Helda Morales

Integrating agricultural landscapes with biodiversity conservation in the Mesoamerican hotspot.

CELIA A. HARVEY,∗‡‡‡ OLIVER KOMAR,† ROBIN CHAZDON,‡ BRUCE G. FERGUSON,§ BRYAN FINEGAN,∗∗ DANIEL M. GRIFFITH,†† MIGUEL MARTINEZ-RAMOS,‡‡ HELDA MORALES,§ RONALD NIGH,§§ LORENA SOTO-PINTO,§ MICHIEL VAN BREUGEL,∗∗∗ AND MARK WISHNIE††† ∗Department of Agriculture and Agroforestry, CATIE, Apdo 7170, Turrialba, Costa Rica †Programa de Ciencias para la Conservacion, SalvaNATURA, Colonia Flor Blanca, 33 Avenida Sur #640, San Salvador, El Salvador ‡Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06268-3043, U.S.A. §Departamento de Agroecoloǵia, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, Carretera Panamericana y Periferico Sur s-n, San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico ∗∗Department of Natural Resources and Environment, CATIE, Apdo 7170, Turrialba, Costa Rica ††Biodiversity of BOSAWAS Biosphere Reserve, Saint Louis Zoo, Managua, Nicaragua ‡‡Centro de Investigaciones en Ecosistemas, UNAM, AP 27-3 Santa Maŕia de Guido, CP 58089, Morelia, Michoacan, Mexico §§Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropoloǵia Social, San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico ∗∗∗Centre for Ecosystem Studies, Wageningen University, P.O. Box 47, 6700 AA Wageningen, The Netherlands †††Equator Environmental, LLC, 250 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10003, U.S.A.

Traditional fertilization and its effect on corn insect populations in the Guatemalan highlands

Cakchiquel farmers in Patzun, Guatemala stated that pest populations have increased in corn crops since they abandoned organic fertilization and adopted synthetic fertilizers. Given the dearth of scientific information about the effects of fertilization practices on pests, a controlled experiment was performed to elucidate these interactions. Pests, their natural enemies, and nutritional status were compared among corn plots with synthetic and organic fertilizers, and a control without fertilizer. Corn in fields treated with organic fertilizer applied for at least 2 years hosted fewer aphids (Rhopalosiphum maidis) than corn treated with synthetic fertilizer. This difference seems attributable to high concentration and total content of foliar nitrogen in corn in the synthetic fertilizer plots, although numbers of Spodoptera frugiperda showed a weak negative correlation with increased nitrogen levels. Coccinellidae populations were higher in plots with high aphid populations, but only where organic fertilizer was applied. There were no significant yield differences among treatments.

Food sovereignty: an alternative paradigm for poverty reduction and biodiversity conservation in Latin America

Strong feedback between global biodiversity loss and persistent, extreme rural poverty are major challenges in the face of concurrent food, energy, and environmental crises. This paper examines the role of industrial agricultural intensification and market integration as exogenous socio-ecological drivers of biodiversity loss and poverty traps in Latin America. We then analyze the potential of a food sovereignty framework, based on protecting the viability of a diverse agroecological matrix while supporting rural livelihoods and global food production. We review several successful examples of this approach, including ecological land reform in Brazil, agroforestry, milpa, and the uses of wild varieties in smallholder systems in Mexico and Central America. We highlight emergent research directions that will be necessary to assess the potential of the food sovereignty model to promote both biodiversity conservation and poverty reduction.

Latin American Agroecologists Build a Powerful Scientific and Social Movement

Around 3800 people came together in Curitiba, Brazil last November for the joint meeting of the Latin American Scientific Society of Agroecology (SOCLA; www.agroeco.org/socla/) and the Brazilian Agroecology Association (ABA; www.aba-agroecologia.org.br). The number of participants was impressive, their diversity was inspiring, and the movement they are building sets an example for the planet. We assigned a random sample of about 10% of the poster and oral presentation abstracts (n = 99) to the levels of Gliessman’s sustainability framework ( JSA 33[1]:1-2, 2009), and found evidence of both deficiencies and progress in the topics these scientists are tackling. Disappointingly, the bulk of the presentations were at level 1, increasing the efficiency of conventional practices (7.1%) or level 2, substituting alternative practices for conventional ones (45.5%). Level 2 presentations typically focused on the effects of alternative inputs such as soil amendments, green manures or biological control agents on yield. Fewer presentations approached farm design and function from a systems perspective (Gliessman’s level 3; 19%). However 28% looked at agroecosystems in their social, cultural and economic contexts (level 4). Level 4 analysis was even more prevalent among the plenary speakers and panelists. These scientists and leaders were clear that agroecology as a science is responsible to agroecology as a movement for biodiverse fields and landscapes, food and energy sovereignty, and healthy environments and economies. Among the most powerful talks were those by farmers who described lifetimes of struggle to sustain their livelihoods, traditions and communities in resistance to economies that treat them as obstacles rather than the foundations of sustainable development. Field trips to farms, organic markets, research centers, Via Campesina’s Latin American

Taking agroecology to scale: the Zero Budget Natural Farming peasant movement in Karnataka, India

This paper analyzes how peasant movements scale up agroecology. It specifically examines Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF), a grassroots peasant agroecology movement in Karnataka, India. ZBNF ends reliance on purchased inputs and loans for farming, positioning itself as a solution to extreme indebtedness and suicides among Indian farmers. The ZBNF movement has achieved massive scale not only because of effective farming practices, but because of a social movement dynamic – motivating members through discourse, mobilizing resources from allies, self-organized pedagogical activities, charismatic and local leadership, and generating a spirit of volunteerism among its members. This paper was produced as part of a self-study process in La Via Campesina, the global peasant movement.

