<div dir="ltr">Hi Margaretha and everyone-<div><br></div><div>Agroecology is one of those terms that defies easy definition. In part this is because it is mobilized by different sectors differently: scientists use it one way, farmers another, farmer movements another (though there are overlaps, of course).</div><div><br></div><div>The closest to a pithy description for agroecology I can come up with is that it is a form of food production that is based on foundational organizing principles which are antithetical to the simplifying industrial capitalist model. Agroecological farming is rooted in specific cultures, worldviews, and experiences of relating to specific ecologies on the planet. </div><div><br></div><div>Agroecology's principles include diversity and diversification (in temporal, spatial, and cultural dimensions); nutrient cycling and the avoidance of inputs; and enhancement and regeneration of biodiversity. Ultimately, agroecosystems should mimic the functioning of local ecosystems.</div><div><br></div><div>In practice, agroecological farms produce a diversity of products, for local and regional consumption, on farms that are not reliant on outside inputs (of say, chemical fertilizers or pesticides), and contribute to greater rather than diminished habitats for other non-human life forms. Agroecological farms treat pest issues through diversification, improvement of soil through additions of organic matter, and the stewarding of <i>greater</i> biodiversity for improved ecological function (e.g. owl boxes to reduce rodent pest pressure rather than poisoning the rodents). Compost is key, but so is reverent water stewardship.</div><div><br></div><div>What I most appreciated regarding LVC is their active creation of unity in diversity, of reaching across human difference from various spaces of being subjected to the worst of modernity, in order to create a living, changing visionary alternative form of modernity out of that difference and that experience. What's particularly inspiring to me is that this vision is anti-capitalist. At the same time, it doesn't propose a singular alternative like 'communism' -- in fact, some LVC members have experiences of statist communism and want nothing to do with such an 'ism'. And being food producers who most often sell into local markets, it isn't a strident anti-capitalism that sees any commerce as wrong, but one that objects to the structures of capitalist reproduction, seeking a new form of production and distribution based on values of ecology, egalitarianism, and democratic participation that moves way beyond its current sclerotic forms. </div><div><br></div><div>Some of the ways this looks in practice is the support of 'peasant markets', localization of distribution, production being directed towards feeding people rather than profit (or land being used to produce fuel or animal feed), CSAs, various forms of 'fair trade' relations, support for subsistence/self-reliance production, opposition to GMOs and synthetic inputs, etc</div><div><br></div><div>Hope this helps to explain!</div><div>Antonio</div><div><br></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, Oct 8, 2017 at 7:30 AM, margaretha haughwout <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:margaretha.anne.haughwout@gmail.com" target="_blank">margaretha.anne.haughwout@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br><div dir="ltr">Dear Antonio,<br><br>Thank you so much for this post, and for echoing the concerns of our other discussants in ways that provide new possibilities for action.<br><br>I'm wondering, before this week comes to a close, if you might share some of the material ways that the CLVC envisions that we can relate to "communities of more distant soil." Are there certain modes of circulation that you found inspiring, or worth pursuing, for example?<br><br>I'm also wondering how you describe agroecology. What are the common practices that distinguish it from common agriculture?<br><br>Thank you again, Antonio --<br>-M<br><br><br><br><br>--<br><a href="http://beforebefore.net" target="_blank">beforebefore.net</a><br><a href="http://guerrillagrafters.org" target="_blank">guerrillagrafters.org</a><br><a href="http://coastalreadinggroup.com" target="_blank">coastalreadinggroup.com</a><br>--<br><br><br><br>On Thu, Oct 5, 2017 at 11:41 AM, Antonio Roman-Alcala <<a href="mailto:antidogmatist@gmail.com" target="_blank">antidogmatist@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>><br>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br>> Hello all, and thanks to the other contributors, and to Margaretha for asking me to contribute.