AGROECOLOGICAL FORMACIÓN FOR FOOD SOVEREIGNTY

Authors: Adriano Muñoz, Nils McCune, and Juan Reardon.

Feeding Critical Thought

Our America has its roots in agriculture, with an amazing diversity of smallholder farming communities that have successfully resisted in both time and space so as to not lose their role as the principal producers of food and nutrition across the continent. In spite of the hegemonic advance of neoliberalism, which seeks to erase campesino culture and impose industrial agriculture on society as if it were the only viable

option, rural social movements are demanding an end to the artificialization of agriculture, monoculture and its destructive environmental practices, and the privatization of everything (water, lands, and seeds, among other things) including the sacred right to a dignified education for young people.

In the struggle for Food Sovereignty – the right of all people to exercise democratic control over their local, regional, and national agroecosystems – youth in the countryside have been largely forced into an asymmetric relationship with transnational corporations and their ability to dominate others using both education and communication. The vast majority of rural youth are marginalized at all levels of the educational system, and the very few opportunities to study exist in institutions that reproduce the transnational perspective of agriculture that is simultaneously productivist, reductionist, and rentierist – a model that goes against the interests of smallholder farmers and their families. While traditional schools and universities teach the youth how to produce, distribute, and consume so as to enrich the few at the expense of most, mainstream media promote artificial needs that intoxicate youth with endless consumerist aspirations that are rapidly pushing us closer and closer to the depletion of the earth’s natural resources. 

Faced with this set of circumstances, the social movements that together make up La Vía Campesina have decided the time was right to build education processes – known in Spanish as formación – for youth (women and men, campesinas and campesinos, indigenous people, rural workers and other excluded members of society) so that, in a permanent process of action and reflection, a new generation of Food Sovereignty activists can successfully build the new food system we so desperately need.

Educating Ourselves to Overcome

In this brief overview of agroecological formación, we have attempted to outline a few of the main elements that are being included in the pedagogical proposals aimed at educating youth activists for Food Sovereignty. Before getting into the details, it’s necessary to state that this description is simply a summary of multiple collective efforts underway. These efforts, enriched by the time and dedication of hundreds of popular educators across the continent, include unique pedagogical experiences such as the Latin American School of Agroecology (ELAA) in Brasil, the Campesino-to-Campesino Agroecological Movement (MACAC) in Cuba, and the Latin American Institute of Agroecology Paulo Freire (IALA-PF) in Venezuela.

While mainstream universities continue graduating what they call “technicians” and “engineers” (truly just promoters of agribusiness), since 2006 La Vía Campesina has been developing novel experiences in agroecological formación that serve to democratize the debate, knowledge and understand, as well as science and technologies. These experiences, including new IALA’s in Paraguay (IALA-Guaraní), Brazil (IALA-Amazónico), and Nicaragua (IALA-MesoAmerica), are spaces in which education and training are directed at fomenting critical thought while, of equal importance, making practical tools available for youth to succeed in the difficult struggle to build Food Sovereignty. These spaces are the direct result of social struggle, born of enormous efforts and mobilizations in defense of an education that dignifies rural livelihoods, and are guided by a popular education based in the philosophical and pedagogical principles detailed below.

Philosophical Principles:

Education through and for Social Transformation: The development of women and men with new values as well as new emotional linkages to others, resulting in actions directed at social transformation, opting always for the people and rejecting lifestyles promoted by neoliberalism. Included here are the most elevated of human values needed for subjects taking on their own formación, including solidarity, humility, equality, justice, honesty, internationalism, and respect for nature, among others.

Education though and for Diversity: Neoliberalism promotes a sole culture in which all people are expected to reproduce the anti-values of consumerism, domination, and egoism. Agroecological formación, on the other hand, recognizes and promotes the indigenous, African, feminist, anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles that have accompanied our people for over 500 years. Agroecologists stand opposed to that dominant culture, defending instead the enormous amounts of cultural diversity found in popular human systems as well as the biodiversity used by Mother Earth to organize our planet.

Education through and for Work and Cooperation: Work is understood as a means by which women and men dignify their existence. Work is considered a form of liberating action instead of a commodified need of working people. Studying is directly linked to productive efforts through work and volunteering, with both these actions considered a means by which the world can be better understood. Cooperation is used so that new citizens educate themselves collectively, developing the capacity to collaborate through a democratic dialogue. Cooperation becomes an ethical necessity in both work and study and is present in processes between students themselves, between students and popular educators, and between, students, popular educators, and communities. 

Education through and for Rebellion: Citing Paulo Freire, “we struggle for an education that teaches us to think – not one that teaches us to obey”. Formación in this context openly questions and confronts social injustice, while at the same time directing students’ efforts into collective processes of social transformation that have at their heart humanity’s pending humanization. Rebellion is promoted so that a better world becomes reality.

Pedagogical Principles:

Practice/Theory/Practice: For popular education to exist, acts of praxis are constantly taking place based on a reciprocal relationship of dialogue between action, reflection, and matured action. As Freire said, “there is not a word in the world that isn’t the unbreakable bond between action and reflection”. True formación takes place when society is being transformed.

Education/Learning: A dialectical and horizontal relationship exists between educators and learners, with both teaching and learning in a constant dialogue free of hierarchy. Educating and learning come together in one single act of formación, “forming” collectives of people committed to their social responsibilities. Every member of the educating community commits themselves to each others’ learning, taking full advantage of the time and space available to harvest the greatest amount of formación possible.  

Diálogo de Saberes: Convinced that only through a diversity of visions, perspectives, and proposals do people come to truly understand the world around them, a real communication is built between participants that allows for the free flow of knowledge, ideas, feelings and awareness, recognizing the conceptual legitimacy of all those who struggle for a better world.

Action-Based, Participatory, and Contextualized Research: Investigations that take place are directly related to the real needs of students, their families and communities. Never are people, campesinas and campesinos in this case, considered the objects of academic research. Rural people and their organizations, with special attention paid to the youth, are the protagonist subjects of all inquiry developed to achieve both formación and liberation. In addition, all research has an overriding strategic objective – contributing to Food Sovereignty.   

The Harvest

The aforementioned spaces for agroecological formación within La Vía Campesina are beginning to see their first harvests – novel pedagogical experiences, different methods for democratic dialogue, and the most important of all outcomes, young women and men who recognize in Food Sovereignty their platform for the transformation of their realities. And while many more sites for formación still need to be consolidated, there are currently hundreds of other permanent educational processes taking place at the roots of rural social movements. All across the Américas, youth are asking and answering the question, what do we do to achieve Food Sovereignty?