Supporting Local Supply Chains in the Global South
We are happy to share our interview with Sofia Rubio Chavez giving you an overview of her great work as a conservationist in Peru.
Sofia is a biologist and with her company shiwi, founded 10 years ago, she aims to protect the Amazon forests.
Just like the Amazon basin is not stopping at country borders, also food systems go beyond borders and are interconnected with each other, says Sofia.
“Territory is not just land, it [includes] people, forests, knowledge, tradition.”
Forests are covering 31% of our global land area and are representing 4.06 billion hectares (FAO). But deforestation is happening at an alarming rate, with 10 million hectares per year being lost between 2015 and 2020 (FAO). By comparison, the world’s primary forests have already declined by 80 million hectares since 1990 (FAO).
Peru, with 72 million hectares, accounts for 1.8% of the world’s forest cover, this puts Peru among the ten countries with the most forest cover (FAO). But in this area, deforestation is also progressing rapidly. In the period from 2001 to 2020, 3.39 million hectares of forest were lost, i.e. 4.3%, of which 2.16 million hectares are humid primary forest (globalforestwatch).
Agriculture, especially monocultures like maize, soybean, and palm oil, is the main driver of deforestation and the loss of biodiversity, making up 70%.
Sofia describes that for people who are living in and around the Amazon region, food is not only what grows on the land, it’s also what grows in the forest and on the trees. Moreover, food has not just one single purpose; it acts as a medicine, to nourish you, to give pleasure, and to connect with nature. Sofia describes that we are losing this connection and integration between the food chain, nature and people. Furthermore, for her, using the term “resources” for food sources is shifting the relationship further away towards exploitative activities, disconnection with nature, and framing it into commodities to operate in a commercial market understanding.
Sofia is aiming for a shift of understanding terms like market, resources, and transform them into tools that can help to conserve ecosystems and value the people behind products.
With shiwi, she wants to promote this transformation. To do so, they create products from the amazon nut.
How does it work?
The idea of shiwi is to give consumers the opportunity to participate in the conservation efforts by making conscious choices about their consumption through the purchase of food at the end of the supply chain.
For Sofia, it is key to give consumers knowledge and awareness about their food, where it’s coming from, and which people are standing behind it. From a classic supply chain concept to an integrated value chain.
Shiwi is selling products such as honey, oils, and butter made out of amazon nuts to connect people with the flavor of the forest. These nuts are being harvested in different national parks in Peru from people who are living in or around these national parks and work already there as guards and conservationists. With this, Sofia aims to connect people with the forest again, and in the end, she is not selling just a product, consumers have the chance to help preserve an ecosystem with their purchases and food choices. It’s not just about how much money you pay for it, it’s more like what is your money being used for in this value chain.
Besides the important network of communities and their traditional knowledge in the field, another network is crucial to raise more awareness and help in the transformation efforts: the one of chefs. Sofia follows the trend with excitement that more and more high-end cuisines are working and experimenting with more biodiversity and bringing more variety to the plate, such as Virgilio Martinez. That can create more awareness, knowledge, and value for these products and foods.
Market opportunities act as an important tool for these conservation activities, but they need to be monitored carefully, with factors like regenerative harvesting methods, seasonality, policies and laws, and more.
We can observe the exploitation of nature, ecosystems, and people in so many countries for “noble” products, such as coffee and cacao. That is why the shift from the supply chain towards the value chain is so important, and the concentration of consumer behavior to make conscious food choices.
We thank Sofia for the insights into her work and her efforts to preserve nature! If you live in Peru, you have the chance to adopt a beehive to support local beekeepers and receive your monthly shiwi honey!
If you want to learn more and gain more insight please watch the full interview here:
What is Holy Tisch?
Holy Tisch is a platform for innovators, change agents and all those working towards a better food system. As this can only work with united forces, Holy Tisch connects people from all parts of the ecosystem: producers, start-ups, investors, trade, brands, chefs, gastronomes, NGOs and the media.
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