Curso VII Lectura 2. New Rural Social Movements

8/14/2019 Curso VII Lectura 2. New Rural Social Movements

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There are new movements emerging in the worldin defence of agricultural policies favourable totraditional agroecological methods. The agroeco-logical antagonism to neo-liberal globalizationis described here mainly with reference to net-works in Latin America (because of our owndirect knowledge and participation in them),but it is a worldwide phenomenon, as shown bymovements in India also described here. Thesemovements have been born out of local resis-tance to seed multinationals, the degradation of ecosystems and the threats to livelihoods because

of agricultural modernization. They also opposesubsidized exports of agricultural surpluses.These movements are based on ancient knowl-edge of farming systems and also on the innova-tions of low input agriculture. The main actorsare not neo-rural postmodern organic farmers (asthey might exist in the United States and Europe)but spokesmen for large rural populations, some-times peasants, sometimes landless labourers (asthe MST in Brazil). Such movements are inter-preted in this chapter in the wider context of aworld movement of dissidence formed by a net-work of networks. By ‘agroecology’ we referhere to a collective practice of agriculture whichexplicitly considers not only economic andsocial aspects (income, employment) but alsoenvironmental and ecological aspects (pollution,soil conservation, cycles of nutrients, energyflow). Therefore there is a link between agroecol-ogy as a practice and the science of agroecology(Altieri, 1987; Gliessman, 1998). Agroecology inour view promotes the endogenous potential of agriculture, relying on traditional peasant knowl-edge, though being also open to innovationsthat help sustainability (Sevilla Guzmán andWoodgate, 1997).

THE RISE IN LATIN AMERICA OF

THE RURAL ARTICULATION OF

DISSIDENCE AGAINST

NEO-LIBERAL GLOBALIZATION

The usual explanation for the disappearance of the active agricultural population in the processof economic development is that, as agricul-tural productivity increases, production cannotincrease pari passu because of a low demand foragricultural produce as a whole. Therefore, the

active agricultural population decreases not onlyin relative but also in absolute terms, and indeedthis has been the path of development – inBritain even before the First World War, in Spainsince the 1960s, not yet in India. Now, however,agricultural productivity is not well calculated:nothing is deducted from the value of productionon account of chemical pollution and geneticerosion, and the inputs are valued too cheaplybecause fossil energy is too cheap, and becauseunsustainable use is made of soils and somefertilizers. What the ecologically correct pricesshould be is unknown; the important point isthat the ecological critique of the economics of agriculture opens up a large space for neo-Narodnik argument, a space that is beingincreasingly taken up around the world. Issuessuch as biodiversity conservation, threats frompesticides and energy saving are transformedinto local arguments for improvements in theconditions of life and for cultural survival of peasants. Such arguments have become wide-spread in new networks such as the ViaCampesina (the Peasant Way), which has insti-tuted an international Peasant’s Day, the17th April, the anniversary of the massacre of

34New Rural Social Movements and Agroecology

Eduardo Sevilla Guzmán and Joan Martinez-Alier

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19 members of the Movement of the Landless(MST) in 1996 in El Dorado, Parà, Brazil.

The convergence of those that, at the begin-ning of the 1980s, were called ‘revolutionary peas-ant unions’, took place in Managua in December

1981 during the ‘Continental Conference of Agrarian Reform and Peasant Movements’. Therean interaction was initiated which would lead tothe birth of the Continental Peasants Movementin Latin America. The different Latin Americanorganizations (with a small European representa-tion) thus became aware of the similarities inboth their means of struggle and their ideologicalevolution. Such is the case of the AndalucianSOC – Sindicato de Obreros del Campo1 (landlabourers union) – and the Brazilian MST, legal-ized in 1984, but at work in an embryonic state inRio Grande do Sul since 1978 (cf. Navarro,

1996; De Medeiros, 1999; Mançano Fernández,2000; Wizniewsky, 2001). This process of con-vergence between indigenous and peasant orga-nizations became more consolidated on theSouth American continent through the formalorganization of the Latin American Congress of Peasant Organizations (CLOC) in 1994 in Peru.We would point out here that there was an inter-action between the MST (as a proto-organiza-tion) and other groups in the first half of the1980s, which became more intense in the 1990s.These first interactions involved productiveexperiments of an agroecological nature (Sevilla

Guzmán, 1999) and the creation of the firstEuropean committees in support of the MexicanNeo-Zapatism and the MST and then those thatdeveloped around the SOC.

Probably the next step in this process of con-fluence of independent peasant organizationstook place on 14/15 November 1984, with theLatin American Conference of IndependentPeasant Organizations, organized in Mexico bythe Coordinadora Nacional Plan de Ayala. Herethe Peasant Confederation of Peru, the NationalFederation of Peasant Organizations of Ecuador,the Independent Peasant Movement of the

Dominican Republic, the National Confederationof Peasant Workers Union of France, the Union of Rural Workers and the recently founded MST of Brazil exchanged experiences.

The MST started in the south of Brazil and hasspread to the whole country. It has withstoodviolent armed repression in Paranà, Parà and otherstates. Its tactics consist in occupation, settle-ment and immediate cultivation of large proper-ties. Some of the MST leaders also belong to theWorkers’ party, though the MST is more to theleft. Other spaces of confluence in the dissidenceprocess include the international exchange events

convoked by the MST of Brazil in 1985 and bythe FENOCI of Ecuador in 1986. In Ecuador in1987 the First Andean Exchange Workshop of Peasant Indigenous Organizations was held. InCentral America, in 1987, the COCENTRA was

created and, in 1989, ASOCODE. In October of that same year indigenous and peasant organiza-tions of the Andean region and the MST of Brazilnamed their continental campaign ‘500 years of indigenous, black and popular resistance’ inBogota, Colombia. Three continental conferenceswere held, as well as several meetings coordi-nated by different Latin American countries, withthe assistance of European rural (or so-calledpeasant) organizations.

