Indigenous people have a lot to teach farmers about sustainable agriculture and building food resilience, as the world seeks to deal with the global disruption to the grain supply because of the war in Ukraine, says the head of the UN’s farming agency.
Alvaro Lario, president of the United Nations’ International Fund for Agricultural Development, said with disruptions to agriculture from conflict and climate change, Indigenous communities have valuable skills to share on how to build a food supply resilient to shocks.
“Nowadays we talk about sustainable, resilient food systems. That is what they have been doing for millennia,” he said.
With conflict, such as the war in Ukraine, disrupting the world’s grain supply, there should be a renewed focus on self-sufficiency and sustainable agriculture, he said in an interview.
Indigenous and small farmers have valuable skills in preserving biodiversity, including seeds, bees and other insects, as well as nourishing the soil and preserving water resources.
“Many of the small farmers are very much aware of what is called nature-based solutions,” he said. “But for them it is just working with nature, which in the case of the communities with whom we work, like Indigenous peoples … they have been doing for millennia, centuries.”
The president of the UN agency, which invests in rural communities, said the world is seeing “alarming biodiversity loss.”
“There has been a degradation in many cases of the land. There has been less diversification of crops, all of that has affected the ecosystems,” he said.
He says a forum with leaders of Indigenous communities worldwide has been established to discuss sustainable practices and “what we can learn.”
“There needs to be an equilibrium. We need to be mindful of resources. Be mindful of water usage. Be mindful of soil management. Be mindful of how we treat livestock,” he said.
IFAD was created 45 years ago in response to drought and famine, and to address the root causes of food insecurity. It invests in small farmers and rural communities. Canada, which was a founding member of the UN agency, is a major donor.
Mr. Lario, speaking during his first official visit to Canada, said smaller farms using traditional methods tend to be very productive.
“They produce one-third of the world’s food and they only occupy 11 per cent of the farmland,” he said.
Climate crises such as floods and fires are also making the need for resilience more pressing. Farmers have been turning to food that can be produced more quickly, he said, and crops with shorter growing cycles.
Canada has been sending faster-growing buckwheat seeds to Ukraine, Canada’s Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau said last year.
Some farmers in the developing world are also turning away from cash crops, such as wheat and rice, to traditional crops with high nutritional value, such as quinoa, millet and cassava so they can feed themselves, Mr. Alvaro said.
“They are normally more nutritious and in many cases have just been dumped because some countries have concentrated on one crop,” he said. “Now they have realized that actually they need to also diversify.”
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, one of the world’s biggest exporters of grain, has disrupted the supply of wheat to countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
The UN official said becoming less reliant on food imports is now a global priority.
“Some of the countries are even talking about food sovereignty and food security being national security,” he said.