Agroecology and the Struggle for Food Sovereignty ... - Yale University

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agroecology and the struggle for food sovereignty
by NGOs, as von der Weid pointed out. Rather than offering farmers specific
techniques, he said, AS-PTA encourages them to develop their own practices through
individual and collective experimentation. Robin Sears, from Columbia University,
argued that NGOs, extension agents, and researchers working with farmers should
aim not just to help improve farming methods, but also to help link farmers with
markets for their products. She added that the existence of a market for secondary
timber species and açaí palm fruits in parts of Brazil has resulted in a shifting
emphasis from annual crop production to forest and fallow management by
smallholder residents. This market incentive to manage trees and forests has, in turn,
resulted in an increase in forest cover in the region. In many cases, smallholder
farmers know very well how to farm, and they are constantly updating their strategies
in response to different drivers.
A major topic of discussion was the relationship between farmers and non-farmer
researchers and academics – what the relationship has been, and what it should be.
Farmers and academics often speak different conceptual languages, and the way
academics receive career incentives for doing research but not necessarily for helping
people has often been a barrier to meaningful relationships. Jesús León Santos of the
Centro de Desarrollo Integral Campesino de la Mixteca (CEDICAM) in Mexico
called for a move beyond campesino-a-campesino networks, toward improved
campesino-academic networks. He explained how in Mexico for the last 20 to 30 years,
relations between campesinos and agricultural extension agents have been strained;
extensionists have perceived farmers as ignorant and backward for using traditional
methods and have urged farmers to use more chemical methods, pushing farmers
away from what they already know. León emphasized that academics must learn to
listen to farmers, but that farmers must also speak up for themselves, as both parties
have useful knowledge to contribute to the practice of agroecology if they can learn
to speak a common language.
Holt-Giménez of the Bank Information Center and Carlos Perez, from the
Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Resource Management (SANREM) program at
the University of Georgia, both discussed ways that academics and NGOs can form
better relationships with farmers. Holt-Giménez discussed the need for “action
research,” in which researchers give up some control and allow the community of
farmers to define the research questions and protocols around their own needs. This
kind of research requires building long-term, trusting relationships with farmers.
Perez described the example of an extension project in Egypt that acted as a
clearinghouse of information instead of a top-down instruction project. The NGO
running the project asked farmers to define their problems in meetings, then brought
in local experts, including expert farmers, to teach the farmers about each topic. In
this way, both Perez and Holt-Giménez emphasized, NGOs do have a role to play in
farmer networks. By understanding the social and physical landscape of an entire
country, they can act as facilitators, helping to link researchers and farmers to one
another.
Participants in this session also raised many concerns about the need to address
larger political and economic structural issues affecting farmer networks. Von der
yale school of forestry & environmental studies