THE ZAPATISTA MOVEMENTAS ONE CREATOR OF THE

ANTAGONISTIC RURAL DISCOURSE

The key social actor, along with the MST, in theconfiguration of antagonistic rural praxis anddiscourse was the Neo-Zapatista Movement of Chiapas. Mexican peasant agriculture was and isunder increasing threat because of food importsfrom the United States, which increased underthe NAFTA free trade treaty between the US,Canada and Mexico. Eco-Zapatism was overdue

in Mexico. In the early 1990s, Guillermo Bonfilhad published his deeply moving account of vanishing indigenous Mexico (Bonfil Batalla,1998). It has now become general knowledge inMexico that indigenous cultures and biodiversitygo together (Toledo, 1996, 2000). Biodiversity isvaluable even when it has no market. The Chiapasrebellion came into the open against the NAFTAon the day it became operative (1 January 1994),helping to make indigenous peasantry a politicalsubject.

Neo-Zapatism came to signify, in 1994, a reac-tion against the attacks on Mexican peasant

agriculture and a real incentive towards the con-vergence and coordination of the movementsthat question economic globalization and neo-liberalism at world level, as well as the progressiveconsolidation of a new antagonistic discourse. Infact, the Zapatista movement made possible theintroduction of socio-cultural diversity into theworldwide anti-neo-liberal movement’s discourse(when this was in its gestation period); that is tosay, the enormous diversity of subjects, territo-ries, resources, traditions and realities that theworld was made up of at the end of the twentiethcentury.

NEW SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND AGROECOLOGY 469




In an attempt to come up with a synthesis, thecharacteristics of Neo-Zapatism, an age-old andat the same time new social movement, are thefollowing:

1 The acceptance of a historical continuancebetween its processes of collective socialaction and those developed by those ethnicgroups which through multiple processesthroughout 500 years have put up resistanceto colonization and oppression generated bythe expansion of the European socio-culturalidentity.

2 The attribution to economic globalization andneo-liberalism in present times, of the histori-cal oppression suffered by the indigenouscommunities. Specifically the foreseeableimpact of the NAFTA on the indigenous com-

munities of Chiapas, which added to theirresistance to the eviction of their communitiesand to the subordination to the interests of thetimber companies and landowners.

3 This struggle against exclusion does not endwith their confrontation with the moderniz-ing socio-economic system. They are alsofighting for the recognition of the NativeIndians in the Mexican constitution. Thediversity of the ethnic groups which make uptheir movement has led them to defend therecognition of differences: ‘We want a worldwhere all worlds fit in’.

4 They demand a democracy unadulterated byexternal or internal mismanagement, corrup-tion and distortion of the true participation of people. To this effect, they are Mexican patriotswho oppose the ‘foreign domination of NorthAmerican imperialism’. Moreover, they aim tomake a true democratic change to the politicalorganization so that ‘those that are in chargealso have to obey’.

From the depths of the Lacandona forest, theEZLN and Subcomandante Marcos developed an‘informational strategy’ to fulfil the establish-

ment of an ‘autonomous communication’ toreach public opinion and to generate a process of confluence with all the groups that are excludedfrom the modernizing socio-economic system.With this, they not only developed a way of defending themselves with the spoken word (‘Weonly take up arms to make a statement’), but theyhave also aimed to generate networks of dissi-dence to the socio-economic and cultural oppres-sion which they suffer.

This was how the Zapatista movement,through its ‘autonomous communication’ madecontact with the, then incipient, economic

anti-globalization social movements, holdingdebates which took place in the context of thecampaign of ‘50 years are enough’, against thehalf-century of existence of global financial insti-tutions (the International Monetary Fund, the

World Bank). Demonstrations took place in dif-ferent places throughout the world, culminatingin the alternative forum ‘The Other Voices of the Planet’ which developed in Madrid in theautumn of 1994. Continuing with its dynamics of resistance and informational struggle, the EZLNcalled, in Spain in the summer of 1997, theSecond Intergalactic Conference against Neo-liberalism and for Humanity, by means of an itin-erant celebration throughout various towns andcities that had as its driving force local Zapatistacommittees. In Andalucia the militant membersof the SOC played a central role in the organiza-

tional infrastructure of the congress, especially inthe closing acts which took place in El Indiano, alarge farm which was acquired after many yearsof struggle involving occupations and imprison-ments. This was one of the agroecological expe-riences that the cooperatives of the SOC carriedout as a ‘place for reflection and sociopoliticaland productive practice’ (Sevilla Guzmán, 1999;Guzmán Casado et al., 2000).

THE IMPACT OF THE FTAA

The biggest and most devastating impact that, inthe short term, the economic globalization processis having on peasant and family-run agriculture iscaused by the policies of the freeing of interna-tional agricultural trade (Rosset, 1999) coupledwith the subsidies to exports in the United States(and the EU). In this sense, the NAFTA must becontemplated within a global strategy that intendsto configurate a ‘Free Trade Area in America’(FTAA). It intended to deregulate the market,services and investments throughout both Americancontinents in such a way that the multinationals

had the right to use natural resources indiscrimi-nately. Dorval Brunelle (2001) illustrated therepercussions of this deregulation with a Mexicanexample: ‘The Mexican government had to pay16.7 million dollars to the Californian firmMetalclad Corp., because a Mexican municipalitywould not authorize the installation of a hazardouswaste dump against which the local populationhad been mobilized.’ The approval of the FTAAmeant the gradual elimination of any type of tariff.Therefore, products coming from the UnitedStates and Canada had free access and wereexempt from custom and non-custom restrictions.

