The "Agro-food system for life" project will be financed by SENESCYT's "Emsamble 2016" scholarships.

Quito, viernes 17 marzo 2017
Paola Chávez and Ronnie Lizano during the scholarships ceremony
Paola Chávez and Ronnie Lizano during the scholarships ceremony

 

To connect agricultural producers from Cayambe with those from Pedro Moncayo and explain the rationale of family and country agriculture and respecting food security and sovereignty is the aim of the project titled "Agro-food system for life", which was the winner of the 1st scholarships  of "Ensamble 2016 Senescyt".

The National Secretariat of Higher Education, Science, Technology and Innovation awards scientific research within the category of Food Security and Sovereignty. The award is $50,000 in order to develop the research.  

This project is an initiative from UPS and Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar de Ecuador, the researchers from UPS who participated were: Ronnie Lizano, Renato Sánchez, Narcisa Requelme and Paola Chávez, who are also members of the Environmental Sciences Research Group (GRICAM for its acronym in Spanish, Grupo de Investigación en Ciencias Ambientales (GRICAM)) and the dairy research group (GILEC for its acronym in Spanish). 

The researchers work under the participatory action methodology with agricultural producers and seek to get close to society through university food courts, bio-fairs and appropriation of spaces. 

The study has three components:

Experimental field units; to analyze the life cycle through the water and carbon footprint, and then make a comparison between the agro ecological system and the conventional system.

Traceability of the product; take care of the product and see how safe it is through a chain of custody that will accompany the agricultural process.

Consumer education in urban spaces "and demonstrate with scientific evidence that the agro-industrial system does not guarantee reliability, it has social, environmental and economic problems", said Lizano

Lizano says the aim of the research is to create awareness in the consumer and provide society agroecological products which up to now are not available to everyone. The contribution of the project focuses on topics such as environmental and human health and reappropriation of spaces; it also supports the agricultural process of small producers because they will be guided from the planting process to the harvest, post harvest, distribution and commercialization. 

"We seek to understand the circuit, detect points of fallure in the chain, suggest solutions on how to close that chain and encourage local consumption", said Lizano.