Making the Case for Food Security through Contextual Engineering

Abstract

Ann-Perry Witmer

A non-westernized nation’s food security often depends on preservation of rural agricultural livelihoods, yet a globalizationdriven international effort to “develop” societies by providing modern infrastructure has focused on population centers, creating two-tiered economies that frequently leave rural populations behind. As a result, young residents of rural communities are migrating with greater frequency to urban areas, viewing their home society as outdated and irrelevant. To address this disparity, organizations and volunteer groups attempt to deliver infrastructure interventions to small rural communities, often drawing upon their own experience or out-of-the-box designs to provide water, sanitation, transportation, or energy. The success rate of these interventions in meeting societal needs are marginal at best, often disregarding indigenous practices and beliefs and further demeaning rural lifestyles. A new approach is needed to stabilize rural communities and sustain agricultural livelihoods throughout the alternately developed world through quality-of-life improvements via engineered infrastructure. Contextual engineering merges technical design with sociological understanding to identify the critical influences that govern each client community, dispensing with the artifice of scalability to address specific physical needs. By focusing on client society beliefs, values, and needs, the infrastructure designer may better create an affordable, functional, and appropriate infrastructure to support and advance that rural society. This paper will present the contextual engineering concept’s potential to support rural growth for stronger agricultural productivity and national food security.

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