Developing products with insects for sustainable food systems.
Food insecurity is a significant public health problem for Indigenous peoples in Canada. According to the authors, a comprehensive literature review was needed to organize the evidence according to the 4 pillars of food security (i.e., availability, access, utilization, and stability) and identify gaps in the published literature on this topic. Evidence from the identified studies indcated that all dimensions of food security among Indigenous peoples in Canada have been impacted. Lack of availability of both traditional and market foods is highlighted among Inuit and First Nation communities. Economic disadvantages, high food prices, and lack of access to transportation are major factors affecting the accessibility pillar of food security. Major factors affecting the utilization pillar of food security are the loss of traditional knowledge and skills, lack of knowledge on market foods, low quality of market foods, and food safety issues. Climate change has affected all 4 pillars of food security among Indigenous peoples. These findings suggest that resolving food insecurity issues among Indigenous peoples in Canada, especially those living in remote communities, requires a culturally specific integrated approach targeting food availability, food cost, food knowledge, food safety, and food quality.
Food systems are a major driver of environmental change, responsible for rapid deforestation, water scarcity, and an estimated 30%–34% of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Findings in this paper point to the capacity of plant-sourced food consumption to minimize environmental harm without necessarily jeopardizing nutrient availability in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Local agriculture can contribute to food system sustainability by producing diversified plant-sourced foods, cornerstones of many traditional food customs, and mitigating the impacts of industrialized livestock operations and imported, animal-centric dietary habits.
Indigenous crops with diverse genotypes facilitate cultivation of crops that are ideally suited to particular sites by small-scale farmers, thus staving off poverty and hunger in local communities while promoting responsible consumption and production. This paper evaluates grain yield and nutritional qualities of a range of genotypes in an African crop plant.
This Personal View supports SDGs 2 and 3 by identifying patterns of food supply that are linked to health and environmental risks. The paper includes details of potential effects of changes in water availablity on agriculture,
Increasing agricultural water scarcity is threatening food security and ecosystem sustainability in China.
Food insecurity, defined as insufficient access to nutritious foods, is a social determinant of health that may underpin health disparities in the US. American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) individuals experience many health inequities that may be related to food insecurity, but no systematic analyses of the existing evidence have been published. Thus, the objective of this scoping review was to assess the literature on food insecurity among AI/AN individuals and communities, with a focus on the prevalence of food insecurity and its relations to sociodemographic, nutrition, and health characteristics. Based on the review, recommendations for future research were derived, which include fundamental validity testing, better representation of AI/AN individuals in federal or local food security reports, and consideration of cultural contexts when selecting methodological approaches. Advances in AI/AN food insecurity research could yield tangible benefits to ongoing initiatives aimed at increasing access to traditional foods, improving food environments on reservations and homelands, and supporting food sovereignty.
This article brings us a step closer to bringing clean drinking water to the world by detecting key harmful microbes.
Future sustainable food systems should more efficiently use natural resources and reduce food waste.
