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New Rural Social Movements and Agroecology
Eduardo Sevilla Guzmán and Joan Martinez-Alier
There are new movements emerging in the world
in defence of agricultural policies favourable to
traditional agroecological methods. The agroeco-
logical antagonism to neo-liberal globalization
is described here mainly with reference to net-
works in Latin America (because of our own
direct knowledge and participation in them),
but it is a worldwide phenomenon, as shown by
movements in India also described here. These
movements 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 oppose
subsidized 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 actors
are not neo-rural postmodern organic farmers (as
they might exist in the United States and Europe)
but spokesmen for large rural populations, some-
times peasants, sometimes landless labourers (as
the MST in Brazil). Such movements are inter-
preted in this chapter in the wider context of a
world movement of dissidence formed by a net-
work of networks. By ‘agroecology’ we refer
here to a collective practice of agriculture which
explicitly considers not only economic and
social aspects (income, employment) but also
environmental and ecological aspects (pollution,
soil conservation, cycles of nutrients, energy
flow). Therefore there is a link between agroecol-
ogy as a practice and the science of agroecology
(Altieri, 1987; Gliessman, 1998). Agroecology in
our view promotes the endogenous potential of
agriculture, relying on traditional peasant knowl-
edge, though being also open to innovations
that help sustainability (Sevilla Guzmán and
Woodgate, 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 process
of economic development is that, as agricul-
tural productivity increases, production cannot
increase pari passu because of a low demand for
agricultural produce as a whole. Therefore, the
active agricultural population decreases not only
in relative but also in absolute terms, and indeed
this has been the path of development – in
Britain even before the First World War, in Spain
since the 1960s, not yet in India. Now, however,
agricultural productivity is not well calculated:
nothing is deducted from the value of production
on account of chemical pollution and genetic
erosion, and the inputs are valued too cheaply
because fossil energy is too cheap, and because
unsustainable use is made of soils and some
fertilizers. What the ecologically correct prices
should be is unknown; the important point is
that the ecological critique of the economics of
agriculture opens up a large space for neo-
Narodnik argument, a space that is being
increasingly taken up around the world. Issues
such as biodiversity conservation, threats from
pesticides and energy saving are transformed
into local arguments for improvements in the
conditions of life and for cultural survival of
peasants. Such arguments have become wide-
spread in new networks such as the Via
Campesina (the Peasant Way), which has insti-
tuted an international Peasant’s Day, the
17th April, the anniversary of the massacre of
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NEW SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND AGROECOLOGY
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’. There
an interaction was initiated which would lead to
the birth of the Continental Peasants Movement
in Latin America. The different Latin American
organizations (with a small European representa-
tion) thus became aware of the similarities in
both their means of struggle and their ideological
evolution. Such is the case of the Andalucian
SOC – Sindicato de Obreros del Campo1 (land
labourers union) – and the Brazilian MST, legal-
ized in 1984, but at work in an embryonic state in
Rio 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 the
South American continent through the formal
organization 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 the
1980s, which became more intense in the 1990s.
These first interactions involved productive
experiments of an agroecological nature (Sevilla
Guzmán, 1999) and the creation of the first
European committees in support of the Mexican
Neo-Zapatism and the MST and then those that
developed around the SOC.
Probably the next step in this process of con-
fluence of independent peasant organizations
took place on 14/15 November 1984, with the
Latin American Conference of Independent
Peasant Organizations, organized in Mexico by
the Coordinadora Nacional Plan de Ayala. Here
the Peasant Confederation of Peru, the National
Federation of Peasant Organizations of Ecuador,
the Independent Peasant Movement of the
Dominican Republic, the National Confederation
of 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 has
spread to the whole country. It has withstood
violent armed repression in Paranà, Parà and other
states. Its tactics consist in occupation, settle-
ment and immediate cultivation of large proper-
ties. Some of the MST leaders also belong to the
Workers’ party, though the MST is more to the
left. Other spaces of confluence in the dissidence
process include the international exchange events
469
convoked by the MST of Brazil in 1985 and by
the FENOCI of Ecuador in 1986. In Ecuador in
1987 the First Andean Exchange Workshop of
Peasant Indigenous Organizations was held. In
Central 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 Brazil
named their continental campaign ‘500 years of
indigenous, black and popular resistance’ in
Bogota, Colombia. Three continental conferences
were held, as well as several meetings coordi-
nated by different Latin American countries, with
the assistance of European rural (or so-called
peasant) organizations.
