Indigenous Food System in Meghalaya

Indigenous Food System in Meghalaya

Subject – Environment

Context – An indigenous community in Meghalaya offers lessons in climate resilience

Concept –

• The UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) report on Indigenous People’s Food Systems co-published by FAO and the Alliance of Bioversity International, and CIAT includes the profiles of eight Indigenous Peoples food systems from around the world, including Uttarakhand and Meghalaya in India.
• In Nongtraw (Meghalaya), a village solely inhabited by the Khasi, diverse traditional food systems supported by jhum (shifting cultivation), home gardens, forest and water bodies, shying away from synthetic chemicals in food production.
• It is based on community-led landscape management practices, regulated by local governance.
• Nongtraw lies along the mid-slope of a deep gorge in the Cherrapunji region, a highly dissected plateau along the southern margins of the Meghalaya Plateau.
• Factors such as the emergence of cash crop production (broom grass), the impact of India’s public distribution system on the local subsistence system and over-reliance on market-based products are weakening the food system’s resilience.
  • Much like the Khasis in Nongtraw, the Sauria Paharias of Jharkhand, a particularly vulnerable tribal group (PVTG), who practice Kurwa farming (a form of shifting agriculture in forests, along with farming in agricultural lands) have switched to growing rice in place of drought-resistant millets due to agricultural interventions which mainly focused on yields.
• Research priorities on indigenous food systems should include systematic documentation of a wide variety of indigenous foods known to the indigenous communities, their contribution to food security and dietary diversity.