Angela Hilmi

Burying Sustainable Development

This chapter revisits the concept of sustainable development and how it came about. It looks at what happened at a turning point in history, in 1974, when the notions of eco-development and co-evolution were proposed. It argues that sustainable development and commercial agriculture both stem from the same roots: sustained growth, which has led us to an impasse. Agroecology is the coming back of eco-development to cover up the mistakes of the last 40 years. This chapter proposes a shift of mindset with the notion of “being within” looking at agroecology as a way to reconnect and rebuild relationships and movement within the farming system and beyond: its reweaving capacity. Rather than linear technical fixes, it suggests to look at the critical nodes of tension in the system: the inflection points, or acupoints, to act upon these and trigger a transition towards greater harmony and well-being.

The Threads of Repair

This chapter proposes 12 steps for an agroecology transition. These have been developed based on the observation of successful transitions worldwide. They are not incremental nor in a particular order and can be used as and when needed as an inspiration to the transformation process. They are about democratic consultation and negotiation, exploration of new practices, the re-organization of resources and the values that are shared by the community, and they leave an open space for communities to themselves design their own futures. They suggest a reweaving of the social fabric, together with the enabling policies that can facilitate more viable farming globally. What is proposed here is not a fit-all scenario, but rather the re-connection of new webs of relationships that can trigger renewed forms of collaboration, which in turn have the power to foster intensive farming systems able to produce nutritious foods and societal welfare.

The Natural Movement of Life

This chapter presents different ways to perceive the world around us and gives the example of a paddy field. It tells the author’s ideas of where agriculture stands today and how an excessive focus on formal knowledge has put aside more subjective forms of understanding what farming is about. It suggests to reorient agricultural research and funding and to focus on reweaving other more invisible threads such as movement, relationship, vibration and connection, of the living and non-living world. This chapter also introduces the different sections of the book, that is, burying sustainable development, showing the wholeness and rationale of peasant farming, finding inflection points that can trigger change from within communities, telling the story of a new financial scheme tested in a pilot in Africa and finally suggesting some steps and policies for a path to autonomy.

Finding the Acupoints

This chapter explores the possibility to develop an investment model dedicated to agroecology and peasant farming, in a way that can benefit local communities. It describes an innovative conceptual approach to financing individual and collective investments, based on royalty on revenue and risk-sharing, with farmers on the driver seat of decision-making. This chapter presents the explorations of a team of international experts who tried to develop collaborative agreements with financial institutions, to test the model and get proof of concept, with a view of creating a world peasant fund for global impact. It tells the story of a pilot project implemented in Africa in 2015, in Mozambique, with a farmer association, Alfredo Namitete, and recounts the way in which the finding of the inner inflection or acupoints, and the reweaving of relationships and connections, has triggered waves of transformations for the association members and their leaders.