Despite the islands of Micronesia being home to a variety of nutrient-rich fruits and vegetables, local foods and crops have widely been displaced over the last three decades. As a result of islandersí growing dependence on imports such as rice and sugar, and the erosion of knowledge about local plants and their nutritional value, Micronesia faces a growing public health crisis exhibited by alarming rates of vitamin A deficiency, diabetes, and anemia. A growing reliance on global food imports is also endangering local livelihoods, ecosystems, and cultural relationships to food, decreasing the overall food security and self-sufficiency of the islands.
The Island Food Community of Pohnpei (IFCP) is a Greengrants grantee based in Micronesia that is addressing both the local and global causes of the current food and nutrition crisis. Through its awareness campaigns and workshops, IFCP is helping residents to reclaim and preserve knowledge of local traditional foods, building a grassroots effort to restore food production and consumption patterns back to their more sustainable and nutritious roots.
The adoption of rice, sugar, and other processed and refined foods as part of islanders’ everyday diets stems from U.S. colonization of the islands. During the 1960s and 1970s, the U.S. had a surplus of grain crops that it exported to Micronesia, creating new markets and tastes for food staples that offered little nutritional value. School-age children were among the first to become hooked on a rice- and flour-based diet, as the U.S. introduced these staples into school lunch programs in Micronesia. The islands’ previous major food crops, including banana, breadfruit, giant swamp taro, and pandanus (a local fruit), became gradually displaced by a new rice-based diet that left many islanders with a vitamin A deficiency and a vulnerability to other health problems ranging from diabetes and anemia to a decreased ability to stave off parasites.
Lucille Overhoff, an Advisor from our Pacific Islands Board, describes how rice-based diets gradually became more desirable to many islanders than the preparation of local foods. She states, “Rice became a very convenient food on the islands, while traditional foods coming from the ground were seen as time-consuming and inconvenient to prepare.” While older generations remember harvesting and eating local produce in the past, Micronesia’s youth, brought up on processed foods and a rice-based diet, have little awareness of the local plants and crops that older generations lived off for hundreds of years.
In fact, rice has often been the sole food fed to toddlers and young children, with many islanders maintaining the erroneous belief – in part established during U.S. colonization – that food imports from the West provide superior nutritional value to locally-derived food staples. Unfortunately, the loss of knowledge about traditional plants and food production has led many of the islands’ youngest population to have a new set of health problems rarely seen before, including a widespread vitamin A deficiency that could easily be prevented simply by eating local varieties of bananas.
Dependence on global food imports has also eroded the previous food self-sufficiency and security that characterized the islands before colonial times. A dependence on rice and other imports such as flour and sugar has displaced land-based livelihoods, destabilizing local food economies and self-sufficiency on islands such as Pohnpei. Specifically, the growing demand for “quick cooking rice” has prevented local growers and sellers from earning livable livelihoods by harvesting taro, breadfruit, and yams, which are often more time-consuming to prepare.
As livelihoods based on food crops have become less viable, cultural knowledge about the value and nutritional benefits of native produce has also decreased. Cumulatively, the loss of environmental knowledge and livelihoods devoted to preserving and harvesting local foods has made the islands increasingly vulnerable to disease and the instability of world food markets.
IFCP is working to address both the health and socio-economic impacts of dietary shifts and dependence on food imports. Their educational workshops and outreach projects have focused on preserving and disseminating knowledge about the cultural heritage of local plants, their nutritional benefits, and the risks of dependence on global food imports to the population. Their programs have been particularly effective at reaching both young and old across Pohnpei. They have launched an extensive food and environmental education program focusing on young children in elementary school. By introducing traditional cuisines back into schools, IFCP is educating youth about how particular foods constitute a critical component of not only self-care and nutrition, but of the island’s unique cultural heritage.
Through collaboration with local farmers and growers, IFCP has also fostered a reintroduction of native plant varietals back into the market. Because IFCP has worked to reinvigorate both markets and livelihoods centered on the production of local foods, and to promote awareness of the health and economic benefits of “going local”, a small-scale food revolution is beginning in Pohnpei that the organization hopes will spread to other islands. Most noticeably, residents’ growing new demand for local foods has propelled restaurants and food markets to begin offering local vegetables and produce on a daily basis. This remarkable shift has increased not only the number of producers and consumers now involved in local food systems, but the food security and sustainability of the island as a whole.
IFCP has also successfully developed a genebank collection that preserves many of Pohnpeiís traditional and locally grown edible plants, including banana, breadfruit, giant swamp taro, common taro (colocasia), and pandanus, ensuring that future generations will continue to benefit from the islandís rich food sources and traditions. This project helps ensure that the biodiversity is protected amidst the forces of globalization and changes in livelihoods, tastes, and desires that have swept the island in recent years.
Small grants, like the one provided by Greengrants, help to provide pivotal funding for IFCP to achieve its goal of “regaining the dignity of relying on home food production, attaining a greater degree of food security for the state, rescuing cultural values, and improving the health of the people.”