Tech-Nurtured Indigenous Food Systems

Indigenous tribal community of Jharkhand, India, Sauria Paharias, despite their boundless traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and biodiverse environment with plentiful indigenous resources, have poor development indicators, alongside food and nutrition insecurity, and a high burden of disease. Our solution has revival of sustainable indigenous food systems with low greenhouse gas emission at its core. Technology enabled innovations syncing local traditional practices with modern development strategies will support socially acceptable, economically viable, climate friendly and nutritious food systems while simultaneously addressing social determinants of health like promoting clean fuel and water options and economic empowerment initiatives for overall development.  Thus, multiple contributory factors like gradual loss of TEK, climate change challenged rain-fed agricultural sytem, energy poverty and access to welfare programs will be addressed. The outcomes would form  the foundation of a prototype for engagement with indigenous people globally to  support community development with a sustainable food system as its bulwark. 

We intend to address malnutrition, health, environmental and developmental concerns of a vulnerable indigenous tribal group in Jharkhand, India by rejuvenating their indigenous food systems (IFS). Tribal populations, comprising 8.6% of the total population of India are marginalized, economically and socially deprived communities. Their life expectancy (63.9 years) is lower than the national average; health and nutrition indicators are poor (43% stunting and 27 % wasting in under-5 children; 55.8 % of children are fully immunized; infant mortality rate is 44.1 /1000 live births) and 60% of tribal women have anemia. Globally too, indigenous communities manage about 28% of earth’s land surface, comprise 5% of total population, but make up 15% of the world’s poor and are disproportionately affected by food insecurity and malnutrition. Indigenous people, the earliest inhabitants of a geographical region, share deep-rooted connections with the environment. They largely depend on natural ecosystems for food and livelihoods; their traditional ecological knowledge and indigenous food systems  are their keystone assets. These food and eco-systems for survival and well-being are, however, threatened by factors like geographical isolation, marginalization, pre-agricultural technology, climate change, limited access to irrigation facilities, poor outreach of welfare programs, local agricultural policies and land ownership issues.

The solution centers on using technology for indigenous food system revival through promotion of traditional cereals including millets, indigenous vegetables, fruits, legumes alongwith supportive strategies for improving broader social determinant of health. A diverse production system blending traditional cereals and rice will be promoted instead of currently practiced, market and policy driven rice-based agriculture- a major source of greenhouse gas (GHG) methane. Apart from reducing GHG emissions, our tech-enabled solution will enhance yield, crop security, climate change resilience, marketability, nutrition and health by using 

1) Apps for frontline workers for: a) Agricultural planning: Data-driven learning algorithms using geo-spatial information on climate, soils and land-use for agricultural planning and risk mitigation; b) Indigenous diet planning: for planning and promoting affordable and nutritious diets utilizing indigenous foods.

2) Low cost technology: for improving forest cover, promoting circular food system, clean fuels, safe drinking water, waste disposal and sanitation.    

4) Technologies will be integrated with and leveraged for improving outreach of government welfare programs.  

5) Livelihood generation: Outputs of point 1 and 2 will be linked to government food security and feeding programs for economic empowerment

6) A web portal will be developed (with repository of traditional knowledge,weather forecast, implementation status of solution)

Our solution aims to build a platform to  facilitate the assembly of strategies addressing food insecurity, widespread malnutrition, poor health and development indicators of Sauria Paharia tribes. We have been working in this area, exploring indigenous food environment and its contribution to health and nutritional status of tribal communities since 2012. Sauria Paharias (population: 46222), reside in small dense villages in hilly ranges of districts of Jharkhand. Their vulnerability is ascribed to pre-agricultural levels of technology, stagnant or declining population, low literacy and subsistence level of economy. They depend on agroforestry-based subsistence and livelihoods. Through our engagement with community, grassroots level NGOs and other stakeholders during qualitative inquiries and village surveys, we developed insights into food systems comprising of high nutritive value indigenous foods. However, an incongruity exists between their vast traditional knowledge, availability, access and utilization of indigenous foods for nutritional wellbeing due to multiple challenges related to geo-political, ecological, socio-economic factors and governance. Despite all these odds, Sauria Paharias are a resilient community, with a strong willingness to reclaim their traditional wisdom and practices. A window of opportunity  exists for spearheading sustainable development through strategies that will revive indigenous food system as central to overall development and well-being. 

