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

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agroecology and the struggle for food sovereignty
plus” which just drives prices below the cost of production. The non-recourse loan
price support programs were created during the New Deal, but have been abandoned
by the U.S. government, making farmers dependent on government subsidy checks. 5
5 See the report “Rethinking
U.S. Agricultural Policy” at
www.agpolicy.org for further
details.
Campesino á Campesino and Academia
Eric Holt-Giménez, currently the Latin America Program Manager at the Bank
Information Center, a Washington-based NGO, attempted to bridge the dialogue
between North and South, stressing the need for North-based academics and activists
to give voice to farmers in Latin America. He read a testimony from a Guatemalan
farmer in the Campesino á Campesino Movement, which, he emphasized, is not an
institution but a decentralized network of tens of thousands of farmers teaching each
other: “Campesino á Campesino has followed the relationships of campesinos to
campesinos throughout Central America and beyond. It hasn’t been the result of
planned projects; the projects come afterwards, and they’re negotiated by the people
within the movement.”
Holt-Giménez cautioned academics and non-governmental organizations that
they have a special role to play as mediators between farmers and conservation organizations
and agencies, to ensure transparency and accountability in projects involving
North-South collaboration. Since farmers come to the negotiating table as unequal
partners in a power relationship, they must be given more say in shaping programs
that affect them.
Eric Holt-Giménez.
Photographer: Steve Taylor.
“We find these terms like ‘sustainable
development’ and
‘community-based conservation,’
like ‘food sovereignty’ and
whatnot, and people use these
terms in the course of negotiation.
But we have to understand
that there are very strong
power dynamics behind this,
and that the issues are, on the
side of the farmers, about survival.
We cannot talk about
conservation without talking
about survival.”
– Eric Holt-Giménez
Linking North and South
When an audience member asked how farmers in the North and South can link
together, the panelists all agreed that farmers in the U.S. and Latin America use such
different techniques of production that, on the technical level, agricultural knowledge
sharing would be difficult. However, they emphasized that farmers throughout the
Americas share common political struggles. Holt-Giménez noted that genetically
modified organisms are an issue that affect farmers in every country and could
become a rallying point for grassroots links. Naylor emphasized that because “so
much of the oppression of farmers, campesinos around the world, [is caused by U.S.
policy] the responsibility for [action] is right here in the United States.” American
farmers would like the support of the world in taking on American farm policies.
León agreed with the need for collaboration. In the past, Mexican farmers believed
that U.S. farmers were wealthy, but “now we are seeing that the small farmers of the
United States are also having problems with low prices and with many things,” he
said. “And I believe that in the future, we have to make bonds with these groups of
small farmers in the United States to be able to say and to declare that the policies at
the international level of production management really are not adequate.” (“Ahora
estamos viendo también que los pequeños agricultores de los Estados Unidos también
estan teniendo problemas con los precios bajos y con muchas cosas . . . y tenemos,
yo creo en el futuro, hacer vínculos con estos grupos de agricultores pequeños
en los Estados Unidos para poder decir y estar manifestando que las políticas al nivel
internacional de manejo de la producción realmente no son las más adecuadas.”)
yale school of forestry & environmental studies