THE ZAPATISTA MOVEMENT
AS ONE CREATOR OF THE
ANTAGONISTIC RURAL DISCOURSE
The key social actor, along with the MST, in the
configuration of antagonistic rural praxis and
discourse was the Neo-Zapatista Movement of
Chiapas. Mexican peasant agriculture was and is
under increasing threat because of food imports
from the United States, which increased under
the NAFTA free trade treaty between the US,
Canada and Mexico. Eco-Zapatism was overdue
in Mexico. In the early 1990s, Guillermo Bonfil
had published his deeply moving account of
vanishing indigenous Mexico (Bonfil Batalla,
1998). It has now become general knowledge in
Mexico that indigenous cultures and biodiversity
go together (Toledo, 1996, 2000). Biodiversity is
valuable even when it has no market. The Chiapas
rebellion came into the open against the NAFTA
on the day it became operative (1 January 1994),
helping to make indigenous peasantry a political
subject.
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 movements
that question economic globalization and neo-
liberalism at world level, as well as the progressive
consolidation of a new antagonistic discourse. In
fact, the Zapatista movement made possible the
introduction of socio-cultural diversity into the
worldwide anti-neo-liberal movement’s discourse
(when this was in its gestation period); that is to
say, the enormous diversity of subjects, territo-
ries, resources, traditions and realities that the
world was made up of at the end of the twentieth
century.
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470 NEW RURAL RELATIONS
In an attempt to come up with a synthesis, the
characteristics of Neo-Zapatism, an age-old and
at the same time new social movement, are the
following:
1 The acceptance of a historical continuance
between its processes of collective social
action and those developed by those ethnic
groups which through multiple processes
throughout 500 years have put up resistance
to colonization and oppression generated by
the expansion of the European socio-cultural
identity.
2 The attribution to economic globalization and
neo-liberalism in present times, of the histori-
cal oppression suffered by the indigenous
communities. Specifically the foreseeable
impact of the NAFTA on the indigenous com-
munities of Chiapas, which added to their
resistance to the eviction of their communities
and to the subordination to the interests of the
timber companies and landowners.
3 This struggle against exclusion does not end
with their confrontation with the moderniz-
ing socio-economic system. They are also
fighting for the recognition of the Native
Indians in the Mexican constitution. The
diversity of the ethnic groups which make up
their movement has led them to defend the
recognition of differences: ‘We want a world
where all worlds fit in’.
4 They demand a democracy unadulterated by
external or internal mismanagement, corrup-
tion and distortion of the true participation of
people. To this effect, they are Mexican patriots
who oppose the ‘foreign domination of North
American imperialism’. Moreover, they aim to
make a true democratic change to the political
organization so that ‘those that are in charge
also have to obey’.
From the depths of the Lacandona forest, the
EZLN and Subcomandante Marcos developed an
‘informational strategy’ to fulfil the establish-
ment of an ‘autonomous communication’ to
reach public opinion and to generate a process of
confluence with all the groups that are excluded
from the modernizing socio-economic system.
With this, they not only developed a way of
defending themselves with the spoken word (‘We
only take up arms to make a statement’), but they
have 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’ made
contact with the, then incipient, economic
anti-globalization social movements, holding
debates which took place in the context of the
campaign of ‘50 years are enough’, against the
half-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, culminating
in the alternative forum ‘The Other Voices of
the Planet’ which developed in Madrid in the
autumn of 1994. Continuing with its dynamics of
resistance and informational struggle, the EZLN
called, in Spain in the summer of 1997, the
Second Intergalactic Conference against Neo-
liberalism and for Humanity, by means of an itin-
erant celebration throughout various towns and
cities that had as its driving force local Zapatista
committees. In Andalucia the militant members
of the SOC played a central role in the organiza-
tional infrastructure of the congress, especially in
the closing acts which took place in El Indiano, a
large farm which was acquired after many years
of struggle involving occupations and imprison-
ments. This was one of the agroecological expe-
riences that the cooperatives of the SOC carried
out as a ‘place for reflection and sociopolitical
and productive practice’ (Sevilla Guzmán, 1999;
Guzmán Casado et al., 2000).