Solution: Substituting the current rice-predominant agriculture with some traditional cereals would reduce methane emissions while increasing nutritional and environmental benefits, and promote low carbon, diverse, and circular traditional food systems. Solution and target population: To utilize social assets and the traditional ecological knowledge and indigenous food systems of this nutritionally vulnerable tribal community and strengthen them with data science, and innovative technology approaches to create self-sustainable food systems.

The solution would enable them to improve nutritional well-being and health while empowering them to achieve sustainable livelihoods and living standards along with improving their development indicators through adopting sound modern practices

Competitors working in this area have usually used a vertical approach addressing one development indicator at a time. Our community-led solution has cross-sectoral convergence, an iterative development process using implementation research and sustainability at its core. It's innovative approach utilizes culturally valued traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and deep-rooted wisdom. Our team (agriculturists, nutritionists, data scientists, environmental and sustainable development experts, grassroots NGOs, policymakers) envisages a technology supported applications. 

We will integrate diverse datasets (on geo-spatial data on soil,climate and land use and TEK) to create data-driven decision algorithms using a machine learning approach and convert into simple actionable outputs (app) for context-specific agricultural planning. A traditional circular food system will be created by low input and low GHG emission diverse food production including indigenous seed production technology, recycling of biomass unsuitable for human consumption as animal feed and by-products for soil fertility and selling of surplus produce to  feeding program and market for economic returns. Based on outputs of this food system and complex dietary intake data and modeling exercises, another simple application for  planning and promotion of indigenous diets will be developed. These will be  supported by low cost, resource efficient, environment-friendly technology to address social determinants of health by providing clean fuel, water and sanitation for overall health and well-being.  All high level functions on datasets will be translated into simple decision-making tools/app and implemented by frontline workers.Developed technologies will be mainstreamed into and leveraged for improving outreach of current government welfare programs for scalability and sustainability.   

Technology usage has been interwoven throughout our comprehensive multi-component solution for leveraging the traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) of Sauria Paurias.

1) Agricultural planning app : After assessing feasibility and potential of re-introduction of low GHG emitting and low input traditional crops, on the basis geospatial data on climate, soil and land use and TEK, an user friendly app will be created to assist agricultural extension workers in risk assessments, agricultural and nutrition garden planning and behavior change communication. Developed Nutri-garden kit and indigenous seed production technology will be transferred to local community.

2) Nutritious diet planning app:  Using linear programming and data sciences outputs, a simplified decision making app to help nutrition workers in planning and promoting affordable, indigenous and nutritious diets will be developed.

3) Technology to improve living conditions and social determinants of health: Low cost environment friendly technology for clean fuel (from circular food system), clean potable water and waste disposal will be developed .This technology enabled ecosystems will be sustained by tweaking the existing policies and programs frameworks for environment conservation and welfare programs on health and education. 

4) Livelihood generation: Cooperatives and business models will be created to sell surplus produced to the Government feeding programs and market

5) A web portal will be developed which will include a repository of information on traditional agricultural practices, weather forecasts, supportive polices (e.g crop insurance schemes), nutritive values of indigenous foods etc and a dashboard on coverage of the components of the solution, quality of implementation etc.

Precision agriculture, or precision farming, is a farming concept that utilizes geographical information to determine field variability to ensure optimal use of inputs and maximize the output from a farm. Large tracts of land usually have spatial variations of soils types, moisture content, nutrient availability and so on. Therefore, with the use of remote sensing, geographical information systems (GIS) and global positioning systems (GPS) farmers can more precisely determine what inputs to put exactly where and with what quantities. We will use this method to help the subsistence farmers to produce low carbon footprint indigenous crops with co-benefits like low input, better yield and nutritional content.

