Agroecology is a word with multiple definitions. Some define it as a narrow set of technologies to make farming more sustainable, while in a broader sense it is multifaceted and seen as: (a) critical thought —offering critical analysis of agrifood systems, both dominant and alternative—; (b) an inter- and trans-disciplinary science, both a ‘Western science’ and a ‘peasant science’, concerning how agoecosystems and food systems function, which provides the understanding needed to development transformative alternatives; (c) a variety of agricultural practices that allow sustainable farming without farm chemicals; and (d) a social movement that fights for social and environmental justice in the food system. Agroecology is currently being contested by different food system actors and is at risk of co-optation by various institutions and players, who attempt to redefine it within the confines of industrial food production, thereby diluting its transformative potential. Despite such attempts at appropriation, peasant agroecology, in particular, has a fundamental role as an alternative to the industrial food system, underlying the construction of local, sustainable food systems rooted in peasant agriculture and the principles of agroecology. In Africa and Latin America, for example, agroecology is an historical practice deeply embedded in indigenous and peasant knowledge systems, that today is critical to sustainable food production while offering challenges to dominant paradigms of agricultural development. There are intricate relationships among peasants, agroecology, and the broader struggle for food sovereignty, and social movements play a pivotal role of in advocating agroecological practices and resisting corporate control over food systems, agriculture, land, and territory.
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Peasant Agroecology in Africa and Latin America
Boaventura Monjane and Peter M. Rosset
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Indigenous Foodways among Native Americans
Christina Gish Hill
Native peoples of North America have developed foodways over centuries of living in relationships with particular landscapes. These foods have emerged from detailed knowledge of the landscape gained through careful observation over the generations. This knowledge includes maintaining a sustainable relationship with the environment to ensure consistent food sources in some unforgiving landscapes. The advent of contact with European settlers in North America and the eventual insertion of Native peoples into a global capitalist economy dramatically affected Indigenous people’s relationship with the environment, impacting access to food using precontact mechanisms. Colonization of Indigenous peoples throughout North America altered their access to healthy, culturally appropriate foods in many ways, leading to severely degraded health in Native communities. Beginning in the early 21st century, Indigenous people throughout North America began to reclaim and rejuvenate precontact foodways in a quest to repair physical and emotional well-being, connect more deeply with ceremony, reanimate local economies, heal damaged environments, and ultimately work toward food sovereignty.
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The Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST) and the Struggle for Agrarian Reform in Brazil
Wilder Robles
The Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, or Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST) is presently one of the largest, best organized, and most influential social movements in Latin America. The MST is one of the key founders of the Via Campesina, or Peasant Way, a global peasant movement dedicated to the struggle for agrarian reform. The MST is well known for linking both political and economic activism to contest authoritarian power structures in the Brazilian countryside. Agrarian reform is one of the most important objectives in this process. Since its formation in 1984, the MST has maintained the view that agrarian reform is fundamental to reversing Brazil’s long history of systemic marginalization of peasants and Indigenous people. Colonialism left a sad historical legacy of extreme concentration of land in the hands of a privileged few, and this situation has not changed. Brazil’s agrarian structure is controlled by a small minority that continue to promote a large-scale export-oriented agricultural economy. Currently, Brazil is the fourth largest agricultural economy in the world, exporting a high volume of diverse agricultural products such as soybean, beef, sugarcane, citrus fruit, and poultry to global markets. Yet, the intensive expansion of this export-oriented agricultural economy has caused immense human suffering and environmental destruction. These challenges have prompted the MST to propose a new vision of agrarian reform that integrates political and economic activism. Without comprehensive agrarian reform, Brazil will continue to be an inequitable society.