THE IMPACT OF THE FTAA
The biggest and most devastating impact that, in
the short term, the economic globalization process
is having on peasant and family-run agriculture is
caused by the policies of the freeing of interna-
tional agricultural trade (Rosset, 1999) coupled
with the subsidies to exports in the United States
(and the EU). In this sense, the NAFTA must be
contemplated within a global strategy that intends
to configurate a ‘Free Trade Area in America’
(FTAA). It intended to deregulate the market,
services and investments throughout both American
continents in such a way that the multinationals
had the right to use natural resources indiscrimi-
nately. Dorval Brunelle (2001) illustrated the
repercussions of this deregulation with a Mexican
example: ‘The Mexican government had to pay
16.7 million dollars to the Californian firm
Metalclad Corp., because a Mexican municipality
would not authorize the installation of a hazardous
waste dump against which the local population
had been mobilized.’ The approval of the FTAA
meant the gradual elimination of any type of tariff.
Therefore, products coming from the United
States and Canada had free access and were
exempt from custom and non-custom restrictions.
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NEW SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND AGROECOLOGY
Likewise the FTAA would mean unrestricted
access to bidding and contracts for public sector
supply. Local companies were left in the hands of
the multinational market to carry out activities
linked to water and energy provision in the urban
economies of Latin American countries. The third
requirement of this amplification of trade centred
on 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 that
industrialized farming, introduced throughout the
Latin American area, requires.
Thus an antagonism towards the FTAA emerged
and it is still mounting. It appeared in the form of
antagonism towards the FTAA from the American
trade union movement and the social movements
crystallizing in the appearance of a Continental
Social Alliance (CSA). In fact, this process began
in the ministerial meeting in Denver in 1995. The
trade union movement of the 35 countries of
the Americas, including Cuba, with the support
of the Pan-American Regional Employment
Organization (PREO) – the continental wing of the
International Confederation of Free Unions –
organized a parallel conference to express their mis-
trust of the FTAA. The following year, the American
Union Movement assembled in the Colombian city
of Cartagena to elaborate a document reflecting
on this subject and to put pressure on government
representatives. The process continued that same
year in Brazil. During the meeting of the presidents
of the member countries of Mercosur, where ‘both
the first central trade union of the USA, the
AFL–CIO and the ORIT sent representatives to
offer support to their South American counterparts
who had reached an agreement to celebrate an
international day of struggle for the workers of
Mercosur’. However, it was in Belo Horizonte in
1987 that the first convergence between the
American trade union movement and the civic orga-
nizations against free trade occurred. These have
since worked together on an alternative project to
the FTAA, The decision was taken to create a
Continental Social Alliance (CSA) which would
face up to the FTAA, elaborating, in a participative
way, concrete and viable alternatives.
In 1998, the five existing national coalitions
against free trade2 called for the first Summit of
the American People. This took place in Santiago
de Chile from the 14th to the 17th of April, par-
allel to the ‘second summit’ of the leaders of the
‘American States’. Environmental and feminist
associations as well as several associations of
alternative American social movements responded
to that call. There a programmatic document was
produced of great relevance to the configuration
471
of alternatives to global neo-liberalism,
‘Alternatives for America: towards an agreement
between the people of the continent’. In this
document 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 involved
with this dynamic, representing of the Peasant
Movement of Latin America and the Caribbean,
is relevant to our line of argument.
Antagonism towards globalization in the
American continent should be analysed in the
much wider context of global dissidence. Here
the Movement against Maastricht and Economic
Globalization (MAM) and the confluence against
the Multi-lateral Investment Agreement (MIA)
developed parallel and confluent dynamics. In
effect, from 1990 to 1995 multiple European
social movements joined forces by incorporating
in to their ideas and debates calls for a struggle
against the rapidly developing ‘Europe of
Capital’. Hence, feminist, ecological, pacifist
and Third World groups and all the collectives
committed to the fight against poverty, with ethical
and solidarity ideals, joined together, consolidat-
ing the MAM. On the other hand, the conflu-
ence against the MIA acquired special relevance
in Canada, France, the United States, central
Scandinavian countries and several countries from
the periphery such as Malaysia, the Philippines,
India and Brazil. Friends of the Earth and Le
Monde Diplomatique conducted vigorous cam-
paigns against the MIA. The joining together of
these two fronts of economic anti-globalization
began 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 in
October 1998, through the configuration of Global
Action of the People.
