ACT Works With McGill University to Study Indigenous Agriculture and Diet

With funding from the Centre for Indigenous Peoples’ Nutrition and Environment (CINE) of Canada’s McGill University, as part of a larger study of the state of traditional nutrition systems across the globe, from 2004-2007, ACT conducted research with the Inga indigenous people of the Colombian Eastern Andean foothills region to assess the condition of the traditional basis of their agriculture, seedbanks and general diet. This overall work is in context of the second United Nations’ International Decade of the World’s Indigenous Peoples and the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. These findings, which demonstrated both retention of many traditional ways and species and ongoing acculturation deleterious to the health of the Inga, were included in publications of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) on indigenous peoples’ food systems and well-being:

http://www.mcgill.ca/cine/sites/mcgill.ca.cine/files/manual.pdf

http://www.fao.org/docrep/012/i0370e/i0370e00.htm

In May 2013, a third and final book in the series, Indigenous Peoples’ Food Systems & Well-Being: Interventions & Policies for Healthy Communities, was published:

http://www.fao.org/docrep/018/i3144e/I3144e08.pdf