CAn Local Agriculture help improve the nutritional quality of food and reduce the environmental impact in GuadeLOUpe?

Understanding how local agricultural production can meet the food and nutritional needs of a territory and participate in the sustainability of the food system is becoming a primordial issue in our societies. In addition to the interest for local economic development, the hypothesis is that a local food supply can contribute to a more positive environmental balance under certain conditions (e.g. logistics optimisation, or more environmentally friendly farming practices).
In Guadeloupe, the agricultural sector is highly specialized in export crops and the local supply of products for the domestic market does not cover the demand (ODEADOM, 2018, Marzin et al., 2021). In parallel, Guadeloupe is facing urgent public health issues with increasing rates of obesity and nutrition-related chronic diseases (NCDs) accompanied by a profound change in the diet structure (Méjean et al, 2020).
The CALALOU project is based on the idea that the food supply is one of the major determinants of dietary behaviors. From there, the objective of the project is to test scenarios and propose solutions to maximize the contribution of local agriculture in Guadeloupean diet and nutrition in a sustainable way.
To do so, we will use a fork-to-farm approach developed by Verger et al. (2018) based on usual food consumption and examine how the improvement of this consumption affects the food system. We will (i) identify the necessary and possible changes to improve the nutritional quality of diet in the general population and food supply in school canteens, from local products; ii) study consumer preferences for these local products and the capacity of stakeholders to coordinate themselves to meet the demand of school canteens; iii) define scenarios of increased demand for local agricultural production and simulate these scenarios to assess the impact of these changes on the organization of production system; iv) quantify the environmental impacts that would result from this increase in local food production, v) organize a meeting with local stakeholders of the food system to build a strategy plan for public policies.
The overall concept of the CALALOU proposal rests on multiscale analysis of the food systems allowing a deep integration of disciplines (economics, nutrition, agronomy, environmental sciences, geography) that will bring valuable knowledge on various components of the Guadeloupe’s local food system.
The outputs from this project will help stakeholders identify the most appropriate strategies to develop local agriculture providing healthy nutrition for the Guadeloupe’s population.