THE CONSOLIDATION OF THE
ANTAGONIST NETWORK AGAINST
NEO-LIBERAL GLOBALIZATION:
GLOBAL ACTION OF THE PEOPLE
Since the First Intergalactic Conference against
Neo-liberalism and for Humanity, which took
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472 NEW RURAL RELATIONS
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 creation
of Global Action of the People (AGP) against
free trade. This group was the first coordinator,
on a world level, against economic globalization
and neo-liberalism. In Geneva, at the beginning
of 1998, the very first meeting of the AGP was
attended by some three hundred activists from all
over 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 centre
of 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 squatter
movement 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 join
forces to fight against free trade? This question
can only be answered in the context of the
debates that the different groups have carried out
in 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 international
institutions – fundamentally the IMF, World
Bank and World Trade Organization, is coac-
tively imposing economic policies that openly
impact negatively on both human work and nat-
ural resources. The large multinational corpora-
tions have been studied since the early 1990s by
different social collectives and networks that
have witnessed how pacifist, feminist and eco-
logical claims have been seemingly incorporated
into sales campaigns as slogans. At the same time
these very same transnationals use the workforce
from the periphery through the relationships they
maintain with their production lines and affili-
ated suppliers. They exploit precariousness and
child labour, impose a total absence of social
benefits and a union prohibition, amongst other
human rights transgressions, as well as paying
wages so low that workers are unable to feed
their families.
In a similar way, the dissidence against eco-
nomic globalization came to the conclusion that
neo-liberal politics mean a growing degradation
of natural resources, revealing the commercial,
financial and speculative mechanisms which pull
down thousands of hectares of forest, transforming
this land for the growth of crop or tree plantations,
forcing indigenous groups, whose livelihood
depended on the forest, to move. The uprooting
of mangroves around the Tropics to the benefit of
shrimp exports became an international scandal.
Also, attention started to be drawn to the human
and environmental damage caused by the obliga-
tion to pay external debts (emphasized by the
Jubilee 2000 campaigns).
THE EMERGENCE OF
AGROECOLOGY FROM THE
ANTAGONISM PROCESSES
TOWARDS NEO-LIBERALISM
AND GLOBALIZATION
In the past few decades there have been various
productive experiences that show the emergence
of a new management model of natural resources,
based on local knowledge and its merging with
modern technologies. Many of these recreate, in
some aspects, historical forms of socio-economic
organization linked to socio-cultural identity.
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NEW SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND AGROECOLOGY
Conventional agricultural science would not
hesitate in labelling such experiences as a new
paradigm of anti-modern rural development. Such
experiences are dispersed world-wide (Pretty,
1995). They are born from processes of resistance
in the interstices of agricultural modernization and
they 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 Manuel
Toledo. They are ‘focal points of civilizatory
resistance’. The first, which he refers to as ‘post-
modern’, is made up of ‘a polychrome range of
social and countercultural movements’. The
second social space is located on certain ‘islands
of 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 in
the 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 born
in Chiapas, a wider movement has risen since
2002 called ‘En Defensa del Maíz’, against maize
imports from the United States. In India, as
Kothari puts it (1998: 51), a single species of rice
(Oryza sativa) collected from the wild some time
in the distant past, has diversified into approxi-
mately 50,000 varieties as a result of a combina-
tion of evolutionary/habitat influences and the
innovative skills of farmers. This contribution to
genetic diversity is a fact that the modern seed
industry conveniently sidesteps, and that the con-
sumers of industrialized countries have ignored
until recently. Mexican peasants never thought of
patenting or instituting other types of intellectual
property rights on the varieties of maize that have
been used by the commercial seed industry.
473
Agricultural biopiracy is a topic which the
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United
Nations (FAO) has been discussing for some
twenty 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 to
continue growing and locally freely sharing or
selling their own low-yielding, low-input seeds?
From the point of view of international capital-
ism, replacing their seeds by commercial seeds
would be more conducive to economic growth.
Should not traditional seeds be forbidden on
grounds of lack of sanitary or yield guarantees?
There is then a growing alarm in southern
countries 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 the
grain of development economics, is helped
by the social and cultural distance between the
seed companies (often multinationals) and the
local peasants and farmers. While conservation
of ‘wild’ biodiversity in ‘national parks’ is seen
often 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 for
many years left aside by the large wilderness
northern organizations. It was pushed instead by
specific NGOs such as RAFI and GRAIN, also
by southern scientists and by southern groups
who developed pro-peasant ideologies.