NEW RURAL RELATIONS470




Likewise the FTAA would mean unrestrictedaccess to bidding and contracts for public sectorsupply. Local companies were left in the hands of the multinational market to carry out activitieslinked to water and energy provision in the urban

economies of Latin American countries. The thirdrequirement of this amplification of trade centredon the patents over life and intellectual property,leaving in the hands of the multinational corpora-tions the provision of seeds, as well as the techno-logical packets linked to the agriculture thatindustrialized farming, introduced throughout theLatin American area, requires.

Thus an antagonism towards the FTAA emergedand it is still mounting. It appeared in the form of antagonism towards the FTAA from the Americantrade union movement and the social movementscrystallizing in the appearance of a Continental

Social Alliance (CSA). In fact, this process beganin the ministerial meeting in Denver in 1995. Thetrade union movement of the 35 countries of the Americas, including Cuba, with the supportof the Pan-American Regional EmploymentOrganization (PREO) – the continental wing of theInternational Confederation of Free Unions –organized a parallel conference to express their mis-trust of the FTAA. The following year, the AmericanUnion Movement assembled in the Colombian cityof Cartagena to elaborate a document reflectingon this subject and to put pressure on governmentrepresentatives. The process continued that same

year in Brazil. During the meeting of the presidentsof the member countries of Mercosur, where ‘boththe first central trade union of the USA, theAFL–CIO and the ORIT sent representatives tooffer support to their South American counterpartswho had reached an agreement to celebrate aninternational day of struggle for the workers of Mercosur’. However, it was in Belo Horizonte in1987 that the first convergence between theAmerican trade union movement and the civic orga-nizations against free trade occurred. These havesince worked together on an alternative project tothe FTAA, The decision was taken to create a

Continental Social Alliance (CSA) which wouldface up to the FTAA, elaborating, in a participativeway, concrete and viable alternatives.

In 1998, the five existing national coalitionsagainst free trade2 called for the first Summit of the American People. This took place in Santiagode Chile from the 14th to the 17th of April, par-allel to the ‘second summit’ of the leaders of the‘American States’. Environmental and feministassociations as well as several associations of alternative American social movements respondedto that call. There a programmatic document wasproduced of great relevance to the configuration

of alternatives to global neo-liberalism,‘Alternatives for America: towards an agreementbetween the people of the continent’. In thisdocument it was established that:

Trade and investments should not be an end in them-

selves but a means capable of guiding us towards a fair

and long-lasting development. It is fundamental that

citizens exercise their rights in the formulation and eval-

uation of the social and economic policies of the conti-

nent. The central objectives of such policies should be

the promotion of economic sovereignty, the collective

well-being and the reduction of inequalities on all levels.

The fact that the Latin American Congress of Peasant Organizations (CLOC) was involvedwith this dynamic, representing of the PeasantMovement of Latin America and the Caribbean,is relevant to our line of argument.

Antagonism towards globalization in theAmerican continent should be analysed in themuch wider context of global dissidence. Herethe Movement against Maastricht and EconomicGlobalization (MAM) and the confluence againstthe Multi-lateral Investment Agreement (MIA)developed parallel and confluent dynamics. Ineffect, from 1990 to 1995 multiple Europeansocial movements joined forces by incorporatingin to their ideas and debates calls for a struggleagainst the rapidly developing ‘Europe of Capital’. Hence, feminist, ecological, pacifistand Third World groups and all the collectivescommitted to the fight against poverty, with ethicaland solidarity ideals, joined together, consolidat-ing the MAM. On the other hand, the conflu-ence against the MIA acquired special relevancein Canada, France, the United States, centralScandinavian countries and several countries fromthe periphery such as Malaysia, the Philippines,India and Brazil. Friends of the Earth and LeMonde Diplomatique conducted vigorous cam-paigns against the MIA. The joining together of these two fronts of economic anti-globalizationbegan to interfere with the plans of global neo-liberalism. This forced a delay in the signing of the MIA, at the heart of the OECD, in Paris inOctober 1998, through the configuration of GlobalAction of the People.

THE CONSOLIDATION OF THE

ANTAGONIST NETWORK AGAINST

NEO-LIBERAL GLOBALIZATION:

GLOBAL ACTION OF THE PEOPLE

Since the First Intergalactic Conference againstNeo-liberalism and for Humanity, which took





place in the Lacandona forest in the summer of 1996, and the Second Intergalactic Conference,which took place in Spain, the processes of con-fluence have quickened, leading to the creationof Global Action of the People (AGP) against

free trade. This group was the first coordinator,on a world level, against economic globalizationand neo-liberalism. In Geneva, at the beginningof 1998, the very first meeting of the AGP wasattended by some three hundred activists from allover the world.

