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

interview: montenegro
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developing a training farm for young people, for the children of farmers in the region.
So they came up with a training program around agroecology that is now in place.
What we wanted to see was agents of change – people who would come, benefit,
gain knowledge, go back to their communities and multiply the knowledge – and
that is exactly what has happened. We have six or eight states in Mexico where this
vision of CIDERS, my organization, is spreading quickly, it’s growing, and this
knowledge went far beyond this group of 15 participants, through their own
organizations and through their own networks and in their own communities and
regions. And a lot of these participants really work at the regional level, not just in a
small community.
Q: From what you have been doing, have your ideas changed – or your sense of
what the farmers with whom you work in Mexico need? Do they need agroecology
training, do they need different policies, or do they need different structures to
make these policies?
A: Policy, I think, is one of the most important issues in Mexico. Because the challenge
farmers are facing is structural. It’s not an issue of commitment, it’s not an issue of
desire, it’s not an issue of wanting to leave the land – it’s a structural problem that I
relate to two key issues. One is the Green Revolution, which has had tremendous
implications in Mexico and of course all over the world – people became dependent on
agrochemicals. But the other is agrarian reforms that have been paternalistic, erroneous
– top-down approaches that have only displaced people from the land, rather than
helping them secure a better future or promising a future in their communities.
Q: You mentioned the effects of the agrarian reforms and national policies. Can you
say more about this?
A: The agrarian reform, especially through Article 27 [of the Mexican Constitution]
– where thousands of ejidatarios were displaced, and they were allowed to sell their
properties very cheap – [happened] right after NAFTA, when Salinas de Gortari was
president of Mexico. The ejidatarios represent a huge percentage of small farmers in
Mexico. They were already facing a very serious crisis. And Article 27 was the last
thing people needed. ...It was just a political agenda initiated by Salinas de Gortari
to somehow free the land so corporations could come and privatize or take over,
which is exactly what is happening in Mexico. You will see huge maquiladoras or
manufacturing companies in small, rural settings. I never ever dreamt of seeing such
things. And what happened is people ended up selling the land and migrating. And
suddenly you want to go back – what do you do? You sold your land. There is no
going back. There is an ongoing struggle – and you enter a kind of survival mode as
a result of this displacement. And how to recover from that is one of the things we
talk about a lot in my organization. How do you recover from that?
yale school of forestry & environmental studies