Nutrition:  Linear programming software have been globally used to develop realistic, affordable, population-specific, food based recommendations based on current dietary patterns and costs of food. “Problem nutrients” in diets are identified and suggestions on combination of locally available foods to meet macro- and micro-nutrients requirements at lowest possible cost (e.g. in Brazil, feasible and low-cost optimal diet formulations were developed for low income households;  in France, UK and New Zealand, nutritious sustainable diets, with reduced diet related greenhouse gas emissions have been developed. We will use similar techniques in data sciences, contextualize it to the information collected from the Sauria Paharia community and develop affordable diets. Additional inputs from our previous findings on barriers and facilitators to access to indigenous crops and foods will be used in developing nutrition sensitive technology enabled solutions  intertwined into supportive policies in agriculture and nutrition. 

Multiple factors impede the Sauria Paharias’ capacity to leverage traditional ecological knowledge of their indigenous food systems for nutritional health and community development and wellbeing. This multi-component solution aims to address barriers to sustainable propagation of traditional foods by engaging in four main technology/app supported activities for improving:

1) agricultural planning and risk mitigation

2) consumption of diverse, nutrient-rich indigenous diets

3) living conditions and social determinants of health

4) Livelihood generation

Improving agricultural planning using an app to increase production of low carbon footprint, indigenous foods: through re-introduction of climate-resilient traditional and indigenous crops into agricultural systems, nutrition gardens and improved extension services. The outputs will be increased knowledge on farming practices and adaptation to climate variability. Short term outcomes will be diverse, high-yield and nutrient-rich production systems. Long term outcomes will be sustainable production systems with low carbon footprint addressing SDG 3,12,13.

Improving diets: using an app, nutrition workers to provide counselling and behavior change communication for planning and promoting affordable nutritious diets based on local indigenous foods. The outputs will be increased knowledge and awareness on adopting economically prudent nutritious diets. Short term outcomes will include improved dietary intakes and nutritional status. Long term outcomes will be reduced burden of malnutrition, improved cognitive development and breaking the intergenerational cycle of malnutrition addressing SDG 2,3, 10, 12.

 Improving living conditions and addressing social determinants of health:  through promotion of clean cooking fuel from circular food systems, clean water initiatives and tweaking local policies for better agricultural planning, risk mitigation and access to welfare programs.  The outputs will be increased adoption of and access to clean resources, sanitation, outreach and welfare programs. Short term outcomes will be reduced indoor air pollution, better awareness and access to welfare programs. Long term outcomes include improved respiratory health, reduced greenhouse gas emissions and overall community wellbeing addressing SDG, 4,5,6,7

 Livelihood generation utilizing surplus produce: through creating cooperatives, connecting the farmers to supplementary feeding programs and markets to sell indigenous crops and produce. The output will be better purchasing power and outcomes will be self-sufficiency and social wellbeing  addressing SDG 1, 8, 10

Currently we are in the developmental phase of the solution, so effectively we are not providing the solution to the community in the first year except for piloting our solution for fine tuning its components 

In the second year we aim to cover 50  villages in one block inhabited by Sauria Paharias in Godda district of Jharkhand. 

We would then scale it up to all the blocks of all the 6 districts of Jharkhand thereby covering the entire population of Sauria Paharias in the region.  The solution intends to serve around 46,222 Sauria Paharias in the state of Jharkhand in India.

Our immediate goal for the next year is to test out the path to the Solution i.e. the development of an application platform to include strategies to intervene in “for indigenous food based agricultural with low carbon footprints and nutritional revival, enabling living conditions through provision of clean fuel, clean water, strengthening pre-existing health and educational programs and livelihood support created within the technology enabled indigenous food system “in all villages inhabited by Saruia Paharia communities in the districts of Jharkhand.

The long-term goal would be to use these interventions to build a self-reliant, healthy, eco-literate Sauria community that has found a foothold in modern society without having lost its traditional indigenous moorings.  This goal envisages a community having a robust and sustainable nutrition security built upon its indigenous food systems, that extends its benefits into sustaining livelihoods along with providing nourishment through cooperatives and leveraging small scale enterprises created for nurturing and preserving these food systems by building capacity of the community for creating its own seed bank, nutri-garden kits.  The nutrition foundation is further sought to be bolstered by addressing the multi-dimensional determinants of nutritional well-being  through nutrition sensitive low cost,resource efficient technology for clean fuel and water, waste disposal and improved access to education and health services.  

