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

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agroecology and the struggle for food sovereignty
Eric Holt-Giménez has worked with the Campesino a Campesino (Farmer to Farmer)
movement in Mexico, Central America, South Africa, California, and the Philippines.
He specializes in farmer-led approaches to sustainable agriculture, conservation, and
watershed management. His recent action-research study “Measuring Farmers’
Agroecological Resistance to Hurricane Mitch in Central America” was a
collaborative project involving 2,000 peasant-researchers and 40 NGOs across three
countries. He holds a Ph.D. in environmental studies from University of California,
Santa Cruz. He is currently the Latin America Program Manager at the Bank
Information Center in Washington, DC.
Ronaldo Lec, a Maya-Kaqchikel from Guatemala, holds a degree in social
anthropology. He has practiced permaculture for the past eight years and holds a
permaculture diploma that entitles him to certify permaculture teachers, which he
has done at the local, regional, and international levels. He also has received seedsaving
and propagation training in Ethiopia. Lec’s work has concentrated on
community organizing, food production, and seed production. He is the founder of
several community initiatives.
Jesús León Santos was born in the Federal District of Mexico in 1965. Since the age of
4, he has lived in the small community of San Isidro in Oaxaca State and was educated
in nearby schools. From a young age, he has had a strong relationship with the land
and animals. He is a small farmer, with a small piece of land that has allowed him to
experiment and demonstrate that it is possible to live with dignity on the land. For 20
years, he has promoted rural development and alternative agriculture to help other
families use their resources sustainably. He has experience with diverse systems of soil
conservation, reforestation with native species, and the production of many types of
organic fertilizers. He has participated in a variety of training programs as both
facilitator and learner. He has held various roles in his community, as well as in
CEDICAM (Centro de Desarrollo Integral Campesino de la Mixteca). He is currently
president of CEDICAM’s board of directors, and is responsible for the development
of various projects there.
Richard Levins is the John Rock Professor of Population Sciences at the Harvard
School of Public Health. He is an ex-tropical farmer turned ecologist,
biomathematician, and philosopher of science concerned with complex systems in
evolutionary ecology, economic development, agriculture, and health. His
mathematical research strives to make the obscure obvious by finding appropriate
ways to visualize complex phenomena. Working from a critique of industrialcommercial
development, he has promoted alternative development pathways to
economic viability with equity, and ecological and social sustainability. As part of
the New World Agriculture and Ecology Group, and as a collaborator with
agriculturalists in Cuba for nearly 40 years, he has helped to develop modern
agroecology, concentrating on whole-system approaches to gentle pest management.
He is co-author, with Richard Lewontin, of The Dialectical Biologist.
yale school of forestry & environmental studies