Implications of native flora as a sustainable food resource: a case study within a traditional agricultural system in southeast Mexico

In the face of the global food crisis, scientists are increasingly concerned about the management of natural resources. Currently, the study of socio-ecological systems represents a novel and holistic approach to sustainability science, and hence, native flora (NF) has been little studied as a food resource within traditional agricultural knowledge. In this article, through a multidisciplinary case study, we have determined the implications for the NF management within traditional agriculture. The traditional agricultural knowledge system is complex and fragile in the face of the acceleration of anthropogenic impacts on traditional food production systems. In this context, we included a novel transdisciplinary case study within the traditional agricultural system in two southeastern Mexican cities. Our research objective was to determine the implications of NF as a sustainable food resource by characterizing traditional knowledge. Consequently, we proposed to demonstrate that there is a regional-scale socio-ecological management system for NF into traditional agriculture. Our findings showed that there is a complex socio-demographic relation between management actors. In relation to NF food use, 41 traditional foods were documented based on consumption patterns and then classified into 12 food groups. Furthermore, farmers perceive the effects of climate change as the main threat to their management of NF through their traditional knowledge. Therefore, there is a narrow system of ethnobiological knowledge at a regional scale which has allowed the existence of biological resources such as traditional foods. As an epistemological contribution, we included a multidisciplinary scheme for the management of traditional food knowledge. Our findings may provide the foundational evidence for future research on NF as a sustainable food resource.