN=2571-581X

ABSTRACT=Local or traditional agri-food systems in the Andes depend on community land-use planning to maintain the genetic pool of crops and landraces in the face of disease, disasters, and climate change. These systems are managed integrally and on the basis of traditional knowledge around soil conservation, water management and maintaining biodiversity. At the same time, national and agricultural policies indicate a limited awareness among governments and institutions of the community contexts of agri-food systems. Community settings are treated as homogenous and without regard for women and men’s traditional knowledge, local power relations, forms of community organization and customary laws. This study aims to shed light on peasant women and men’s planning and land use for their contributions to the resilience and sustainability of local food systems. We apply an intersectional lens that draws on intersectional feminist thinking, the social-ecological approach and social-ecological resilience. Findings identify contributions around soil conservation, biodiversity upkeep, water management, and communal or cultural practices, and that these are shaped by peasant’s intersecting identities and their interactions within social-ecological dimensions. Findings illustrate the importance of multiple social locations, relations, and structures of power, including but not limited to gender, but other categories such as age and ethnicity for the delivery of equitable resilience. We emphasize the importance of local planning in Andean communities for managing resources in accord with Andean indigenous worldviews. Knowledge and Andean ways of adapting and innovating are part and parcel of their innate capacities to maintain the land and their genetic resources.