In March 2020, the Indian government announced a strict lockdown with a 4-hour notice, adding a ban on casual and classic food establishments that 80-90% of Indians count as their main source of food.
In a new paper titled “Applying the Six-Dimensional Food Security Framework to Examine a Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program Implemented Through Self-Help Groups During the COVID-19 Lockdown in India,” published in the journal World Development, researchers from the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT tested the effects of a government-backed women’s self-help organization program in the state of Odisha, India, and its impact on six dimensions of food security: availability, access, utilization, stability, action, and sustainability. Array
Jonathan Mockshell, agricultural economist at the Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and first in the article, explains that these teams (women-only rotating savings and loan associations with a long history in India), They obtained new crops and vegetables from farmers, hired transportation, bought more vegetables from wholesalers and sold the food to other people in local and urban markets through trucks, cars or motorcycles.
“Our studies have shown that these self-help teams (SHGs) play a very important role in closing the fractures in blocking the new price chains for fruits and vegetables. “
Mockshell states, “The GAA formula provides a ‘third force’ and style to rethink and revamp existing progression styles by leveraging existing establishments and grassroots networks to build resilience in food formulas.
Thea Ritter, an agricultural economist at the Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), and second author of the study, explains that these women were running these programs, called “Veg on Wheels” on top of their household responsibilities and the existing work of the self-help groups.
“They met every night,” Ritter says. There were women who were fruit and vegetable producers or who had close ties with others outside the group; This helped because they were familiar with the chain of origin. “
Ritter added that some teams got government investments for education in spaces such as accounting, which some members would then use to start their own businesses.
The number of people who are acutely food insecure or at risk of food distrust increased from 135 million in 53 countries before the COVID-19 pandemic to 345 million in 79 countries in 2023, according to World Food Programme statistics.
In 2009, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) explained food security as “all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient and nutritious food that satisfies their nutritional desires and personal food tastes. “for an active life. . . and a healthy life. “
However, researchers from the Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) highlighted two critical dimensions of food security that came into play in the timeline they tested on action and sustainability/resilience.
“In terms of the value chain, agency means being able to sell your fruit and vegetables if you want to and having a say in policies and laws,” Ritter says, adding that the researchers focused on resilience (i.e., ability and capacity to deal with shocks in food systems) rather than the traditional view of sustainability, that is, being able to provide for future generations without depleting current resources.
“We didn’t have this six-dimensional view of food safety in the brain when we collected the data, but it comes from what the respondents in the study were talking about,” Ritter says.
Mockshell and Ritter claim that there are more than a billion members of revolving savings and credit associations, specifically in Africa and South Asia.
Given how widespread these groups are, the researchers believe that this model has global applications: harnessing these pre-existing organizations to rebuild fractured supply chains can provide a model for other governments to replicate in times of crisis, such as extreme climate events and conflicts, when both rural and urban supply chains are disrupted.
“This solution is not specific to COVID-19 or India, because with climate change, disasters and conflicts are becoming increasingly common,” Ritter says, “If there was a natural disaster in future, the government could tap into and leverage these groups.”
Mockshell explained that while researchers looked at the factor from a food security perspective, pre-existing teams can simply be used to facilitate choice supply chains in conditions where public and private sector presence is limited.
“For example, they could be used to distribute medical supplies,” he says.
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