Can the state take agroecology to scale? Public policy experiences in agroecological territorialization from Latin America

Giraldo, Omar Felipe; McCune, Nils

doi:10.1080/21683565.2019.1585402

Cited by 61 publications

(56 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…Land tenure security is seen as a policy target to allow for alternative agriculture, environmental justice, and agrarian transitions (Lawry et al, 2014). Scholars who work with concepts such as agroecology and food sovereignty champion marginalized tenure regimes like common-held, indigenous, or customary management systems with long histories of sustainable use (Borras and Franco, 2013;Penniman, 2018;Giraldo and McCune, 2019).…”

Section: The Role Of Land Tenure On Agrarian Change Farmer Decision mentioning

confidence: 99%

“Who Has the Power to Adapt?” Frameworks for Resilient Agriculture Must Contend With the Power Dynamics of Land Tenure

Calo

2020

Front. Sustain. Food Syst.

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This special issue aims to develop how Diversified Farming Systems (DFS) may contribute to adaptive capacity in order to confer resilience to agricultural systems. In this perspective article, I argue that a framework for DFS and adaptive capacity must adequately contend with the role of farmland tenure on the shape of food systems to be both internally coherent and socially redistributive. Yet, both DFS and adaptive capacity scholarship deemphasize or mischaracterize the role of farmland tenure in favor of ecosystem dynamics. In this paper, I bring together lessons from the agrarian change literature and established critiques of resilience thinking to demonstrate core problems with a framework aimed at linking DFS to adaptive capacity without adequately addressing the role of farmland tenure. Namely, applying resilience thinking as a framework to understand food systems change prioritizes concern over final “states” or processes of farming systems and may ignore who has the power to adapt or who derives benefits from adaptation. The critiques of resilience thinking inform that the result of this apolitical elision is (1) entrenchment of neoliberal logics that place responsibility to cultivate adaptation on individual farmers and (2) provisioning of legitimacy for land tenure systems that can most readily adopt DFS, without understanding how well these systems distribute public benefits. Resilience reformers call for ways to include more power aware analysis when applying resilience thinking to complex socio-technical systems. I suggest that centering the role of land tenure into the frameworks of DFS and adaptive capacity provides a lens to observe the power relations that mediate any benefits of agricultural diversification. Integrating analysis of the social and legal structures of the food system into the DFS for adaptive capacity formulation is a crucial step to transforming resilience thinking from an apolitical tool to transformative and power-aware applied science.

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Section: The Role Of Land Tenure On Agrarian Change Farmer Decision mentioning

confidence: 99%

“Who Has the Power to Adapt?” Frameworks for Resilient Agriculture Must Contend With the Power Dynamics of Land Tenure

Calo

2020

Front. Sustain. Food Syst.

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“…Undoubtedly, Venezuela has seen an abundance of projects, schools, and policies seeking to cultivate agroecological farming throughout the national food system (RBV, ; Herrera et al, ). And yet, as Giraldo and McCune () point out, fundamental to the transition to agroecology would be both the breaking down of large‐scale private land owning as well as heavy investment in territorial infrastructures linking rural producers. The case of Venezuela has remained limited on both counts (Lubbock, , Chapter 5), which leaves more far‐reaching examples, like El Maizal, locked into conventional farming methods.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The hidden edifice of (food) sovereignty: Rights, territory, and the struggle for agrarian reform in Venezuela

Lubbock

2019

Journal of Agrarian Change

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This article seeks to make a critical contribution to the “sovereignty problem” in food sovereignty (FS) studies. Contemporary scholarship has largely struggled to answer the question of who or what is sovereign within the realm of FS politics—underpinned by the relocalisation of agrarian production, sustainable nature–society relations, and a radical democratisation of food systems. Although the most recent scholarship has made significant progress on this issue, I offer an alternative historical materialist account of sovereignty understood as the combination of rights and territory. From a critical Marxian perspective, I deconstruct the basis of sovereign power as the intersection between social property rights (exploitation) and territorial governance (political technology) congealed within both capital and the state. This approach thus provides some clarity as to the necessary breaks required to establish an FS regime (self‐directed labour and cooperative territorial governance). The framework is then applied to the case of Bolivarian Venezuela. While witnessing some important achievements, Venezuela's FS experiment has encountered a number of contradictions. As this case study shows, peasant struggles aiming to retake control over production and establish cooperative forms of governance must traverse the entire terrain of the state and thus affect a broader socialisation of society's sociopolitical infrastructures.

