Hurricane María: An Agroecological Turning Point for Puerto Rico?

When Hurricane María tore through Puerto Rico on September 20, 2017, it left 17 dead, 11,000 seeking shelter, and the island’s 3.4 million people without power, water, or fresh food supplies.i It also ripped off the democratic veneer of the US’ “commonwealth,” revealing the structural vulnerability of an island that has been colonized for over half a millennium. Disasters tend to unmask both unsustainable practices and inequitable relations of power. But they can also unleash the power of solidarity and self-governance as communities—abandoned by their governments and preyed upon by disaster capitalists—come together in unexpected ways. In the aftermath of Puerto Rico’s worst social, economic and environmental catastrophe, the Puerto Rican food sovereignty movement is using agroecology to reconstruct the island’s beleaguered food system

Racism and capitalism: Dual challenges for the food movement

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Introduction: critical perspectives on food sovereignty

Visions of food sovereignty have been extremely important in helping to galvanize broad-based and diverse movements around the need for radical changes in agro-food systems. Yet while food sovereignty has thrived as a ‘dynamic process’, until recently there has been insufficient attention to many thorny questions, such as its origins, its connection to other food justice movements, its relation to rights discourses, the roles of markets and states and the challenges of implementation. This essay contributes to food sovereignty praxis by pushing the process of critical self- reflection forward and considering its relation to critical agrarian studies – and vice versa

A Latin American Perspective to Agricultural Ethics

The mixture of political, social, cultural and economic environments in Latin America, together with the enormous diversity in climates, natural habitats and biological resources the continent offers, make the ethical assessment of agricultural policies extremely difficult. Yet the experience gained while addressing the contemporary challenges the region faces, such as rapid urbanization, loss of culinary and crop diversity, extreme inequality, disappearing farming styles, water and land grabs, malnutrition and the restoration of the rule of law and social peace, can be of great value to other regions in similar latitudes, development processes and social problems. This chapter will provide a brief overview of these challenges from the perspective of a continent that is exposed to the consequences of extreme inequality in multiple dimensions and conclude by arguing for the need to have a continuous South-South dialogue on the challenges of establishing socially and environmentally sustainable food systems

Do we need to categorize it? Reflections on constituencies and quotas as tools for negotiating difference in the global food sovereignty convergence space

Convergence–as an objective and as a process–designates the coming together of different social actors across strategic, political, ideological, sectoral and geographic divides. In this paper, we analyze the global food sovereignty movement (GFSM) as a convergence space, with a focus on constituencies and quotas as tools to maintain diversity while facilitating convergence. We show how the use of constituencies and quotas has supported two objectives of the GFSM: alliances building and effective direct representation in global policy-making spaces. We conclude by pointing to some convergence challenges the GFSM faces as it expands beyond its agrarian origins.</p

The Effectiveness of Contract Farming for Raising Income of Smallholder Farmers in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: a Systematic Review

Contract farming is used by an increasing number of firms as a preferred modality to source products from smallholder farmers in low and middle-income countries. Quality requirements of consumers, economies of scale in production or land ownership rights are common incentives for firms to offer contractual arrangements to farmers. Prices and access to key technology, key inputs or support services are the main incentives for farmers to enter into these contracts. There is great heterogeneity in contract farming, with differences in contracts, farmers, products, buyers, and institutional environments. The last decade shows a rapid increase in studies that use quasi-experimental research designs to assess the effects of specific empirical instances of contract farming on smallholders. The objective of this systematic review was to distill generalised inferences from this rapidly growing body of evidence. The review synthesised the studies in order to answer two questions: 1: What is known about the effect size of contract farming on income and food security of smallholder farmers in low- and middle-income countries? 2: Under which enabling or limiting conditions are contract farming arrangements effective for improving income and food security of smallholders

The Agrofuels Transition: Restructuring Places and Spaces in the Global Food System

A pesar de las recientes críticas contra los agrocombustibles, la industria está creciendo, mostrando transformaciones en los sistemas alimentarios y de combustibles del mundo. Las instituciones financieras internacionales, las firmas de biotecnología, los gobiernos y la agroindustria reestructuran el control sobre la tierra, los recursos genéticos, el espacio económico y el poder del mercado. Estas movidas favorecen el capital transnacional a expensas de los agricultores del norte y de extensas áreas esenciales para el sustento de los pequeños productores del Sur del globo. Este artículo sugiere que el auge de los agrocombustibles pueda ser una nueva, y particularmente destructiva, etapa en las transformaciones agrícolas extractivas impulsadas por la industria. La lógica basada en el movimiento del derecho de los pueblos a la “soberanía alimentaria” para definir sus propios sistemas alimentarios y agrícolas, sugiere que es posible revertir la “ transición de los agrocombustibles”.Abstract: Despite recent critiques of agrofuels, the industry is booming, signalling transformations in the world’s food and fuel systems. International financial institutions, biotechnology firms, governments, and agribusiness are restructuring control over land, genetic resources, economic space, and market power. These moves favor transnational capital at the expense of farmers in the North and extensive areas vital to the livelihoods of small producers in the Global South. This article suggests that the agrofuels boom may be a new—and particularly destructive—stage in industry’s extractive transformation of agriculture. The movement-based logic of food sovereignty— people’s right to define their own food and agriculture systems—suggests a rollback of the “agrofuels transition” is possible

Racism and Capitalism: Dual Challenges for the Food Movement

First paragraphs: Our modern food system has co-evolved with 30 years of neoliberal globalization that privatized public goods and deregulated all forms of corporate capital, worldwide. This has led to the highest levels of global inequality in history. The staggering social and environmental costs of this transition have hit people of color the hardest, reflected in the record levels of hunger and massive migrations of impoverished farmers in the global South, and the appalling levels of food insecurity, diet-related diseases, unemployment, incarceration, and violence in underserved communities of color in the global North. The U.S. food movement has emerged in response to the failings of the global food system. Everywhere, people and organizations are working to counteract the externalities inherent to the "corporate food regime." Understandably, they focus on one or two specific components—such as healthy food access, market niches, urban agriculture, organic farming, community supported agriculture, local food (farm to table), food and farmworkers' rights, animal welfare, pesticide contamination, seed sovereignty, genetically modified organism (GMO) labeling, etc.—rather than the system as a whole. But the structures that determine the context of these hopeful alternatives remain solidly under control of the rules and institutions of the corporate food regime, e.g., the farm bill, the free trade agreements, the USDA, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, USAID, global supermarket oligopolies, meat, fisheries, grain, seed, and input oligopolies, and big philanthropy...