1. Cultural : a) Acceptance of the Solutions by the Sauria Paharia community  b) Integrating/Syncing technology, data sciences and evidence based strategies with traditional ecological knowledge about agriculture, food intake pattern, fuel usage, health care seeking behavior and livelihood choices.
2. Technical and Financial: a) Standardizing the technology and creating simple user friendly apps.  b) Scaling up of cost technology for clean fuel and sustaining it within the circular food system. c) Transferring the indigenous seeds production technology to the community and sustaining it d) managing the portal with real time data entry e) adapting all the technological inputs and operationalizing them within the limitations of a resource poor, remote, hard to reach hilly terrain of Jharkhand with minimal environmental impact f) working on multiple components of thee intervention simultaneously as a complex intervention while keeping each component fixed in form but flexible in function g)Training a team of grassroots functionaires in using a digital platform in consultation with the field NGOs and Government departments and evolving a public private partnership (PPP) model.
3. Market: Testing the viability of the business model of creating villagers cooperatives for selling of surplus produce to Govt programs and the open market
4. Legal and political: Working within the boundaries of the existing policy framework and keeping the policy makers informed and in agreement at every stage of intervention planning, development and implementation.Integrating the solution into the existing system and tweaking the supportive policies at local level for overall well-being of the commnutiy. 

Cultural barrier will be overcome by relying on the rapport built by the research team and the local NGO while working with the community for the past several years. The TEK of the community, their resilience to work in difficult situations, their aspirations and perceptions about development have been well researched by the core team. The grassroots levels government functionaries working in the community will be invited to be a critical member of the intervention team. Several dialogues with the community representatives will be facilitated for refining the intervention and the researched and the researcher will team up to develop this community led solution packages.

Technical and financial barriers: The subject matter experts in the team would identify technologies that are best suited to the context. The environmental health and sustainable development experts will scrutinize the packages suggested using their “environmental impact and sustainability lens” before finalizing of the different packages. The prototypes of already developed technologies and software will be used and refined for the present solution to reduce the financial implications

Market: Previously developed business models of village level cooperatives will be utilized and crop protection and insurance schemes will be optimally utilized.

Legal and political: The policy makers will be a part of the core research team and each component of the solution will be first negotiated within the team before being incorporated into the solution package 

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• The team will comprise of a technical advisory committee (will include the members of the core research team and the external experts)
• For the phase 1, ie development phase, we would have software developers and research associates, and a team of field workers supervised by the core team.
• For phase 2, ie during the roll out, 1 block level coordinator, and 10 village coordinators per block, 1 part-time village level mobilizer along with Govt appointed agriculture extension and community nutrition workers will constitute the intervention team.
• A surveillance team will comprise of surveillance manager, supervisor and data collectors

Our mentor and collaborator Prof Ruth Defries from Columbia University, an expert in ecology and sustainable development, has decades of experience in the field and specializes in the use of remote sensing and field surveys to examine how the world’s demands for food and other resources are changing land use.

For the past 8 years, the nutrition and food systems research team (primary applicant and Dr Archna Singh from AIIMS-Delhi) has been exploring food environments of tribal communities of Jharkhand and developing solutions

Dr Shauna Downs, Rutgers University, USA has been working in food systems research, using mixed-methods to examine the development, impact and implementation of interventions aimed at improving access to nutritious foods produced in a sustainable way for 10 years.

Dr Sangeetha, Vellachamy, agriculture scientist, IARI has been experimenting with Agri-Nutri(A2N) Smart village model and Community Agri-Nutri Security Centres (CANSCs) in villages for past 6 years.

Dr Kyle Davis, University of Delaware, USA has worked on issues related to sustainability in Indian agriculture for the past 4 year and he has expertise in sustainable food systems and environmental footprint accounting.

Dr. Narasimha D. Rao, faculty, Yale School of environment examines the relationship between energy systems, human development and climate change.

Dr Upasona Ghosh, social anthropologist and faculty, PHFI  focuses on socially determined pathways of impacts of climate change on community health and health care delivery system.

Dr Tavpritesh Sethi, physician-scientist and faculty, IIIT, India, focuses on development and deployment of machine-learning based solutions to enable decisions and policy.