There are deliberate attempts in India by groups
and individual farmers to revive agricultural
diversity. In the Hemval Ghati of the Garhwal
Himalaya, some farmers under the banner of the
Beej Bachao Andolan (Save the Seed Movement)
have been travelling in the region collecting
seeds of a large diversity of crops. Many farmers
grow high-input high-yield varieties for the
market but also other varieties for their own fam-
ilies. An important issue is to promote not only
the survival of many varieties of the main crops
(wheat and rice) but also to keep alive other
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474 NEW RURAL RELATIONS
food crops that have been not subject to ‘Green
Revolution’ seed substitution – like bajra, ramdana
and jowar, and also pulses in general. In the south
of the country, the somewhat grandly named
‘seed satyagraha’ of the Karnataka Rajya Raitha
Sangha (KRRS), became well known in the early
1990s.3
Monsanto has used the loopholes in legislation
or in effective regulation to introduce transgenic
crops outside the United States. Thus, there is a
debate in some parts of India against the intro-
duction of Bt cotton (that is, cotton seeds into
which the bacillus thurigiensis has been geneti-
cally engineered to act as an insecticide). In
Andhra Pradesh, the farmers’ movement APRS
uprooted and burned two crop sites in 1998, and
alerted the state parliament and government to
ban further field sites, while in Karnataka the
leader of the farmers’ movement KRRS transpar-
ently called on the company to reveal the exact
locations 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 thousand
farmers gathered in Bangalore at the Mahatma
Gandhi statue in the park. They issued a ‘Quit
India’ notice to Monsanto, and they warned
the prestigious Indian Institute of Science not to
collaborate with Monsanto in research. The
company was urged to leave the country or face
non-violent direct action against its activities and
installations. Agribusiness had already been
warned with the destruction of Cargill facilities in
one district back in 1993. The KRRS leaders have
travelled around the world, being much involved
in the anti-neo-liberal dissidence against the WTO
because the new regulations on international trade
bring in their wake the enforcement of property
rights on commercial seeds, which unjustly do not
recognize the original raw material and knowl-
edge, while preventing farmers’ local gifts or sale
of 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 different
parts 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 is
contradictory, and movements against Cargill
and Monsanto are combined in India with
movements for subsidized industrial fertilizers.
However, who would have thought twenty years
ago that praise for organic agriculture would be
expressed 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 homespun
oriental wisdom combating northern agricultural
technology, it is not identity politics only. On the
contrary, it must be interpreted as part of an inter-
national worldwide trend with solid foundations
in agroecology.
Should there be a rush in southern countries to
impose intellectual property rights on crop vari-
eties, animal races and medicinal knowledge? In
India, 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 resource
uses in the form of local registers. The objectives
are manifold: the exchange of ideas between
communities, the revitalization of local knowl-
edge systems and the building up of local pride in
such systems, and the protection against intellec-
tual ‘piracy’ by outsiders (Kothari, 1998: 105).
The protection arises because prior registration
and publication would stop patenting. As Anil
Gupta (1996) has said repeatedly, if somebody is
to patent some properties of neem, why not our-
selves, Indian farmers and scientists? The main
thrust of his work, however, has been to enhance
local 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 sufficient
knowledge) for a review of other similar move-
ments in countries in Asia and Africa. We shall
now very briefly review some Latin American
agroecological movements. In South America pro-
ductive dissidence to agricultural modernization
can be found in the south of Brazil, in the states of
Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul and
extending through Misiones up to the historical
region of Gran Chaco, from the north of Argentina
and Paraguay as far up as the south of Bolivia.
In Argentina, probably the most relevant
agroecological experience that has so far emerged
takes place in the province of Misiones.4 Here, a
peasant agroecological movement has brought
together a range of productive experiences based
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NEW SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND AGROECOLOGY
on the ‘improvement of the traditional, productive
diversification, specialization in some sectors
and the strengthening of production for family
consumption’. Such experiences emphasize the
transformation of production and the search for
new markets in ferias francas de Misiones (fairs).
With reference to the creation of one of these
fairs, one of the organizers said, ‘We didn’t
invent Ferias Francas, we are recreating an age-
old experience …’. In this province, 27 fairs take
place every week of the year, in which more than
2,000 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 Misiones
is that of the Organic Farming Network of
Misiones.
Experiences with agroecological initiatives
can also be found in north Santafesino,5 and in all
of Gran Chaco. In the past few years a network
of farmers and NGOs has taken shape, exchang-
ing experiences (some with more than 20 years
of experience, as is the case of INCUPO) and
coordinating actions generating training courses
for 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 communitarian
ecological food gardens’ on villas miseria, which
provide ‘local health centres’ with medicinal
plants rescued from Toba knowledge (Martinez
Sarasola, 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 (with
the official support of EPAGRI) and, above all, in
Rio Grande do Sul where EMATER (the state
organism for agricultural extension) adopted
agroecology as its official policy (until 2002),
declaring that the state is ‘free of transgenics’.
