Projects - dr. S (Siera) Vercillo

Creative kitchens for amplifying neglected and underutilized foods – A Partnership with the Ghana Food Movement for locally resilient food systems

Partnership Engage Grant, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada

A participatory action research (PAR) project with a local NGO in Ghana called the Ghana Food Movement (GFM) specializing in building resilient local food systems to investigate NUS systems. Our interdisciplinary team of geographers, political scientists, and historians with cross-sectoral and community-based applied research expertise work with practitioners at GFM to develop a demonstration kitchen and innovation hub in Ghana's capital Accra focused on developing the supply chains of neglected and underutilized crop species (NUS). The participants include a sample of GFM members (150+) focused on NUS, using qualitative and semi-structured data collection, including oral histories and monitoring and evaluation of their entrepreneurship projects. Since little information exists about NUS, we work to develop a demonstration, tasting and teaching kitchen; a library of NUS resources, including scholarly and histories, the actual NUS themselves stored for use in the hub, and a seed bank for sharing. This creative kitchen serves as a case study into the institutional impact on NUS supply chains for more locally resilient food systems and to theorize beyond individual, household and national food security measures to more structural, culinary infrastructures that include embodied knowledge.

This research contributes to the emerging literature exploring foodways, environments and culinary infrastructures, which are new concepts arising from food studies that advance the way we understand food and society. Emerging scholarship is showing how the world has a lot to learn from African foodways, the nutritional content of diets, African terroirs, and expert chefs who should be revered for their evolutionary techniques that coped historically with a 250-year-long drought, slave trades , political upheavals, colonial rule and neoliberalism. We contribute to this call by privileging, promoting and preserving some of these foodways, knowledge and efforts, as well as their reimagining towards localization in Ghana. This learning is integral for building resilience to current and future hunger crises by encouraging solving local problems using endogenous solutions in ways that give people more control over their food systems, instead of global corporations.

Explaining the influence of a globalizing local urban food system on food security in Tamale, northern Ghana

Insight Development Grant, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada

There is a disturbing pattern of dietary transitions in the Global South, where people move from diminishing hunger to nutrition-related diseases, which account for an estimated one in five deaths globally. One factor contributing to this pattern is that people consume more processed foods because they are more inexpensive than traditional foods due to the globalization of local food systems. 

This research has four main objectives:
1. To assess different types of people’s desires for imported, processed foods compared to more nutritious traditional foods based on gender, age, class, ethnicity and education in the urban centre of Tamale, northern Ghana.

2. To investigate the different types of consumer participation in the transformation of the local food system from primarily locally-sourced to more globally-industrialized by examining consumer interaction with various local and global food system actors based on their location in Tamale (e.g. first and second stage processors, open air markets, hawkers, street foods, restaurants and supermarkets).

3. To analyze national and municipal food policy transitions that shapes the prevalence of global food actors and foods in Tamale.

4. To demonstrate the potential of participatory research methodologies for informing food policy in ways that promote more socially and spatially equitable systems and healthier foods through a community co-authored cookbook or advocacy tool.

This research adopts a qualitative comparative case study design to analyze policy changes associated with different consumer food preferences and behaviours across three neighbourhoods in Tamale. (poor, wealthy, and further from main markets). Methods include policy analysis, as well as focus groups, interviews (community members, market vendors, policymakers and practitioners), oral histories and food diaries, involving photovoice and participatory GIS. These will assess different types of people’s desires for and reliance on imported processed foods compared to potentially healthier local alternatives broadly applied to food policy.

This research will deepen scholarly understandings of how food policy shapes local urban food systems in ways that deepen nutrition risks and socioeconomic disparities relevant to sociocultural, urban and health geographers. This study also advances theoretical framings of food security by moving beyond access issues to also incorporate food quality and cultural appropriateness that have largely remained absent in scholarship. Findings provide insights into how innovative methods can inquire about food security in ways that are inclusive and justice oriented. Finally, a series of workshops involving community representatives and policymakers will determine how to analyze and present findings, including through a coauthored community advocacy tool.

Connecting and building the capacity of rural to urban food sovereignty organizations in Ghana

Connections Grant, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada

Our multidisciplinary team of geographers, historians, political scientists and urban planners
mobilize research for major food sovereignty organizations in Ghana to organize their efforts and build their capacity to work towards transforming neglected areas of their local food system, further shifting public attitudes, scholarship, and activism towards justice. Through a week-long workshop event in Tamale, Ghana, four major food sovereignty organizations with differing engagements in Ghana’s food system (activism, archiving, outreach and academic) participate in movement-building activities facilitated by other academics and practitioners to coordinate efforts and develop collaborations post- workshop, which include a working group, policy briefs, videos, media articles and ongoing events. Each collaborating organization led a field visit to a different part of the local food system to demonstrate strategies, and connect with and build the capacity of others in Ghana, including a day of advocacy at the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) regional office, extension units, local faculty and students.

After the workshop, four organizations participate in a Working Group with scholars to
further develop outreach activities. This work has developed bachelors level education on food sovereignty. 

Food studies cross the boundaries between scholarship, outreach and activism, serving to help
decolonize knowledge, policy and practice, making it an ideal lens for engaging varied food sovereignty groups. We work to develop reciprocal relationships amongst diverse local organizations and multidisciplinary academics transnationally, strengthening opportunities for future exchange in ways that amplify knowledge from the Global South and beyond the academy.