Spotlight on the FATE project in Bolivia
“COVID-19 has shown the need to maintain sustainable crop production”
In Bolivia, the Feminization, Agricultural Transition and Rural Employment (FATE) research project has been examining the impacts of the quinoa boom on producers and the environment. Project coordinator Elizabeth Jiménez Zamora explains the study, its approach, and how COVID-19 has affected the research and the farmers.
Eva Ming: You coordinate the FATE project, which is the Feminization, Agricultural Transition and Rural Employment project. Can you briefly describe what this research project is about?
Elizabeth Jiménez Zamora: In Bolivia, the FATE project is studying the impact of the quinoa boom, meaning what has happened to producers in the southern Highlands, the main quinoa producers in Bolivia; what has happened with labour; what has happened with the use of land and the impacts on the environment and on ecosystems; and obviously the impacts in general on livelihoods.
An important part of our research had to do with collecting data. We realized that particularly in Bolivia, there is very little data on the rural sector. So what we did, as part of this research, was to construct a panel data set regarding livelihood strategies, production, use of land, commercialization of quinoa, and so on. But we also complement this information with qualitative information.
Eva Ming: As in many other parts of the world, the COVID-19 virus has heavily impacted Bolivia as well. So how did the pandemic affect your research activities, and how do you experience the situation in your study region?
Elizabeth Jiménez Zamora: We had a major lockdown last year, and we had to cancel fieldwork activities, like going to the countryside. The site where quinoa producers are located is a bit far from the city of La Paz where our University is, so we had to travel, and that was very restricted last year. But we used the opportunity to do a survey over the phone because obviously COVID-19 was an unexpected issue, but at the same time it gave us the opportunity to see how they were dealing with risk and uncertainty – such a shock.
Eva Ming: Do you already have first findings of how the shock of COVID-19 affected the quinoa farmers?
Elizabeth Jiménez Zamora: Yes, you see, to start with, one very unexpected issue was that producers and farmers started to return to the countryside, to their communities, because in certain times of crisis, going back to the community was the most effective way to deal with it.
The other thing is that quinoa producers, as with many other farmers in Bolivia, diversified their income sources. So they are not only producing quinoa, but they also work in other opportunities. So certainly COVID-19 has impacted on their livelihoods, on their income levels, restraining their opportunities to commercialize as well, but also to diversify their income.
But also I think, not only for them, but for Bolivian society too, COVID-19 has also raised the issue of health – the need for a healthy diet, and the need to maintain the production of crops such as quinoa in a sustainable way, so I think this is a positive aspect of this shock.
About the researchers
Dr. Elizabeth Jiménez Zamora is a professor and researcher at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés, Bolivia, with a research focus on economic transformation, labour migration, and climate change. She is co-applicant of the FATE project and leads the research activities in Bolivia.
Eva Ming focused on the FATE project in her Master’s thesis, researching the collective organization of women farmers in Nepal. In 2019 she joined FATE as operative project coordinator in Switzerland.
The FATE project
The Feminization, Agricultural Transition and Rural Employment (FATE) project is part of the Swiss Programme for Research on Global Issues for Development (r4d programme) that is co-financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC).
The FATE project seeks to understand how rural households adapt to increased commercialization and export orientation in agriculture. Working in four different countries – Bolivia, Lao PDR, Nepal, and Rwanda – the project assesses the conditions under which the shift from self-sufficiency towards wage reliance enhances the capabilities of household members and their well-being, or, conversely, adds pressure on farming families as they opt out of subsistence and are pushed towards capital investment.
The project is hosted at the Centre for Development and Environment (CDE) and the Interdisciplinary Centre for Gender Studies (ICFG), University of Bern. It began in 2014 and will end in August 2021.
