UEA project to study women's food heritage to boost food security and climate resilience

The University of East Anglia (UEA) in the UK is launching a five-year project that uses food heritage among women in the south Atlantic to address issues linked to climate change and food security. The £1.3 million project is funded by a European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant.

Researchers will trace food practices shared by communities in The Gambia and Afro-Colombia, which were separated by the slave trade in the 16th century. They will examine knowledge passed down across generations of women and apply it to present-day food security challenges. Nutritional science and women's knowledge will work side by side to build food security policy from the ground up, an approach that could be applied well beyond the project's two field sites.

The team will produce the first freely available dataset of heritage dishes, combining laboratory nutritional analysis with detailed records of taste, preparation methods and the ecological knowledge behind them.

Knowledge rarely treated as evidence

Project leader Dr Paola Vargas Arana, a researcher at UEA's School of Global Development, says knowledge handed down through generations is rarely treated as evidence when decisions are made on food security and climate resilience. She argues that food heritage is not just a cultural artefact but the infrastructure of food security in vulnerable communities, and that effective food policy must take into account the knowledge these communities already hold.

Building on earlier research

The project builds on Dr Vargas Arana's book, which shows how women from upper Guinea created farming and food practices that helped sustain the colonial mining economy. The book found that 71% of enslaved people brought to Antioquia's gold mines in the 16th century came from the upper Guinea Coast. The marginalised diet of enslaved African women remains the basis of Colombia's staple diet today. Women in both regions still cultivate medicinal and seasoning gardens, prepare rice-based dishes and wrap foods in banana leaves.