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“…In addition, barriers to participation can be minimised by including training and capacity building for resource-poor smallholder farmers [133]. For instance, the voluntary regulatory instrument of organic certification, PLANAPO, has been successful with smallholder farmers in Parana, or PNATER, which supports agroecological training and exchange of experiences [69]. The Social Fuel Certificate (Selo Combustível Social), granted by the Ministry of Agriculture [134], is another pertinent example, which inserts family agriculture, via registered cooperatives, into the biodiesel production chain.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition to improving the nutritional quality of school meals, these programmes have stimulated the creation of new markets for small-scale farmers. A final policy that merits mention is the 2003 National Technical Assistance and Rural Extension Policy (PNATER), which aims to promote or support processes of "agroecological training, exchange of experiences and knowledge, research-action, and technical support to families and producer communities" [69] (p. 794). This offers scope to bring together different kinds of knowledge to build human capital in agricultural production.…”

Section: Policiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding the Implications of Alternative Bioenergy Crops to Support Smallholder Farmers in Brazil

et al. 2020

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Smallholders constitute more than three quarters of the world’s farmers, and despite their numbers, they commonly lack opportunities to advance their development status. Bioenergy production and consumption can help sustain smallholders’ energy needs and generate employment and income, but it also raises concerns over social justice and equity, especially where crops used for bioenergy could also be used for food. This perspective paper is grounded in a literature review related to three different crops in Brazil: sugarcane, landrace maize and sweet potato. It seeks to determine if these crops offer the potential to support smallholder farmers’ development in a more equitable way, focusing on opportunities for their use in bioenergy. We review the literature to identify policies shaping the smallholder development context in relation to these crops, assessing whose knowledge informs policy and institutional decision making, and highlighting the policy attention afforded to the different crops from different sectors. We further evaluate the literature on each crop in relation to water use and calorific value (i.e., food and energy). Our review indicates that while sugarcane has received the most policy and institutional attention, its development is largely anchored in research and development investments that support large-scale commercial farms and agri-businesses. Smallholders have not benefited or had the opportunity to engage in relevant policy decision making for sugarcane cultivation. At the same time, smallholders hold valuable untapped knowledge on the cultivation of sweet potato and landrace maize, both of which have the potential to generate development opportunities for smallholders. Our review suggests that the environmental impact of landrace maize and sweet potato in terms of water use is significantly lower than sugarcane, while they can generate more calories for energy or food consumption and offer diversification opportunities. Despite that these alternative crops offer considerable untapped potential to support rural development, more research is still needed to harness these benefits. Changes are needed to address inequities in policies, institutions and the types of knowledge informing decision making. Such changes need to afford smallholder farmers greater recognition and participation in decision making, so that the distribution of benefits from the three study crops can reach them to support their development better.

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Can the state take agroecology to scale? Public policy experiences in agroecological territorialization from Latin America

Cited by 61 publications

References 34 publications

“Who Has the Power to Adapt?” Frameworks for Resilient Agriculture Must Contend With the Power Dynamics of Land Tenure

“Who Has the Power to Adapt?” Frameworks for Resilient Agriculture Must Contend With the Power Dynamics of Land Tenure

The hidden edifice of (food) sovereignty: Rights, territory, and the struggle for agrarian reform in Venezuela

Understanding the Implications of Alternative Bioenergy Crops to Support Smallholder Farmers in Brazil

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