The principal applicant has partnered with researchers from John Hopkins University, Rutgers University and MRC Nutrition and Bone Health Research Group, University of Cambridge  for the initial project on assessing food environment of tribal communities of Jharkhand,India.

She has also partnered with D-Labs at MIT to develop mobile health tools for assessment of nutritional status of infants and under 5 years old children.

She has worked on similar proposals with a researcher at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI). The institute has been working to address the numerous challenges facing food and nutritional security in India. It has been making tremendous contributions in addressing nutrition security through the development of high yielding crop varieties as well as products which are rich in nutrients.

While improving human capital is the key outcome of this model, we would also strive to add elements that could support self-reliance and augment economic activity within the community through activities linked to maintenance of indigenous food resources.

Through better agriculture, nourishment, clean environment, better education, healthcare and economic empowerment for self-sustainability, we aim to develop a thriving Sauria Paharia community. Our main deliverable or product from this solution are apps and low cost technology that would facilitate agricultural planning and risk mitigation, nutritious diet planning, clean fuel and water and better outreach of welfare programs and livelihood generation. The apps if mainstreamed into the ongoing programs are likely to sustain for long. The low cost technologies also have the potential to be adopted by the community for long-term implementation such as producing nutrition garden kits, transfer of technology for seed production and maintenance of seed banks, creation of cooperatives and better marketability of the indigenous produce. The good practices can further be utilized for setting up of microfinance initiatives through pooling of resources earned through surplus indigenous produce and utilizing the same for sustainability of the complete package of proposed solution.     

Since our solution draws heavily from data sciences and low cost environment friendly technology we would like to seek expertise of the Solve community and its network of scientists. We appreciate the intent of this grant which aims to create a marketplace for social impact innovations. Its core value of human centered solution and inclusive technology mirrors our vision of making technology available at the door step of low resource traditional communities while conserving their cultural values and ecosystem intact and in fact, promoting them. Technology is at the core of our intervention with investments on improving human capital and developing sustainable solutions for generations to come. We seek support from Solve to connect us to experts who work in technology supported sustainable development and funding opportunities which look for outcomes that may not show immediate profits but will build empowered communities who do not exploit the environment they live in for material goods but live in harmony with it. 

We would seek mentorship from experts who can help our team in developing a successful business models. This should be contextualized to a resource poor community challenged with geographical isolation, poor access to welfare programs and may face challenges in establishing and sustaining technological empowerment due to logistic constraints.  

The solution will be an outcome of partnership between scientists and researchers from  Indian Institute of Public Health-Delhi, Public health Foundation of India, (expertise in nutrition and food systems) Indian Institute of Public Health-Bhubaneshwar, PHFI (expertise in climate data), All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi (expertise in nutrition and food systems), Indian Council of Agricultural Research (expertise in agriculture, seed production technology)  Department of Urban-Global Public Health, School of Public Health, Rutgers University (expertise in food systems and policy) Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology, Columbia University (mentor and expertise in sustainable development and environmental sciences, geo-spatial data) Department of Geography and Spatial sciences, University of Delaware (Expertise in data Sciences, environmental sciences, climate change) Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies (expertise in environmental impact assessment and technology to address energy poverty), Indraprastha Institute of Information technology (Expertise in data sciences, AI and Machine learning) .We will seek support from the community members, local NGOs and policy makers  

The solution has a strong gender equality component. Women participate very activity in the agricultural system of this community. Moreover, nutritious diets promoted at the household level as well as through supplementary feeding is likely to have impact on nutritional status of women and children, who currently are the most nutritionally vulnerable section of this community. A diverse food system is likely to address widespread micronutrient deficiency among women. Since we also aim to address the issue of unclean fuel and indoor air pollution which has a direct impact on respiratory health of women and strengthening education system, we feel our solution is cross cutting in nature and addresses multiple issues related to health, well being and overall development of women. 

The apps development as part of our solution will use data sciences, AI and machine learning to support agricultural planning and risk mitigation using geo-spatial data on climate, soil and land use pattern supported by traditional ecological knowledge. The outcome will be a low carbon footprint diverse production system that is economically viable and provide nutritious diets. The diet planning app will also use data sciences and AI to prepare nutritious diets using local indigenous foods. Hence our solution qualifies for this award.