The state of traditional foods in Imbabura, Ecuador
Traditional foods remain a part of daily life among both reference and agroecological farmers in our study population, but there is no bar to gauge how much traditional food consumption is “a lot” or even “enough.” Most farmers consume at least half of the indicator TFs assessed, and they consume them often: agroecological farmers report consuming indicator TFs 260 times a year, and reference farmers do so 144 times a year. All farmers continue to practice wild harvest to some extent, and most do so on a weekly basis. TF consumption appears more alive in this farming population than in other spaces in the country; for example, a recent representative study in three Ecuadorian highland cities found that only 19% of participants consumed either quinoa, amaranth or Andean lupine more than three times per month (52). The comparable figures in our study population would be 60% of reference farmers and 85% of agroecological farmers. Even the indicator TFs that we selected because they are locally recognized as underutilized (amaranth, yacon, oca, mashua, quinoa leaf, amaranth leaf) are all still present to some extent in our study population’s diets. Nevertheless, for several of the underutilized TFs, median consumption frequency among reference farmers was only once yearly, and this frequency would hardly suggest that these foods are a regular part of the diet. Further, we believe a word of caution is warranted with respect to the frequencies of TF consumption, given the cognitive recall difficulties that beleaguer FFQs (53) as well as the added complication of estimating frequency of products that are only available during limited harvest seasons (54)[1].
Opportunities for traditional food promotion
Our analysis suggests that TF production promotes TF consumption. This is no surprise in light of the expanding literature on the pathways between production and consumption, and namely production diversity and dietary diversity (55). Indeed, we find that farmers that grow a given TF are not only more likely to consume it, but they also consume it more frequently. For the most underutilized TFs, own harvest is key to whether or not farmers consume them at all. Those who do not grow these underutilized TFs themselves tend to obtain them from farmers that do grow them, relying on social economy transactions such as barter or direct purchase. This is likely a consequence of the reduced availability of such products in conventional markets driven by the demand of urban consumers (56), and signals the importance of the social economy in filling supply gaps.
If growing traditional products is key to unleashing TF dietary practices among farmers, it is helpful to understand what conditions might foster their production. We detected that higher overall farm production diversity of edible products is associated with higher TF production diversity. This may reflect adherence to more traditional cropping systems, which depend on relatively high production diversity to meet dietary needs or to increase agricultural resilience (1). Yet simply increasing farm production diversity would not necessarily guarantee TF incorporation. Initiatives to increase farm production diversity for ecological, productive or nutritional reasons (36) could ensure that they are sensitive to TF promotion while making simultaneous contributions to their main objectives. For example, the adaptation of TFs to local environmental conditions can improve agricultural resilience for farming communities, supporting livelihoods and food access (57–60). Further, initiatives with nutritional objectives may consider integrating TFs given their contributions to key macronutrients, micronutrients and phytochemicals (59–64).
We further find that farmers whose diets rely less on conventional markets and more on own production or the social economy maintain stronger TF practices. Other scholars similarly discuss the importance of non-market subsistence practices such as own production and local trade in conserving traditional crops (5,25). In contrast to other studies (4,28,30,31), market distance, income and age did not emerge as strongly or consistently associated with TF practices among our study population. This means that in this context, TF practices are not merely a relic of the most isolated, impoverished and aging—or in short, marginalized—people, as public opinion has long perceived them to be (7). In the development literature, practices that are the purview of the most marginalized people, and especially of subsistence-oriented farmers, tend to be discussed as “coping” or “adaptive” strategies driven by reactive necessity rather than proactive agency (65). In contrast, the fact that we detected an association with reliance on non-market food sources but did not detect a strong association with marginalization implies that TF practices in our study population are not merely a reaction to adverse conditions. Possibly, farmers may be participating in a globalized cultural shift toward re-valorization of TFs, as has been described in Europe (66). Doing so, some may even perceive TF practices as active agents in strengthening cultural identity and food sovereignty (39).
Agroecology as an incubator for traditional food promotion
Agroecological farmers unambiguously perform better than their reference neighbors on three of the four TF practices assessed. They produce twice as much TF diversity, consume 40% more TF diversity and consume TFs 80% more often compared to their reference counterparts. In our path analysis, participation in agroecology directly contributed to both TF production diversity and TF consumption diversity, leading to downstream impacts on TF consumption frequency. While our methods did not measure changes in TF practice over time, agroecological farmers emphatically identify their participation in agroecological markets as the drivers of increased TF production and consumption. In our study region, this points to agroecology as a means to strengthen TF practices. Moreover, the strongest differences in consumption of specific TFs appear precisely in those that are locally recognized as underutilized. Agroecology may thus be key for reclaiming at-risk TFs in this region.