There were representatives from the Southern periphery,

of the indigenous people that inhabit the most recondite

places on the planet, that suffer a threat to their habitats

and territories as a result of the unstoppable expansion

of globalization (the Maoris of New Zealand, the

CONAIE of Ecuador, the Mayan indians, the Ogonis of

Nigeria …); also the peasant movements of those places

on the planet where there still exist important contin-gents of population living in the traditional rural world

(Nepal, India …), as well as new peasant movements

that are fighting for access to community ownership of

land (MST of Brazil). There were also representatives

of those metropolitan movements fighting against the

consequences of the so-called plans structural adjust-

ment of the [International Monetary Fund] and the

[World Bank] that urban populations are suffering (eg.

the teachers’ movement in Buenos Aires, or the move-

ments from the slums of Mexico City). Also represented

were the new workers’ organizations (many of them

clandestine due to repression) of the maquila industries

in Central American countries, and even organizations

representing people with specific problems as such is

the case with certain Afro-American communities in

Caribbean countries. (Fernandez Durán and Sevilla

Guzmán, 1999: 365)

The dissident groups from countries of the centreof the system were also diversely represented:

In Geneva the French unemployed movement, as well

as certain organizations on the European network

against unemployment, precariousness and social

exclusion, attended. North American organizations that

work with the homeless, also Food Not Bombs. New

organizations in defence of part-time workers or those

threatened by privatization processes. The squattermovement and the self-managed social centres from dif-

ferent European countries. In fact the meeting in Geneva

was organised thanks to the active participation of the

squatter movement of the city. Some direct action orga-

nizations from the ecological environment, amongst

which the movement Reclaim the Street from Great

Britain stood out. As well as the different groups and

networks that attempt to unveil the consequences that

the Maastricht treaty had on the population of the

European Union countries. (1999: 366)

Why is it that such diverse social groups joinforces to fight against free trade? This question

can only be answered in the context of thedebates that the different groups have carried outin order to identify the nature of globalization,subject to the command of the profit logic of multinational companies. The transnational join-

ing of states, in the form of their internationalinstitutions – fundamentally the IMF, WorldBank and World Trade Organization, is coac-tively imposing economic policies that openlyimpact negatively on both human work and nat-ural resources. The large multinational corpora-tions have been studied since the early 1990s bydifferent social collectives and networks thathave witnessed how pacifist, feminist and eco-logical claims have been seemingly incorporatedinto sales campaigns as slogans. At the same timethese very same transnationals use the workforcefrom the periphery through the relationships they

maintain with their production lines and affili-ated suppliers. They exploit precariousness andchild labour, impose a total absence of socialbenefits and a union prohibition, amongst otherhuman rights transgressions, as well as payingwages so low that workers are unable to feedtheir families.

In a similar way, the dissidence against eco-nomic globalization came to the conclusion thatneo-liberal politics mean a growing degradationof natural resources, revealing the commercial,financial and speculative mechanisms which pulldown thousands of hectares of forest, transforming

this land for the growth of crop or tree plantations,forcing indigenous groups, whose livelihooddepended on the forest, to move. The uprootingof mangroves around the Tropics to the benefit of shrimp exports became an international scandal.Also, attention started to be drawn to the humanand environmental damage caused by the obliga-tion to pay external debts (emphasized by theJubilee 2000 campaigns).

THE EMERGENCE OF

AGROECOLOGY FROM THEANTAGONISM PROCESSES

TOWARDS NEO-LIBERALISM

AND GLOBALIZATION

In the past few decades there have been variousproductive experiences that show the emergenceof a new management model of natural resources,based on local knowledge and its merging withmodern technologies. Many of these recreate, insome aspects, historical forms of socio-economicorganization linked to socio-cultural identity.





Conventional agricultural science would nothesitate in labelling such experiences as a newparadigm of anti-modern rural development. Suchexperiences are dispersed world-wide (Pretty,1995). They are born from processes of resistance

in the interstices of agricultural modernization andthey offer a list of productive and social strategies.

There are two social spaces where such ‘pro-ductive dissidence’ towards agricultural modern-ization can be found, according to Victor ManuelToledo. They are ‘focal points of civilizatoryresistance’. The first, which he refers to as ‘post-modern’, is made up of ‘a polychrome range of social and countercultural movements’. Thesecond social space is located on certain ‘islandsof pre-modernity or pre-industriality’,

those enclaves of the planet where western civilization

did not or still has not managed to impose its values,

practices, corporations and modern actions. They are

predominantly, although not exclusively, rural, in coun-

tries such as India, China, Egypt, Indonesia, Peru or

Mexico, where the presence of various indigenous

populations (made up of peasants, fishermen, shepherds

and craftsmen) confirm the presence of civilizatory

models different to those originated in Europe. These do

not constitute immaculate archaisms, but contemporary

syntheses or forms of resistance born from the encoun-

ters that have taken place in the last few centuries

between the expansive force of western civilization and

the ever present forces of the ‘peoples without history’.

(Toledo, 2000: 53)

THE EXPERIENCE OF INDIA

Elements in the movement for agroecology inthe south are the collective defence of agro-biodiversity, food security and the in situ conser-vation or co-evolution of plant genetic resources.Thus in Mexico, beyond the neo-Zapatism bornin Chiapas, a wider movement has risen since2002 called ‘En Defensa del Maíz’, against maizeimports from the United States. In India, as

Kothari puts it (1998: 51), a single species of rice(Oryza sativa) collected from the wild some timein the distant past, has diversified into approxi-mately 50,000 varieties as a result of a combina-tion of evolutionary/habitat influences and theinnovative skills of farmers. This contribution togenetic diversity is a fact that the modern seedindustry conveniently sidesteps, and that the con-sumers of industrialized countries have ignoreduntil recently. Mexican peasants never thought of patenting or instituting other types of intellectualproperty rights on the varieties of maize that havebeen used by the commercial seed industry.

