Coordinators: Katia Rejón Márquez, Nicole Martin & Zoila Antonio Benito
Women and LGBTIQ+ people fighting for food and land defense in Latin America with a sovereign and agroecological conscience inspired us to conduct this collaborative research. We were nine media located in five Latin American countries, Argentina, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela, and a total of forty-six people working collaboratively and horizontally.
The objective of the research is to unite the stories of our continent organized in three approaches: production, distribution and consumption. To achieve this, we collaboratively conducted a situated and inclusive coverage of multiple perspectives. In order to make the processes transparent, a podcast was produced on how we did the research.
The work spanned seven months, from February through August 2022. The first month was spent organizing meetings and communication channels, as well as teams responsible for each product. We had an initial training for the whole team on the topic of Food Sovereignty, given by the organization Cultiva Alternativa, a self-consumption project of a Mayan community in Yucatan.
After that, the editorial coordination made a proposal of approaches for the products that was agreed upon by the whole team. The second month and a half was for reporting, then the fact-checking and editing of the articles, fourth and fifth month of audiovisual production and illustrations, followed by the elaboration of the aesthetic identity and the design of the website. Dissemination began one month before the launch, which took place in the seventh month, together with a press conference for the presentation.
This research is possible thanks to the generous participation of producers, cooperatives and families who shared their experience in self-managed and community food. Their knowledge of land, cultivation, distribution and food was fundamental to understanding how, from the beginning, food is a collective creation.
We also thank the International Women’s Media Foundation and each of the journalists who put together this multimedia research, and those who read this research. We hope it will be useful in contributing to the necessary reflections and actions regarding fair, responsible and healthy food consumption in Latin America.