Part of the reason why agroecological farmers perform so much better on TF practices is likely because agroecology promotes other factors that act to strengthen TF practices, namely farm production diversity and reliance on non-market food sources (37,39). However, we find that agroecology participation continues to have an impact even when these other factors are held constant, suggesting that other forces are at play that we did not measure. Focus group discussions help clarify these unknowns, identifying two additional drivers that motivate agroecological farmers to increase their TF practices.
First, the social space surrounding the agroecological market association drives farmers to produce and consume TFs for their health benefits, taste, agricultural resilience, cultural value and even aesthetics. Agroecological farmers are not alone in perceiving TFs to be healthier, agriculturally strategic or culturally important. These same convictions were recently documented in a nearby study site in Northern Ecuador (67), as well as in much of the academic work we cite in this article
(5–11). However, focus group discussions suggest that the social encounters in agroecological spaces concentrate these convictions, inserting TF practices into social norms that strengthen a shared cultural identity, and embedding consumption of TFs into the moral impetus of feeding healthy food to the family. Similarly, previous findings in this region suggest that agroecological identity is closely tied with the recovery of traditional cultural practices (33,39). The importance of these socially-driven elements in guiding TF practices is consistent with dietary behavior models that find food decisions to be informed by “affective” components, including feelings and emotions, moral obligations, and social norms and pressures (68).
The second driver of TF practices identified in focus group discussions is specialized consumer demand in agroecological markets. This drives production of certain TFs for sale, which then also leads farmers to increase consumption of those TFs in their own diets. Other studies on TFs similarly find that consumer demand-driven value chains influence TF production (69,70), yet farmers’ voiced perceptions go a step further by explicitly connecting consumers’ TF consumption to downstream impacts on farmers’ TF consumption. Yet these flows of influence are not unidirectional. Agroecological farmers’ associations played an important role in the emergence of a nation-wide campaign to form “responsible” consumers that consume traditional Andean crops as well as nutritious, socially just and ecologically sustainable food (34,71). Now, these very consumers frequent agroecological markets to participate in the formation of the markets’ affective spaces (39) and to create demand for traditional foods.
Wild harvest
We found wild harvest of foods to be a common practice among our study population. However, our efforts to understand its correlates do not produce clear patterns. As far as we can tell, wild food consumption diversity among our study population is not associated with age, income, distance to markets, or food acquisition strategies. This relative democratization of wild foods within our study population is particularly relevant given the evidence that wild foods can be remarkably nutritious, but also remarkably neglected and underutilized (7,72,73). This combination often relegates wild foods to coping strategies for the poorest of the poor and erroneously dismisses them as “famine foods” (7,72). We find that people who consume a greater diversity of TFs in general also consume a greater diversity of wild harvested products, potentially signaling similar drivers of these two dietary outcomes. However, we do not believe that farm production diversity, which is also correlated with somewhat higher wild food consumption, is one of these shared drivers. Rather, it is likely that both farm production diversity and the off-farm wild edible diversity are similarly affected by the ecological niche that they co-habit. Curiously, we detected no differences between agroecological and reference farmers on wild food consumption, despite clear differences in other TF practices. One explanation may be that wild foods have not been prioritized in agroecological affective and commercial spaces in the same way as the other TFs assessed. If so, this may be a point of interest for Ecuador’s agroecology movement.
Internal and external validity of findings
Farmers participating in focus group discussions corroborated the detected pathways between TF production and consumption and also concurred with the finding that agroecological farmers have overall stronger TF practices. This triangulation between qualitative and quantitative methods gives us more confidence in our findings, despite the relatively small sample assessed in the survey. Nevertheless, we only conducted FGDs with agroecological farmers. While these farmers did reflect on their lives prior to joining agroecology, we are uncertain of the subjective biases at play. Moreover, our study is limited to a single region, and we recognize that many contextual factors could affect the external validity of our findings. Not only is agroecology a term that embraces many local expressions (32), but other characteristics that are subject to broad variation include the cultural presence of TFs, ecological availability of wild foods, food acquisition from own harvest or from social economy, and many more. Rather than providing a proscriptive formula for strengthening TF practices, it is our hope that we shed light on how these possible paths can play out, recognizing that they will likely be different in other spaces.
[1] Farmers in our study population would often report that they ate a given product “every day while it’s available”, which, for a product that is available for two months, would lead to an unrealistic estimated frequency of 60 during that time period. While we believe this inflation would be equally distributed across both agroecological and reference farmers, we do not have a reliable means of correction in order to obtain a more accurate TF consumption frequency.