Bringing agroecology to scale: key drivers and emblematic cases

ABSTRACT Agroecology as a transformative movement has gained momentum in many countries worldwide. In several cases, the implementation of agroecological practices has grown beyond isolated, local experiences to be employed by ever-greater numbers of families and communities over ever-larger territories and to engage more people in the processing, distribution, and consumption of agroecologically produced food. To understand the nonlinear, multidimensional processes that have enabled and impelled the bringing to scale of agroecology, we review and analyze emblematic cases that include the farmer-to-farmer movement in Central America; the national peasant agroecology movement in Cuba; the organic coffee boom in Chiapas, Mexico; the spread of Zero Budget Natural Farming in Karnataka, India; and the agroecological farmer–consumer marketing network “Rede Ecovida,” in Brazil. On the basis of our analysis, we identify eight key drivers of the process of taking agroecology to scale: (1) recognition of a crisis that motivates the search for alternatives, (2) social organization, (3) constructivist learning processes, (4) effective agroecological practices, (5) mobilizing discourses, (6) external allies, (7) favorable markets, and (8) favorable policies. This initial analysis shows that organization and social fabric are the growth media on which agroecology advances, with the help of the other drivers. A more detailed understanding is needed on how these multiple dimensions interact with, reinforce, and generate positive feedback with each other to make agroecology’s territorial expansion possible.

Mediated territoriality: rural workers and the efforts to scale out agroecology in Nicaragua

The Spanish word formación can be translated as ‘training’ or ‘education’, but Latin American social movements use it as inspired by Che Guevara’s notion of ‘molding’ the values of the new woman and new man for egalitarian, cooperative social relations in the construction of a ‘new society’. This contribution presents findings on the dialectical linkages between the formación processes led by the Rural Workers’ Association (ATC) and the gradual transformation of the Nicaraguan countryside by peasant families choosing to grow food using agroecological practices. We use Vygotsky’s sociocultural historical theory to explore the developmental processes of formación subjects and the pedagogical mediators of their transformation into movement cadre. The motivations of active learners to develop new senses and collective understandings about their material reality become a counterhegemonic process of internalization and socialization of agroecological knowledges and senses. In this paper, we further explore the formación process by identifying territorial mediators: culturally significant elements within and outside of individuals that facilitate the rooting of agroecological social processes in a given territory where the social movement is active. By placing the territory, rather than the individual, at the center of popular education processes, new synergies are emerging in the construction of socially mobilizing methods for producing and spreading agroecological knowledge.

The Long Road: Rural Youth, Farming and Agroecological Formación in Central America

ABSTRACT Across the globe, the countryside faces the “generation problem”: Who will grow food when the current generation of aging small farmers and peasants disappears? A combination of objective and subjective factors effectively discourages young people from assuming the continuity of peasant and family farming, especially in countries that have experienced significant neoliberal dismantling of rural infrastructure and education. Rural social movements are increasingly building educational processes linked with small-scale, ecological farming in the hopes of reinforcing the development of identities and skills for peasant futures and cadre in the struggle for popular land reform, agroecology, and food sovereignty.

Back to the roots: understanding current agroecological movement, science, and practice in Mexico

ABSTRACT In the middle of the last century, there were two types of agronomic scientists in Mexico. One group perceived traditional agriculture as backward and in need of modernization with advanced technologies. The other group, engaged in intensive fieldwork, studied and found inspiration in peasant and indigenous systems. This latter group of researchers who studied and described the biocultural richness of these systems provided the foundations for the development of agroecology in Mexico. Mexican indigenous systems also inspired many of the pioneers of agroecology at the global level. In this review, we strive to describe the historical landmarks of the development of agroecological education and research in the past and present in Mexico, while elaborating on the challenges that this discipline faces today and in the future.

Urban transition toward food sovereignty

ABSTRACT In cities throughout the world, people are taking steps to develop just, sustainable alternatives to the dominant food system. These initiatives pose questions which, to be answered, require new theoretical approaches. This study makes use of Marxs concepts of ‘social metabolism’ and ‘metabolic rift’, as well as Altvaters analysis of forms of capitalist appropriation, in order to understand how current society-nature relationships have given way to a socioeconomic spatial order which makes it difficult to develop just, sustainable food systems. From this theoretical framework, we identify and analyse some key aspects of the urban transition toward food sovereignty.