TRusT™ for ITKIUS Project

The International Traditional Knowledge Institute US (ITKIUS) has a mission to document, protect, share and disseminate Traditional Knowledge while simultaneously paying respect to its origins. Out of this mission, the TRusT™ for ITKIUS Project was envisioned, aligning its goals with the UNESCO 2013, Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage, Article 2; take under consideration the COP21’s concerns regarding the need of the agriculture adaptation to climate change; and take under consideration the indications promoted by the FAO Committee on World Food Security (CFS), presented at the 2015-2016 Recommendation on Connecting Smallholders to Markets – Zero Draft.

Particularly relevant to the ITKI-UNESCO-City of Gastronomy “Food and Water in Arid Lands: Dialogues across Contemporary and Traditional Knowledge” Conference, the TRusT™ for ITKIUS Project addresses two points concerning “Local food systems and markets”:

  1. promoting products with specific quality characteristics, such as products linked to geographical origin, organic, or products resulting from agro-ecological approaches which help local populations to preserve traditional food systems and diets;
  2. encouraging transparent pricing of agricultural products and developing and disseminating tools that give smallholders access to timely and affordable market information to enable them to make informed decisions on what, when and where to sell;

The Project additionally addresses two more points regarding “Nutrition and smallholders’ access to markets”:

  1. providing information and capacity building to smallholders about food standards, good practices and markets’ requirements to increase food safety and smallholders’ market competitiveness;
  2. facilitating production diversification to increase resilience to climate and price shocks and enable more diverse food consumption, reduction of seasonal food and income fluctuations

To clarify, the TRusT™ for ITKIUS Project consists of an innovative story-telling, tracking and tracing software platform (App and Website) that gathers information connecting producers and consumers. The TRusT™ for ITKIUS platform gives local chefs, farmers and producers a new way to communicate the quality and unique characteristics of their products, leaving a lasting impact long past the end of a meal.

Discover Tucson a UNESCO Creative City and their Traditional Knowledge.


Food
Tucson City of Gastronomy

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