Challenges in achieving food sovereignty: Puerto Rico’s path to sustainability

In Puerto Rico, the intersection of food sovereignty challenges, landfill crisis, and corruption underscores the urgency for education on sustainable practices. Achieving food sovereignty proves challenging in Puerto Rico. According to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), over 85% of the food products consumed on the island are imported, placing local farmers, or “jíbaros,” at a disadvantage.

Oscar Meléndez Colón, Chief Business Development Officer of Trito Agro-Industrial Services, Inc. (TAIS), a Puerto Rican organic recycling company, emphasizes the need to address the island’s flawed garbage disposal system to achieve food sovereignty.

“The problem with organics is that when they end up in landfills, they rot and create methane,” Colón explained, which is more than 28 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere. “For about seven years, we’ve been recycling food scraps and composting them commercially.”