<br>><br>> <br>><br>> In general, I’m interested in these same questions and issues and have tried mostly to develop relational human-centered work (a.k.a. “organizing”) to address them. I’m also interested in doing this across geographical scales, without reifying one scale as the only or proper space for engagement. Thus I appreciate Valentine’s concern for the concrete question of “how to practice relating to the communities of more distant soil”, and offer some recent experiences that may relate.<br>><br>> <br>><br>> I was privileged to be a delegate to the 7th International Conference of La Vía Campesina this past July. For those who aren’t familiar, LVC is the world’s largest social movement of food producers, including ‘peasants’, indigenous groups, fishers, and ‘family’ farmers, and the conference is its preeminent decision-making space. The movement is a heterogeneous agglomeration with a distinctive politics and hybrid cosmovision.<br>><br>> <br>><br>> Some observers have proposed that LVC’s politics and cosmovision – founded on twin concepts of agroecology and food sovereignty – offers a new vision for modernity. That vision is fundamentally about dismantling the nature-society dichotomy, as the process of food production embedded in place and in longstanding (yet dynamic) culture brings to the fore immediate, physical and spiritual interrogations of the (false) division between human and non-human natures. Jason Moore and others have argued this division has underpinned the extractive period of the Capitalocene, and I would concur.<br>><br>> <br>><br>> My experience at the LVC conference showed me an imperfect but inspiring process of dismantling that divide, within our ‘local’ communities and between them, as an ever-expanding circle of solidarious relationships. Agroecology serves LVC – and can serve others, perhaps – as a means to build human-serving agroecosystems that are also constitutive of human/nonhuman alliances.<br>><br>> <br>><br>> Simultaneously interpreted between 13 or more languages, the conversations amongst 500 delegates from 80 countries revolved around ending capitalism, advancing (human) justice and the rights of nature, and defending indigenous and campesino ways of life under threat. The conversations advanced an agenda and strategy for the movement, but equally they offered spaces of encounter, of simple mutual listening.<br>><br>> <br>><br>> Combined with the ‘mystica’ (an LVC ritual of sharing of our different (rural) cultures in song, dance, theater and music), the ostensibly political direction of the conversations to me seemed at its core to be about “relating to the communities of more distant soil”, as a precondition for developing a powerful and effective oppositional movement to the structural violence of capitalist modernity.<br>><br>> <br>><br>> I will close here, so as not to go on too long, by arguing for seeing the slow and concrete building of shared affinity, solidarity and (political) alignment as key tasks for creating a more-than-human post-Capitalocene. While we may not yet have the volunteer interpretation force necessary to bring our non-human allies into our human-centered conversations, if we are building up from communities of practice – whose lives and worldviews are steeped in an everyday co-construction of life with non-human allies – a new politics and vision, and organization to bring these about, I am confident that we will be on a better path towards healing.<br><br>></div>
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empyre forum<br>
<a href="mailto:empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.<wbr>edu.au</a><br>
<a href="http://empyre.library.cornell.edu" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://empyre.library.cornell.<wbr>edu</a><br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div><span style="font-size:12.8px">Antonio Roman-Alcalá, MA</span><br></div><div>Thinker, Writer, Doer</div><div><span style="font-size:12.8px"><a href="http://antonioromanalcala.com" target="_blank">antonioromanalcala.com</a></span><br></div><div><a href="http://antidogmatist.com" target="_blank">antidogmatist.com</a></div><div><div style="font-size:12.8px">+1 (415) 571 6660</div><div style="font-size:12.8px"><br></div><div style="font-size:12.8px">recent peer-reviewed articles:</div><a href="http://www.ephemerajournal.org/contribution/looking-food-sovereignty-movements-post-growth-theory" target="_blank">Looking to food sovereignty movements for post-growth theory</a> (2017)</div><div><a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01436597.2016.1142366" target="_blank">Conceptualizing components, conditions, and trajectories of food sovereignty's 'sovereignty'</a> (2016)</div><div><a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14747731.2015.1033199?journalCode=rglo20" target="_blank">Broadening the land question in food sovereignty to Northern settings: the case of Occupy the Farm</a> (2015)</div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>
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