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

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agroecology and the struggle for food sovereignty
2 For a comprehensive
description and analysis of the
scope of agribusinessagricultural
research linkages,
please refer to J. Hightower
(1973), Hard Tomatoes, Hard
Times: The Hightower Report.
Cambridge, MA: Schenkman.
provide the lion’s share of money for agricultural research, and through lobbying
exert disproportionate pressure on policymaking that affects public directives for
agricultural research. 2 Agribusiness has different priorities for agriculture than small
farmers have. Agribusinesses make their money by exploiting the cheap labor of
farmers and farm workers, and economically undervalued natural resources. They
aim to produce quarterly profits even at the expense of long-term sustainable management
of natural resources and vibrant rural communities.
Farmers’ movements have vociferously called for a reformed agricultural research
agenda. Vía Campesina, an international coalition of small farmers and peasants’
organizations, makes this demand alongside other more specific demands such as
land reforms, valuation of environmental services provided by small farms, and
reform of subsidy systems to promote regional food crops instead of export cash
crops.
As our workshop demonstrated, some of Vía Campesina’s demands are already
being met. There exists a small but committed group of academics conducting
research and analysis sensitive to the demands of Vía Campesina and other farmers’
movements. However, our academic participants did not present a typical crosssection
of the agricultural research agenda. Furthermore, basic complications exist in
maintaining healthy, productive working relationships between academia and social
movements of any kind.
One purpose of the workshop was to facilitate discussion among our diverse participants
about past gains and further challenges of a farmer-friendly agricultural
research agenda. They found that while collaboration may be inherently challenging,
there are points of leverage for reform. The following synopses draw on feedback
from conference participants to detail how relationships between researchers and
social movements can improve.
Research in collaboration with social movements inherently has multiple goals.
Research may work to support social movements. But at the same time, this support
should not grossly alter findings. Researchers should respect the opinions and
insights of farmers’ movements. Local knowledge, rural knowledge, and indigenous
knowledge have long been marginalized by formal systems of knowledge production,
and this should be remedied.
Here, two student researchers from Yale
F&ES, Christian Palmer and Christiane
Ehringhaus work with residents of the
Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve, Acre
State, Brazil, to separate beans from their
pods. Although a seemingly rote task, this
and other kinds of participant
observation may help broaden
researchers’ perspectives while giving
back materially to communities in which
the researchers work. Photographer
Christian Palmer.
yale school of forestry & environmental studies