Agricultural biopiracy is a topic which theFood and Agriculture Organization of the UnitedNations (FAO) has been discussing for sometwenty years under the name of Farmers’ Rights.Even some governments say that

if a company takes a seed from a farmer’s field, adds a

gene and patents the resulting seed for sale at a profit

[or otherwise ‘improves’ the seed by traditional meth-

ods of crossing, and then protects it under the UPOV

rules], there is no reason the initial seed should be free.

They also say patents ignore the contributions by

indigenous peoples, who often are the true discoverers

of useful plants and animals, or of farmers who improve

plants over the generations. The negotiation run by the

Food and Agriculture Organization [on Farmers’

Rights] is weighing whether to compensate traditional

farmers for work on improving crops and maintaining

different varieties. (Pollack, 1999)

But, then, who wants the Third World farmers tocontinue growing and locally freely sharing orselling their own low-yielding, low-input seeds?From the point of view of international capital-ism, replacing their seeds by commercial seedswould be more conducive to economic growth.Should not traditional seeds be forbidden ongrounds of lack of sanitary or yield guarantees?

There is then a growing alarm in southerncountries which are centres of agricultural biodi-versity, or close neighbours to them, because of the disappearance of traditional farming. This

new awareness, which goes totally against thegrain of development economics, is helpedby the social and cultural distance between theseed companies (often multinationals) and thelocal peasants and farmers. While conservationof ‘wild’ biodiversity in ‘national parks’ is seenoften as a ‘northern’ idea imposed on the south(as to some extent is really the case), the conser-vation of in situ agricultural biodiversity was formany years left aside by the large wildernessnorthern organizations. It was pushed instead byspecific NGOs such as RAFI and GRAIN, alsoby southern scientists and by southern groups

who developed pro-peasant ideologies.There are deliberate attempts in India by groupsand individual farmers to revive agriculturaldiversity. In the Hemval Ghati of the GarhwalHimalaya, some farmers under the banner of theBeej Bachao Andolan (Save the Seed Movement)have been travelling in the region collectingseeds of a large diversity of crops. Many farmersgrow high-input high-yield varieties for themarket but also other varieties for their own fam-ilies. An important issue is to promote not onlythe survival of many varieties of the main crops(wheat and rice) but also to keep alive other





food crops that have been not subject to ‘GreenRevolution’seed substitution – like bajra, ramdanaand jowar, and also pulses in general. In the southof the country, the somewhat grandly named‘seed satyagraha’ of the Karnataka Rajya Raitha

Sangha (KRRS), became well known in the early1990s.3

Monsanto has used the loopholes in legislationor in effective regulation to introduce transgeniccrops outside the United States. Thus, there is adebate in some parts of India against the intro-duction of Bt cotton (that is, cotton seeds intowhich the bacillus thurigiensis has been geneti-cally engineered to act as an insecticide). InAndhra Pradesh, the farmers’ movement APRSuprooted and burned two crop sites in 1998, andalerted the state parliament and government toban further field sites, while in Karnataka the

leader of the farmers’ movement KRRS transpar-ently called on the company to reveal the exactlocations of its field tests of transgenic Bt cotton.Monsanto has been more successful elsewhere.There was little opposition in Argentina to trans-genic soybeans (Pengue, 2000).

In India, on 30 November 1999, the first day of the WTO conference in Seattle, several thousandfarmers gathered in Bangalore at the MahatmaGandhi statue in the park. They issued a ‘QuitIndia’ notice to Monsanto, and they warnedthe prestigious Indian Institute of Science not tocollaborate with Monsanto in research. The

company was urged to leave the country or facenon-violent direct action against its activities andinstallations. Agribusiness had already beenwarned with the destruction of Cargill facilities inone district back in 1993. The KRRS leaders havetravelled around the world, being much involvedin the anti-neo-liberal dissidence against the WTObecause the new regulations on international tradebring in their wake the enforcement of propertyrights on commercial seeds, which unjustly do notrecognize the original raw material and knowl-edge, while preventing farmers’ local gifts or saleof such commercial seeds. In 2001 the KRRS was

still trying to prevent the wholesale introduction of transgenic Bt cotton in India.Also in India, Navdanya is a large network of

farmers, environmentalists, scientists and con-cerned individuals which is working in differentparts of the country to collect and store crop vari-eties, evaluate and select those with good perfor-mance, and encourage their reuse in the fields(Kothari, 1998: 60–61), certainly a more partici-patory strategy than that of ex situ cold storage.What other name but ‘ecological neo-Narodnism’can be given to such initiatives? Reality iscontradictory, and movements against Cargill

and Monsanto are combined in India withmovements for subsidized industrial fertilizers.However, who would have thought twenty yearsago that praise for organic agriculture would beexpressed not by professional ethnoecologists or

agroecologists or by northern neo-rural environ-mentalists but by real farmers from India in inter-national trade meetings? This is not homespunoriental wisdom combating northern agriculturaltechnology, it is not identity politics only. On thecontrary, it must be interpreted as part of an inter-national worldwide trend with solid foundationsin agroecology.

Should there be a rush in southern countries toimpose intellectual property rights on crop vari-eties, animal races and medicinal knowledge? InIndia, Anil Gupta has long confronted this ques-tion with a pioneering large-scale ground-level

effort to document the local communities’knowledge regarding old and innovative resourceuses in the form of local registers. The objectivesare manifold: the exchange of ideas betweencommunities, the revitalization of local knowl-edge systems and the building up of local pride insuch systems, and the protection against intellec-tual ‘piracy’ by outsiders (Kothari, 1998: 105).The protection arises because prior registrationand publication would stop patenting. As AnilGupta (1996) has said repeatedly, if somebody isto patent some properties of neem, why not our-selves, Indian farmers and scientists? The main

thrust of his work, however, has been to enhancelocal pride in the existing processes of conserva-tion and innovation, and to stop outside advan-tage being taken gratis from this work.

