Bringing agroecology to scale: key drivers and emblematic cases

Agroecology, as defined by Meek , is an agricultural approach that commonly synthesizes indigenous and peasant traditional knowledge with scientific knowledge and research. Hence, agroecology resides at the intersection of the "traditional" and the "scientific", and as a result, attracts a set conflicting actors, including Green Revolution proponents, peasant farmers, landless rural workers and governments. This paper will explore these conflicting cooptations of the practice and rhetoric of agroecology, as well as consider the ability of agroecology to improve the agrifood provisioning system, on a global scale and in a radical manner. The paper will first expose some misconceptions and common oppositions to smallscale peasant agriculture and then proceed to consider the ability of agroforestry to provide a sufficient and efficient food supply. Finally, the paper will bring attention to the cases of Cuba and Brazil to consider the political feasibility of agroecology institutionalization.

Agroecology is in fashion, and now constitutes a territory in dispute between social movements and institutionality. This new conjuncture offers a constellation of opportunities that social movements can avail themselves of to promote changes in the food system. Yet there is an enormous risk that agroecology will be co-opted, institutionalized, colonized and stripped of its political content. In this paper, we analyze this quandary in terms of political ecology: will agroecology end up as merely offering a few more tools for the toolbox of industrial agriculture, to fine tune an agribusiness system that is being restructured in the midst of a civilizational crisis or, alternatively, will it be strengthened as a politically mobilizing option for building alternatives to development? We interpret the contemporary dispute over agroecology through the lenses of contested material and immaterial territories, political ecology, and the first and second contradictions of capital. Popular pressure has caused many multilateral institutions, governments, universities and research centers, some NGOs [non-governmental organizations], corporations and others, to finally recognize 'agroecology'. However, they have tried to redefine it as a narrow set of technologies, to offer some tools that appear to ease the sustainability crisis of industrial food production, while the existing structures of power remain unchallenged. This co-optation of agroecology to fine-tune the industrial food system, while paying lip service to the environmental discourse, has various names, including 'climate smart agriculture', 'sustainable-' or 'ecological-intensification', industrial monoculture production of 'organic' food, etc. For us, these are not agroecology: we reject them, and we will fight to expose and block this insidious appropriation of agroecology. The real solutions to the crises of the climate, malnutrition, etc., will not come from conforming to the industrial model. We must transform it and build our own local food systems that create new rural-urban links, based on truly agroecological food production by peasants, artisanal fishers, pastoralists, indigenous peoples, urban farmers, etc. We cannot allow agroecology to be a tool of the industrial food production model: we see it as the essential alternative to that model, and as the means of transforming how we produce and consume food into something better for humanity and our Mother Earth.

Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society, 2021

The Green Revolution exemplifies the capital-intensive modernisation model of resource plunder and labour exploitation. This has provoked small-scale producers and civil society groups to counterpose an agroecology-based solidarity economy (EcoSol-agroecology), especially in Latin America. But their efforts encounter dominant models – of innovation, management, markets, nature, etc. – which limit alternatives. To clarify a transformative agenda, advocates have elaborated agroecological innovation through several complementary practices. Nature is framed as agri-biodiversity complementing socio-cultural diversity. Short food-supply chains (circuitos curtos) build consumer support for production methods enhancing producers’ livelihoods, providing socio-economic equity and conserving natural resources. Through diálogos de saberes, i.e. knowledge exchange among farmers and with external experts, cultivation and water-management methods are designed or adapted as socio-environmental technologies. Capacities are built for collective self-management of those solidarity relationships. In such ways, agroecological innovation co-produces specific forms of nature, technoscientific knowledge and society; their practices construct a distinctive socionatural order. Such order arises through several instruments – making identities, institutions and discourses – as understood by STS co-production theory. Here it illuminates two Brazilian agroforestry initiatives whose cooperative practices seek to transform their own participants’ lives and wider agri-food systems. By combining diverse sources, composite cultures deepen the social basis of territorial belonging.

Agroecology is in fashion, and now constitutes a territory in dispute between social movements and institutionality. This new conjuncture offers a constellation of opportunities that social movements can avail themselves of to promote changes in the food system. Yet there is an enormous risk that agroecology will be co-opted, institutionalized, colonized and stripped of its political content. In this paper, we analyze this quandary in terms of political ecology: will agroecology end up as merely offering a few more tools for the toolbox of industrial agriculture, to fine tune an agribusiness system that is being restructured in the midst of a civilizational crisis or, alternatively, will it be strengthened as a politically mobilizing option for building alternatives to development? We interpret the contemporary dispute over agroecology through the lenses of contested material and immaterial territories, political ecology, and the first and second contradictions of capital. Popular pressure has caused many multilateral institutions, governments, universities and research centers, some NGOs [non-governmental organizations], corporations and others, to finally recognize 'agroecology'. However, they have tried to redefine it as a narrow set of technologies, to offer some tools that appear to ease the sustainability crisis of industrial food production, while the existing structures of power remain unchallenged. This co-optation of agroecology to fine-tune the industrial food system, while paying lip service to the environmental discourse, has various names, including 'climate smart agriculture', 'sustainable-' or 'ecological-intensification', industrial monoculture production of 'organic' food, etc. For us, these are not agroecology: we reject them, and we will fight to expose and block this insidious appropriation of agroecology. The real solutions to the crises of the climate, malnutrition, etc., will not come from conforming to the industrial model. We must transform it and build our own local food systems that create new rural-urban links, based on truly agroecological food production by peasants, artisanal fishers, pastoralists, indigenous peoples, urban farmers, etc. We cannot allow agroecology to be a tool of the industrial food production model: we see it as the essential alternative to that model, and as the means of transforming how we produce and consume food into something better for humanity and our Mother Earth.

