Climate-Smart Agriculture and a Sustainable Food System for a Sustainable-Engendered Peace

Abstract

In addition to increasing extreme events due to climate change, losses of ecosystem services, soil depletion, water scarcity, and air pollution, in most emerging countries the importation of basic food items, especially corn, soya beans, and wheat, has increased. These countries often purchase genetic modified grains which might affect their biodiversity. The present chapter proposes a climate-sustainable agriculture with food sovereignty (CSAFS) that combines the climate-smart agriculture promoted by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations with the recovery of local food cultures, environmental diversity, and healthy food intake from a gendered perspective. This approach deepens the concept of food sovereignty from Via Campesina, the international movement which coordinates small and medium scale agricultural producers and workers across the globe. This case study of Mexico illustrates the nutritional impact on poor people of industrialised and imported food. In 2018, half of all Mexicans live in conditions of poverty, with informal jobs and insufficient income. The increase of food prices has forced many people to substitute nutritious fresh food with sugar and carbohydrates. This change of diet has increased obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, cancer and other chronic illnesses. Since 2017 President Trump has initiated a renegotiation of the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and his administration has charged import taxes on selected Mexican export products. The complexity and urgency of this crisis, aggravated by climate change impacts, obliges the Mexican Government to rethink its agricultural policy, which is now unable to provide healthy food to everybody. The State, the business community and the citizens must design a policy of a sustainable agriculture and a healthy food culture, which may reverse environmental deterioration, increase the capture of greenhouse gases, mitigate climate change impacts, reduce the malnutrition of adults, and improve the chronic undernourishment of small children.