TIE Affiliation

Environmental Research Fellowship

Research

I am particularly excited to be going back to Guatemala for this research project.  It is home to 23 Mayan groups with farming cultures that date back millennia, but currently 80% of the arable land is owned by 5% of the population which pushes many indigenous farmers onto marginal land.  The impacts of these inequities were demonstrated in 2014 when an El Nino drought caused such wide crop failures that the World Food Programme provided emergency aid to 150,000 smallholder farmers in Guatemala while the country enjoyed 5-year record highs in the production of the water intensive export crops banana and sugar cane.  This project seeks to work with stakeholders and civil society organizations from three Guatemalan departments (Quetzaltenango, Retalhuleu, and San Marcos) to develop a series of food system and water use models that will aid in decision making and in the advocacy work of the Pastoral de la Tierra of San Marcos (PT).  The PT is a small branch of the Catholic Dioceses which focuses on resolving agricultural conflicts and promoting more sustainable and just agricultural systems.

Biography

I am a MS/MA candidate splitting my time between the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy and the Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning department.  My general research interests relate to changing diets around the globe and how they are related to sustainable agriculture and resource use equity.  Of particular interest is how demand that is generated in more affluent parts of the world impacts production centers that are located in less affluent parts of the world.  This interest began while working with Guatemalan farmers between 2012 and 2015.  During this time I learned a great deal about how the trends of globalization and free trade impacted small scale farmers very directly.