Rural social movements have in recent years adopted agroecology and diversified farming systems as part of their discourse and practice. Here, we situate this phenomenon in the evolving context of rural spaces that are increasingly disputed between agribusiness, together with other corporate land-grabbers, and peasants and their organizations and movements. We use the theoretical frameworks of disputed material and immaterial territories and of re-peasantization to explain the increased emphasis on agroecology by movements in this context. We provide examples from the farmer-to-farmer movement to show the advantages that social movements bring to the table in taking agroecology to scale and discuss the growing agroecology networking process in the transnational peasant and family farmer movement La Vía Campesina.

Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, 2019

In this article we use a food sovereignty frame to analyze the role of the State in favoring agroecological scaling, particularly in Cuba and in the Latin American countries that elected leftist governments in the first years of the 21st century and currently face an upsurge of right-wing political forces. As with social movement participation in international governance structures, at the national level social movements face risks when they allow themselves to become absorbed in collaborations with the State in order to build public policy for taking agroecology to scale. By participating in the institutionalization of agroecology, movements become part of the established rules of the game, having to move within limits defined by a system that exists to preserve the interests of the dominant class. On the other hand, by boycotting the arena of governance, agroecological movements allow resurgent political and economic elites to grab land, territories and resources needed for agroecological food systems to ever become a global substitute for industrial agriculture. At the heart of the matter is the political character of agroecology: shall we continue betting on reform, in times of (counter) revolution? KEYWORDS Scaling-up agroecology; political agroecology; the state; social movements; the right CONTACT Omar Felipe Giraldo

Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, 2019

In this article we use a food sovereignty frame to analyze the role of the State in favoring agroecological scaling, particularly in Cuba and in the Latin American countries that elected leftist governments in the first years of the 21st century and currently face an upsurge of right-wing political forces. As with social movement participation in international governance structures, at the national level social movements face risks when they allow themselves to become absorbed in collaborations with the State in order to build public policy for taking agroecology to scale. By participating in the institutionalization of agroecology, movements become part of the established rules of the game, having to move within limits defined by a system that exists to preserve the interests of the dominant class. On the other hand, by boycotting the arena of governance, agroecological movements allow resurgent political and economic elites to grab land, territories and resources needed for agroecological food systems to ever become a global substitute for industrial agriculture. At the heart of the matter is the political character of agroecology: shall we continue betting on reform, in times of (counter) revolution?

Alternautas 4(2), 2017

Local Environment

This study examines how and why socially excluded peasant farmers in the Brazilian Landless Movement (MST) transitioned to ecological agriculture, or agroecology. Utilising the photo-elicitation method, I investigate the Cooperativa Agropecuária Vista Alegre (COOPAVA), one of the first cooperatives of the MST to make this transition, which has become a point of reference for the Movement. I analyse the formation of COOPAVA through the lens of transition theory, their early years and experiments, transition to agroecological practices, and establishment of an alternative form of rural peasant life. Drawing from this analysis, I identify the major socio-technical factors shaping how COOPAVA has constructed an ecological development alternative in the context of the industrialisation and commodification of agriculture in Brazil and globally. And finally, I argue that through engaging the natural world degraded by the dominant agricultural model, the families of COOPAVA have developed agroecology as a political tool with which to construct autonomy, agency and livelihood – transforming themselves, and their relationships with nature, each other and society.

Ecological Economics, 2022

Recent research suggests that there is an urgent need to create transitions to agroecology to address the many ecological, social, and ethical problems caused by the hegemonic Corporate Food Regime. In the Global South, however, there are already numerous and diverse agroecological initiatives driven by peasant communities, indigenous peoples, and grassroots organizations. Although many agroecological innovations developed by such grassroots groups have been identified, they have seldom been analyzed under a specific theoretical framework of innovation (e.g., grassroots innovation). To contribute to this gap, in this paper we review the existing literature on agroecology that is concerned with innovation. Further, we analyze three case studies in Michoacán (Mexico) using two theoretical frameworks: grassroots innovation and transitions to sustainability. The cases illustrate different visions and ways of practicing agroecology, as well as the development of several agroecological innovations. Our study provides empirical evidence about the potential of grassroots groups in the Global South for creating innovations that can be useful in the transition to a more just and sustainable food regime based on agroecology. This evidence has important implications for policy making in agriculture, climate change and biocultural conservation.