Hello, this is John Poveda one more time.

I would like to keep the line of contributions around the question 3.3.6 given by Dionisio Ortiz-Miranda (# 54) and Francisco Gurri (# 59).

I agree with Francisco in the position that there is an increasing amount of information that reports a very positive impact on the "on farm" diets related to the increase of diversity in the farm. An interesting "review-like" report was made by Heywood (2013). The author concludes amongst other things that "There is abundant evidence that edible plant and animal diversity contributes substantially to human diets in terms of energy intake and also helps alleviate problems of malnutrition in developing countries through the supply of vitamins and micronutrients". However, he recognizes that "...there is still a lack of knowledge about the species that are involved", and in particular lots of research is needed around the question of nutritional value of these diverse elements on the local diets where crop diversification is a common practice. In this part, it's clear that regional differences in the nutrition habits of small holders are the main factor who limits our capacity for making worldwide generalizations.  

From a more on the field perspective I've had the opportunity to observe in Latin America and in particular in Colombia that small farmers with diversified gardens (whether for market or not) are more likely to include those items on their diets and therefore their nutrient intake has perceptibly increased.

From our recent experience in Canada we have never eaten a more diverse diet since we started our community supported agriculture (CSA) project in 2014. This year, for example, we managed to plant, harvest and consume over 40 different items in our 1 acre garden. Since our project only includes plants, we informally organized with other local producer the exchange of vegetables for cheese, eggs etc. throughout the season. As an example of the impact of small scale diversified agriculture in a developed country, our project belongs to the biggest network of family farms (small scale) with over 100 participants who produce food for 35000 people in Quebec (http://www.equiterre.org/sites/fichiers/divers/annual_report_2013_en.pdf).

John Poveda
Quebec
Canada
E-mail: jpovedam (at) gmail.com
Website: www.viacolibri.com
Tel (1) 514 553 8516

Reference:

Heywood, V. H. (2013). Overview of agricultural biodiversity and its contribution to nutrition and health. In D. Hunter, T. Borelli, F. Mattei, & J. Fanzo (Eds.), Diversifying Food and Diets Using Agricultural Biodiversity to Improve Nutrition and Health. (pp. 384): Earthscan from Routledge. http://www.bioversityinternational.org/uploads/tx_news/Diversifying_food_and_diets_1688_02.pdf (7.4 MB).

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