BCFN Young Earth Solutions YES! Promoting Human Local Development in Paripe, a suburban neighborhood of Salvador in Brazil, by valorizing local food production. Abstract: Guarantee access of all indispensable nutrients to all by promoting and valorizing locally produced food. Valorizing and promoting the jobs carried out by local food producers, such as fishermen, and demonstrate how important locally produced food, using natural methods is and can be for health and wellbeing. Furthermore, promote the consumption of fresh and natural food, which has not been subject to the addition of chemical ingredients. All these ideas will be promoted by the creation of a communitarian consortium of food suppliers and a local supermarket which will be run and depends exclusively from the local community, promoting transparency and whose main driver will not only be profit but also quality and healthy food. Valorize and see food as a product deriving from mother nature, where seasons and other factors have to be taken into account, and change the vision that food is a commodity like any other one in the globalized market. Promote the idea that the mass production of food can lead to the decrease in quality and healthiness of it.
Author
Vasco Bernardi Cristina Sodi Andrea Santi
Title given by the BCFN: Food and sustainability: How to reduce the environmental impact, guaranteeing health and access to food for all. Title of Project: Promoting Human Local Development in Paripe, a suburban neighborhood of Salvador in Brazil, by valorizing local food production. Authors: Vasco Bernardi, Cristina Sodi, Andrea Santi Introduction Our project aims to create a simple solution that gives the community and its citizens the access to healthy locally produced food, valorizing the role food plays for health and wellbeing, valuing local knowledge and traditions related to food and promoting “local human development”. Why Brazil? Brazil is part of the famous BRICS, which are all deemed to be at a similar stage of newly advanced economic development. Brazil has been highly influenced by the USA in many ways, and the way to produce and consume food has been one of them. We know that, “around one in seven Brazilians are classed as obese (13.9 per cent) up from 11.4 per cent four years ago and still far lower than the rate of one in three (33.8 per cent) in the US.”1 Unfortunately, "Brazil's obesity rate could match US by 2022”2. An article that summarizes the topics discussed at the fourth National Conference on Food Security of Brazil, states “16 million people who still live in extreme poverty”3 and “specially among vulnerable groups such as indigenous people and the 'quilombola' communities, descendants of African slaves, the problem of food remains very serious and food insecurity continues unabated” 4 . The unresolved problem to distribute food equally, food for all, and problems arising from over-‐ nutrition all meet in Brazil today. Why Salvador ? The city of Salvador de Bahia in Brazil is the city with the highest number of Afro-‐ Brazilian descendants. One of the suburban impoverished suburban neighborhoods of Salvador is Paripe. It is an impoverished community marginalized in every sense, from political decisions or from access to public services. It is difficult to have precise and actual data on Paripe. Nonetheless Paripe also has resources such as a good communitarian organization5 and people whose job involves supplying food and or processing it. 1http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/brazil/8204625/Brazils-‐obesity-‐rate-‐could-‐match-‐US-‐ 2http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/brazil/8204625/Brazils-‐obesity-‐rate-‐could-‐match-‐US-‐ by-‐2022.html 2http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/brazil/8204625/Brazils-‐obesity-‐rate-‐could-‐match-‐US-‐ by-‐2022.html 3 3 http://www.news.va/en/news/americabrazil-‐food-‐security-‐prices-‐increase-‐and-‐ob 4 http://www.news.va/en/news/americabrazil-‐food-‐security-‐prices-‐increase-‐and-‐ob 5 http://www.amicidigianni-‐pati.org/?page_id=438 consulted il 13 Agosto 2012
Our project: A supplier consortium and a local supermarket in Paripe Aim of the Project • Create a network of all the persons that are involved in food supply in the community. This includes: fishermen, chicken, pork and cattle farmers, vegetable and fruit producers, women who process fruit into jam or desserts, in simple words all local members of the community who are involved in food in the supply and processing of food. • Create a communitarian consortium of all the food suppliers. This consortium will have the aim to valorize the local food products and defend those who supply these products. • Minimize the steps between supplier and consumer, in order to eliminating useless costs so local food products can be sold at an accessible price for the community. • Gather all the locally produced and manufactured products in a supermarket run by the consortium of suppliers. This aims to create a supermarket that is not influenced by the decisions of multinationals (decentralized), be less vulnerable to volatile food prices, and will represent a place where local food products are promoted. Creating a professional team to support the consortium A team (in partnership with local universities) will be created for and by the consortium and it will be made up by: • A local nutritional doctor who will analyze the nutritional needs of the community, in particular those of children and pregnant mothers, and suggest which locally produced types of local food should be consumed more or less. • A local agronomist and/or biologist that will help optimize the yield of food from the territory using techniques that have no impact on the environment and minimize food waste. • A communitarian educator whose goal should be the one to sensitize children and adolescents to the importance of following a “double pyramid diet”, where their food is coming from, the energy and time used to produce it, and therefore not only the monetary value it has. • A professional who controls the quality of the processed and not processed food supplied by the consortium.
Collaborators Entities with which we are in touch and who are willing to cooperate to realize this project: - ASSOCIAZIONI PATI (http://www.pati.org.br) - Universita UNEB (Universidade do Estado da Bahia), Brazil - Cattedra Transdisciplinare Unesco in Sviluppo Umano e Cultura di Pace - Universita di Firenze, Facoltà di Scienze della Formazione , Dipartimento di Scienze dell'Educazione e dei processi culturali e formative. - Citizens and representatives of the community of Paripe General Objectives: • Promote human local development • Contribute to overcome the marginalization of the community, the social integration of young members, adults and their families. Specific objectives: 1. Contribute to prevent diseases and pathologies that derive from an inadequate diet. 2. Improve the social economic conditions of the community of Paripe 3. Maximize local development of the territory respecting the environment and the local natural resources by promoting the consumption of locally produced food products. 4. Valorize the jobs of farmers, grazers, poultry farmers, fishermen, and local food manufacturers. 5. Sensitize and educate pregnant women and children to the essential role food plays in their everyday life. 6. Valorize the women’s labor of the community of Pairpe 7. Prefer and codify the local methods of production that minimize their environmental impact 8. Increase local governance 9. Increase empowerment of the women of Paripe 10. Valorize the local culinary culture. 11. Decrease the consumption of food products that can lead to non communicable diseases 12. Promote a supply chain with few steps in the middle, promoting the idea of “food at zero kilometers” and the benefits deriving from this philosophy. Conclusion: The innovation of this project stands in creating a supermarket that is run by local members of the community and the food in it supplied by the local members of the community, and not influenced by multinationals. Profit will not be the only driver of this supermarket, but quality and health will be taken into account in this supermarket. The community of Paripe could highly benefit from a project like this one. WORD COUNT: 981 words excluding the title