Tropentag 2023, September 20 - 22, Berlin, Germany "Competing pathways for equitable food systems transformation: trade-offs and synergies."

Local food system resilience in context of shocks and crises: Vulnerabilities and responses of agroecology-based farmers in Peru, the United States, and Germany

¹Leibniz Centre for Agric. Landscape Res. (ZALF), Sustainable Land Use in Developing Countries (SUSLand), Germany
²Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Thaer-Institute of Agricultural and Horticultural Sci., Germany
³Freie Universität Berlin, Inst. for Latin American Studies (LAI), Germany
⁴International Potato Center (CIP), Andean Initiative, Peru
⁵Grupo Yanapai, Peru

Abstract

Multiple crises have disrupted food systems globally in the last years. The shocks induced by the COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with the economic effects related to increased energy prices and shortages of fertilisers and agricultural inputs, affect farmers everywhere. By applying inductive, qualitative, and comparative research approaches, we investigate the effects of interlinked shocks and crises on local food systems from a farmers’ perspective. We applied mixed qualitative field methods to voice farmers’ perceptions about the effects of interrelated shocks and crises of farmers (n=25) belonging to agroecology-based local food systems of Peru, the United States and Germany. This study aims to: (i) understand the different crises scenarios and induced farmers’ vulnerabilities; and (ii) identify the response mechanisms that farmers deploy in response. Results show that farmers in the three study areas experience multifaceted effects of the crises, mainly reduced access to inputs and labour, resulting in production decline, low incomes, and decapitalisation. Farmers' strategies and responses are understood with regards to their responsive capacities and within the socio-political environments that they are embedded, and thereafter analysed based on attributes of food system resilience. The main differences among our case studies related to the form of capitals (financial, social and human) that farmers have available for responding to shocks. Our findings demonstrate how strategies were successfully implemented where social resilience, i.e., stronger communal ties existed. We argue that the main potential for scaling agroecological local food networks, and thereby strengthen food system resilience, lies in improving the efficiency of existing short-length distribution channels and fostering trust-building and solidarity-based interactions between producers and consumers. Thereafter, we emphasise the need for more proactive policies aimed at promoting agroecological and localised production, as well as ensuring channels for commercialization, in order to enhance food systems resilience against recurrent shocks and crises

Keywords: Farm-market interfaces, persistence, responsive capacities, social-ecological systems

Contact Address: Giovanna Chavez-Miguel, Leibniz Centre for Agric. Landscape Res. (ZALF), Sustainable Land Use in Developing Countries (SUSLand), Eberswalder Straße 84, Müncheberg, Germany, e-mail: Giovanna.Chavez-Miguelzalf.de