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

iographies of workshop presenters
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Sérgio Lopes is the head of the traditional agriculture program at the Secretaria de
Extrativismo e Producão Familiar (SEPROF) in Rio Branco, Acre, Brazil. He also
serves as an advisor to the Brazilian Environment Ministry. His previous work
includes 15 years of community organizing with fellow agrarian reform recipients
involved in the Reflorestamento Econômico Consorciado e Adensado (RECA) project
in Rondônia state. He holds a degree in philosophy, history, and psychology from the
Instituto Popular de Assistência Social, Ponta Grossa, Paraná. He has also completed
a course in public policy and environment at New York University and has studied
community leadership through the Acre Diocese of the Catholic Church.
Kathleen McAfee is a visiting scholar in geography at the University of California at
Berkeley. At the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, she was the faculty
sponsor and initiator of the workshop that gave rise to this report. Her interests
center on economic globalization, social justice, and the equitable sharing and
sustainable use of natural resources. Her work on “Selling Nature to Save It?” analyzes
problems of valuing and conserving biodiversity and distributing environmental
benefits and burdens in a world-market economy. As a policy analyst for Oxfam, she
authored Storm Signals: Structural Adjustment and Development Alternatives (1991).
She has published research on agro-biotechnology, intellectual property, food trade,
and development policy, and has consulted for the UN Food and Agricultural
Organization and other international agencies.
José Montenegro is the founder and director of the International Center for
Sustainable Rural Development (CIDERS), a nonprofit organization that enables
Mexican-American immigrants and their communities of origin to improve and
sustain their local economies, cultures, livelihoods, and environments through
sustainable land-use practices. For the last 12 years, he has successfully guided the
implementation of cross-border exchanges involving small family farmers and
Mexican professionals. Montenegro holds a B.S. in plant science (agronomy) from
the University of Agronomy (ITA No. 1) in his native state of Durango, Mexico. He
resides with his wife and three children in Salinas, California.
Catherine Murphy lived in Cuba from 1994 to 1999. She received an M.A. from the
Facultad Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) program at the University
of Havana, with thesis research on urban agriculture in Havana. She has lectured and
written widely on this topic, including the 50-page report “Cultivating Havana: Urban
Agriculture and Food Security in the Cuban Special Period,” published by Food First.
She is currently working on a book that will reflect on the first ten years of Cuba’s
urban agriculture program.
George Naylor, president of the National Family Farm Coalition, raises 470 acres of
corn and soybeans near Churdan, Iowa, with his wife and two young sons. Soon after
coming back to the family farm in 1976, Naylor was elected to the first Iowa Corn
Promotion Board and began driving tractors in tractorcades with the American
yale school of forestry & environmental studies