Healthy Ecologies: Next Steps and New Directions in Linking Agro-food Systems with Community Equity for Food Security in Rural Ethiopia

This paper reflects on necessary next steps and new directions in food security and public nutrition as approached in an interdisciplinary research and development project in southern rural Ethiopia. It further addresses some of the particular challenges that arise in working across knowledge domains. While the ultimate goal of the project is to address protein-calorie malnutrition and low dietary zinc levels, its guiding philosophy combines what a social determinants of health perspective with an “agro-food systems” approach. Rural food insecurity and malnutrition are largely linked to poverty, inequality and agricultural livelihood insecurity, and agricultural livelihood security is dependent upon sustainable access to the components of livelihood: practical labour, knowledge and skills; fertile soils; productive seeds and plants; fit animals; appropriate markets and institutions; and suitable tools. These elements and outcomes of livelihood are produced, distributed and consumed within social, economic and cultural contexts and relationships that can be viewed as ecologies in their own right, and that shape people's “opportunities to be healthy” and to have their nutritional needs met (Labonte & Schrecker, 2006). This approach to food security and nutrition - from field to fork – involves collaboration across a range of disciplines. Moreover, to achieve “healthy ecologies”, this project combines conventional science with local and indigenous knowledge, joining the small farmers' understanding of their own needs and production conditions with scientists' insight into underlying processes and the problem-solving ability of scientific methods. This framework lends itself to a participatory research approach, an essential part of which comprises the implicit education and development processes of the project.