The Three Sisters Project

The ‘Three Sisters’ is an agricultural system in which corn, squash and beans are grown together. This type of system is very old and continues to be used in some communities and family gardens. From 2015 to 2018, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, which is a Department of the Federal Government, in collaboration with the Agricultural Society for Indigenous Food Products, implemented the Three Sisters project. Its main purpose was to study characteristics of varieties of corn, squash and beans and the products derived from them in order to develop added value for indigenous stakeholders, while also studying health benefits. Research activities included studies of traditional knowledge, e.g. on ancestral lineages of the Three Sister crops and their respective seed keepers, combined with studies relating to production, processing and use. Existing instruments identified in Canada were used in the project to select good practices. The project looked for principles, rules and mechanisms that enable Indigenous people to control the circulation of their resources and knowledge at each step of the research project (access, utilization and valorization), and also resulted in new knowledge on health and nutritional benefits and possible ways to protect and preserve genetic material of ancestral crop genetic resources.