TOWARDS A LATIN AMERICAN

AGROECOLOGICAL MOVEMENT

There is no space here (and we lack sufficientknowledge) for a review of other similar move-ments in countries in Asia and Africa. We shall

now very briefly review some Latin Americanagroecological movements. In South America pro-ductive dissidence to agricultural modernizationcan be found in the south of Brazil, in the states of Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul andextending through Misiones up to the historicalregion of Gran Chaco, from the north of Argentinaand Paraguay as far up as the south of Bolivia.

In Argentina, probably the most relevantagroecological experience that has so far emergedtakes place in the province of Misiones.4 Here, apeasant agroecological movement has broughttogether a range of productive experiences based





on the ‘improvement of the traditional, productivediversification, specialization in some sectorsand the strengthening of production for familyconsumption’. Such experiences emphasize thetransformation of production and the search for

new markets in ferias francas de Misiones (fairs).With reference to the creation of one of thesefairs, one of the organizers said, ‘We didn’tinvent Ferias Francas, we are recreating an age-old experience …’. In this province, 27 fairs takeplace every week of the year, in which more than2,000 farmers take part in order to sell their pro-duce directly to customers (Carballo, 2000).Probably the most beneficial work, agroecologi-cally speaking, that is carried out in Misionesis that of the Organic Farming Network of Misiones.

Experiences with agroecological initiatives

can also be found in north Santafesino,5

and in allof Gran Chaco. In the past few years a network of farmers and NGOs has taken shape, exchang-ing experiences (some with more than 20 yearsof experience, as is the case of INCUPO) andcoordinating actions generating training coursesfor technicians and producers in agroecology.

In the north of the province of Santa Fe an‘agroecological week of the Santa Fe province’has been developed. Since 1998, in the city of Rosario, there have existed ‘urban communitarianecological food gardens’ on villas miseria, whichprovide ‘local health centres’ with medicinal

plants rescued from Toba knowledge (MartinezSarasola, 1992: 441–476).If the agroecological movement is significant

in the north of Argentina it is more so in Brazil,especially in the states of Paraná (with the funda-mental action of AS-PTA), Santa Catarina (withthe official support of EPAGRI) and, above all, inRio Grande do Sul where EMATER (the stateorganism for agricultural extension) adoptedagroecology as its official policy (until 2002),declaring that the state is ‘free of transgenics’.There is in Brazil today the strongest movementin the world for land reform, the MST (the

Movement of the Landless), whose social ori-gins are in Rio Grande do Sul. In 1999 the MSTdeclared itself against transgenic crops, and inJanuary 2001 the MST, together with RafaelAlegria and other leaders of Via Campesina, andwith José Bové of the French ConfederationPaysanne, became the media stars of the PortoAlegre World Social Forum when they symboli-cally destroyed some Monsanto experimentalfields in the village of Nao-metoques. The contextwas the prohibition of transgenic soybeansin Rio Grande do Sul by the state government.Even if the valiant attitude of the government and

judiciary in Rio Grande do Sul against transgeniccrops would finally fail because of federal over-ruling, it has served to propel the MST in an eco-logical direction. The transgenic issue has sparkedoff a general discussion on agricultural technology

inside the MST.The rural–urban link of the Brazilian experi-

ences of Rio Grande do Sul is especially relevantin Porto Alegre, where a few days a week entirestreets fill up with market stalls, where manycooperatives establish ‘agroecological socializa-tion links’ with consumers (Caporal, 1998;Costabeber, 1998; Caporal and Costabeber, 2001).However, the Brazilian agroecological phenome-non is much more widespread, as hundreds of pro-ductive agroecological experiences can be foundthroughout the country (Canuto, 1997).

Similarly, in the states of Jalisco (Morales

Hernández, 1999) and Michoacan (Toledo, 1991)in Mexico, there exist several experiences thatthrough social collective action organize theirproduction and marketing to face up to conven-tional markets. Likewise, in Chile, the excellentwork of CET (previously in Santiago, now inTemuco), with its ramifications throughout thecountry and even throughout the rest of LatinAmerica through CLADES (with its magazine‘ Agroecology and Development ’), provide goodexamples of agroecological experiences, andwhich acquire special significance in theMapuche territory. Also, in Colombia, a Red de

Custodios de Semillas (seed wardens) existswhich is composed of farmers who exchangeexperiences, reinforcing a recuperation of localpeasant knowledge. Quite a few such alternativemanagement proposals also have a strong indige-nous content.

In the land reforms of the past 50 years, thehighland peasantries of the central Andes foughtagainst the modernization of the haciendas,which sought to get rid of them; they stayed put,and increased their holdings. There are moreestablished communities and more community(pasture) land in the Andes now than 30 or 40

years ago. This bothers the neo-liberals. Thepeasantry has not yet decreased in numbers,despite migration, but now the birth rate is comingdown. Will Quechua and Aymara communitiessurvive as such? Only 40 years ago, integrationand acculturation was the destiny traced for themby local modernizers (such as Galo Plaza inEcuador) and by the US political-anthropologicalestablishment. Their resistance today would behelped by improvement in the terms of trade fortheir production, if subsidized imports of agricul-tural products from the United States and Europewere stopped, if they could get subsidies (in





the form of payments for Farmer’s Rights, forinstance, and subsidies for the use of solarenergy), and if they could exercise organizedpolitical pressure for this purpose. We see explic-itly for the first time in the Andes and also in

Mesoamerica an agroecological pride which pro-vides a foundation for an alternative developmentor, as Arturo Escobar would put it, for an alter-native to development. If not this, what then?Should Andean peasants, with low-yielding agri-culture, give up farming and livestock raising asthe economy grows, give up their communitiesand their languages? Should then some of theirgrandchildren, as the economy grows still more,come back in small numbers as subsidizedmountain caretakers, making music and dancingas Indians for the tourists? In the final analysis,in situ agricultural biodiversity and local food

security could be assured as part of a movementwhich would put a much higher value also on thepreservation of cultural diversity. This is whatPRATEC in Peru, founded by the dissidentagronomist Eduardo Grillo, tried to do, buildingupon the work by agronomists from remoteprovinces, such as Oscar Blanco who longdefended cultivated species such as quinua andmany tubers (the ‘lost crops of the Incas’) againstthe onslaught of imported subsidized wheat.PRATEC is romantic and extremist, but the sub-

ject it puts on the table is realistic and down-to-earth. It is not their fault that it is not considered

worth the attention of multilateral banks or evenof universities (Apffel-Marglin and PRATEC,1998). In the University of San Simón deCochabamba in Bolivia there is an AgriculturalInstitute (AGRUCO) which is reviving Andeanpeasantry agroecology (Delgado, 2002; TapiaPonce, 1999; likewise Stephan Rist, 2001 in theUniversity of Berne: all of these published inAGRUCO, 2002).

Farmers and peasants from the movementsand experiences discussed in this chapter, fromin Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Mexico, Chile andColombia, met in December 1998 in Pereira,

Colombia, and established a declaration of principles, as members of the AgroecologicalMovement of Latin America and the Caribbean(MAELA). In this declaration they expressedtheir ‘opposition to the neo-liberal model … forits degradation of nature and society’. At thesame time they established, as a right of theirlocal organizations, the ‘management and controlof natural resources … without dependence onexternal input (agrochemical and transgenic), forthe biological reproduction of their cultures’,underlining its ‘support of the promotion,exchange and diffusion of local experiences of

civil resistance and the creation of alternativesin the use and conservation of local varieties’(MAELA, 2000). They also expressed their‘solidarity with the MST of Brazil, the peasantmovements of Bolivia, the Mapuches of Chile,

the indigenous peasants of Chiapas’, amongstother groups, as an example of internationalpeasantry.

A BRIEF CONCLUSION

In this chapter we have reviewed several move-ments in countries of the south based on anexplicit agroecological awareness. These move-ments are very different from the small neo-ruralpostmodern organic farming movements of the

United States and Europe. We are still far frombeing able to provide a complete taxonomy of such movements in the south, and in fact nobodyseems yet able to provide a whole picture. So,this chapter gives some detailed information onsome cases but only a very brief (superficial, andsecond-hand) view of other cases. However,there are some undoubted developments a newnetwork such as Via Campesina has arisen; manyagronomists now write theses and books onagroecology based on peasant knowledge; thedebates on Farmers’ Rights, biopiracy, in situcoevolution of agricultural biodiversity reach

public opinion. The agricultural policies of theUnited States and the European Union (protec-tionism against some imports, large export subsi-dies for many other products undermining worldpeasant agriculture) are under attack. There is aconfluence of views from peasants groups in thesouth and from some circles in the EuropeanUnion against such policies. In Europe this ischaracterized as the Agrarwende, against subsi-dized exports but in favour of subsidies to farmersbased on the multifunctionality of agriculture. Inthe south, subsidies to agroecological peasantswould be even more justified on grounds of in

situ biodiversity conservation and coevolution,energy efficiency, food security, cultural conser-vation. Such a policy of subsidies would requirean international agreement, perhaps based on anotion of paying back an ecological debt fromnorth to south for so many cases of biopiracy.

Under the discussion on agroecology lurks alarge question that is still outside the political andeconomic agenda. Has the march of agriculturein the past 150 years in Western countries beenwrong? What is the agronomic advice that shouldbe given not only in Peru or Mexico, but evenmore in India, in China? Should they preserve





their peasantries or should they get rid of them inthe process of modernization, development andurbanization? Compared to 100 years ago, andbecause of population growth, the number of peasants in the world has increased considerably;

therefore such questions are indeed relevant.In summary, agricultural policy should

balance environmental, economic, social, cul-tural values at different geographical and timescales. In some interpretations, modern agricul-ture is characterized by lower energy efficiency,genetic and soil erosion, ground and waterpollution. From another point of view, in thelanguage of economics, modern agricultureachieves increased productivity. Another, non-equivalent, description of agricultural develop-ment will emphasize loss of indigenous culturesand knowledge. There is here a clash of scientific

perspectives, also a clash of values. How to inte-grate the different points of view? How to decideon an agricultural policy in the presence of suchopposite, legitimate points of view? The role of the rural social scientist that we have adopted isto study experiences of peasant agroecologicalmovements and extract theoretical principles fortwo purposes: first, to help design participatorystrategies of local development, second, to inter-vene in the policy discussions at higher levels onthe role of agriculture in today’s world. Theworldwide peasant agroecological movement isnow an actor in these debates, as seen very

clearly in the World Social Forums of PortoAlegre both in 2001 and 2002. The wider sceneis the worldwide movement against neo-liberalglobalization in all its aspects (financial, trade,environment, politics), a network of networks, inwhich agrarian movements are just one actor.Perhaps an unexpected one.

NOTES

1 This land labourers union (SOC) was, in fact, the

expression in the 1980s of the final stage of a peasant

movement led by the land labourers or peasants with-

out land who demonstrated a huge potential and capa-

city for struggle in Southern Spain for more than 100

years. In the 1980s there was discontent with almost

total mechanization of work: coinciding with a grave

industrial crisis, this meant that land labourers had little

or no opportunities of alternative work. With their

wish to look for new alternatives which would surpass

the traditional claim to land, the SOC moved towards

new social movements in general, and towards the eco-

logical movement in particular. From the interaction of

their activism with their productive experience, there

emerged a clear approach of ecological management

of natural resources, similar to organic farming but

disagreeing with some of its styles of farming. The

aspect which they most dislike is the emphasis on

healthy eating and the commercial interest which

organic farming shows, in contrast to the social

aspects.

In its fight for land the SOC had had access to land

on several farms. Some of these lands were obtained

through continuous occupations and evictions which

led to frequent imprisonments, and others through

renting or purchase. There was always union pressure

and support from the more progressive sectors of the

church and the university, as well as some socio-

economic and cultural institutions. This meant that, in

the first half of the 1980s, the SOC was accompanied

by different non-peasant groups in their many actions.

These ranged from peaceful demonstrations and

marches looking for support from the villages and

cities on their itineraries to ‘symbolic’ occupations of

land or other more problematic temporary take-overs

of local government buildings, airports or even theAndalusian Parliament building. The ISEC of the

University of Cordoba has collaborated with SOC

since it was founded in 1978.

2 The Alliance for Responsible Trade (ART) of the

United States; Common Frontiers of Canada; the Red

Mexicana de Acción contra el Libre Cambio

(RMALC); the Quebec network for Continental

Integration; the Red Chilena por la Iniciativa de los

Pueblos (RCHIP, which is presently called the Alianza

Chilena por la Iniciativa de los Pueblos, ALCIR).

3 Cf. the letter from M.D. Nanjundaswamy, ‘Farmers

and Dunkel Draft’, Economic and Political Weekly, 26

June 1993, and the emailed newsletter of the KRRS.

Also, Akhil Gupta (1998), esp. last chapters, for adescription of the KRRS up to the mid-1990s.

4 Our knowledge of this experience is due to our unfor-

gettable friend ‘el coya Cametti’, with whom we

shared an enriching experience in the Maestria del

ISEC in la Rábida.

5 In spite of the grave social situation, disturbances,

environmental degradation and the progressive depop-

ulation of North Santafesino, there exists a wide

nucleus of institutions and independent technicians

which, for some years now, have made great efforts in

the search for an alternative development. Many pro-

ducers of the region share these ideals and some years

ago started to make changes using agroecological

practices. There now exists an inter-institutional artic-

ulation whose first success was the excellent diagnosis

of the Chaco Argentino (1999) which was carried

out by the Chaco Argentina Agroforestal Network

financed by the Secretary of Natural Resources of the

Argentinian central government. Incupo and Fundapaz

participated in this diagnosis, thus potentiating the

constitution of a Santafesina Agroforestal Board. This

group developed many experiences in North

Santafesino, including: (a) rotative pasture trials

on forested low-lands in Vera, where FundaPaz,

INTA, MAGIC Vera participated from 1994 to 1997;

(b) forestry and pasture management experiences with





small producers of the Cuña Boscosa Santafesina

developed by FundaPaz from 1992 to 2000; (c) devel-

opment of means of protection against overpasturing

of cattle, with the participation of CATIE of Costa

Rica; (d) experiences with forestal plantations by

means of intercalating the cultivation of local tree

species by FundaPaz in 1995 and 1996; (e) recupera-

tion of soil and impoverished natural pastures with

producers of the La Cabral area, on the part of PSA,

INTA San Cristóbal, with similar experiences in San

Manuel – La Sarita, on the part of PSA; (f) selective

thinning out of woodland with the production of eco-

logical charcoal and the management of natural pas-

tureland with rotative pasture in San Cristóbal on the

part of INTA San Cristóbal; (g) forestry management

experiences with small producers in the Colonia Piloto

Villa Guillermina area, on the part of the PSA from

1997 to 2000; (h) agroforestry management experi-

ences in the north-east Santafesino on the part of

Pastoral Social de Rafaela, Incupo and FundaPaz from1995 to 2000; (i) cataloguing of the native woodland

flora of the province of Santa Fe, carried out by

G.D. Marino and J.F. Pensiero, for the Subsecretary of

Culture – the provincial government of Santa Fe;

(j) introduction of subtropical pastures in the rainforests

of the Chaco, on the part of a team which was coordi-

nated by G.D. Marino of the university Department of

Agricultural Sciences; (k) gathering of floral informa-

tion of young quebrachales of the Cuña Boscosa

Santafesina, FACA and FundaPaz; (l) cataloguing of

flora and bird life in the province of Santa Fe, by

members of the aforementioned university depart-

ment; (m) experience of InCuPo moving from the

monocrop cultivation of sugarcane to the productiverecuperation of the Tacuarendí area from 1995 to

2000; (n) sustainable management of the ‘coast and

islands’ ecosystem through diversified agroforestal

production in the Romang area developed by the

InCuPo from 1993 to 2000; (o) trials in the harvesting

and storing of water for human consumption, of which

the Pastoral Social de Rafaella was in charge from

1996 to 2000. The information gathered from these

experiences led to the institutional articulation of the

Agroforestal Board Santafesina, which is committed

to working for and combining efforts in the preserva-

tion of the natural environments of the region, con-

tributing with ideas and activities for productive and

demographic recuperation of an agroecological nature.

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Documents

Curso VII Lectura 2. New Rural Social Movements