There is in Brazil today the strongest movement
in 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 MST
declared itself against transgenic crops, and in
January 2001 the MST, together with Rafael
Alegria and other leaders of Via Campesina, and
with José Bové of the French Confederation
Paysanne, became the media stars of the Porto
Alegre World Social Forum when they symboli-
cally destroyed some Monsanto experimental
fields in the village of Nao-metoques. The context
was the prohibition of transgenic soybeans
in Rio Grande do Sul by the state government.
Even if the valiant attitude of the government and
475
judiciary in Rio Grande do Sul against transgenic
crops would finally fail because of federal over-
ruling, it has served to propel the MST in an eco-
logical direction. The transgenic issue has sparked
off 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 relevant
in Porto Alegre, where a few days a week entire
streets fill up with market stalls, where many
cooperatives 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 found
throughout the country (Canuto, 1997).
Similarly, in the states of Jalisco (Morales
Hernández, 1999) and Michoacan (Toledo, 1991)
in Mexico, there exist several experiences that
through social collective action organize their
production and marketing to face up to conven-
tional markets. Likewise, in Chile, the excellent
work of CET (previously in Santiago, now in
Temuco), with its ramifications throughout the
country and even throughout the rest of Latin
America through CLADES (with its magazine
‘Agroecology and Development’), provide good
examples of agroecological experiences, and
which acquire special significance in the
Mapuche territory. Also, in Colombia, a Red de
Custodios de Semillas (seed wardens) exists
which is composed of farmers who exchange
experiences, reinforcing a recuperation of local
peasant knowledge. Quite a few such alternative
management proposals also have a strong indige-
nous content.
In the land reforms of the past 50 years, the
highland peasantries of the central Andes fought
against the modernization of the haciendas,
which sought to get rid of them; they stayed put,
and increased their holdings. There are more
established communities and more community
(pasture) land in the Andes now than 30 or 40
years ago. This bothers the neo-liberals. The
peasantry has not yet decreased in numbers,
despite migration, but now the birth rate is coming
down. Will Quechua and Aymara communities
survive as such? Only 40 years ago, integration
and acculturation was the destiny traced for them
by local modernizers (such as Galo Plaza in
Ecuador) and by the US political-anthropological
establishment. Their resistance today would be
helped by improvement in the terms of trade for
their production, if subsidized imports of agricul-
tural products from the United States and Europe
were stopped, if they could get subsidies (in
34-Cloke New-3295.qxd 7/29/2005 1:33 PM Page 476
476 NEW RURAL RELATIONS
the form of payments for Farmer’s Rights, for
instance, and subsidies for the use of solar
energy), and if they could exercise organized
political 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 development
or, 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 as
the economy grows, give up their communities
and their languages? Should then some of their
grandchildren, as the economy grows still more,
come back in small numbers as subsidized
mountain caretakers, making music and dancing
as Indians for the tourists? In the final analysis,
in situ agricultural biodiversity and local food
security could be assured as part of a movement
which would put a much higher value also on the
preservation of cultural diversity. This is what
PRATEC in Peru, founded by the dissident
agronomist Eduardo Grillo, tried to do, building
upon the work by agronomists from remote
provinces, such as Oscar Blanco who long
defended cultivated species such as quinua and
many tubers (the ‘lost crops of the Incas’) against
the 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 even
of universities (Apffel-Marglin and PRATEC,
1998). In the University of San Simón de
Cochabamba in Bolivia there is an Agricultural
Institute (AGRUCO) which is reviving Andean
peasantry agroecology (Delgado, 2002; Tapia
Ponce, 1999; likewise Stephan Rist, 2001 in the
University of Berne: all of these published in
AGRUCO, 2002).
Farmers and peasants from the movements
and experiences discussed in this chapter, from
in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Mexico, Chile and
Colombia, met in December 1998 in Pereira,
Colombia, and established a declaration of
principles, as members of the Agroecological
Movement of Latin America and the Caribbean
(MAELA). In this declaration they expressed
their ‘opposition to the neo-liberal model … for
its degradation of nature and society’. At the
same time they established, as a right of their
local organizations, the ‘management and control
of natural resources … without dependence on
external input (agrochemical and transgenic), for
the biological reproduction of their cultures’,
underlining its ‘support of the promotion,
exchange and diffusion of local experiences of
civil resistance and the creation of alternatives
in the use and conservation of local varieties’
(MAELA, 2000). They also expressed their
‘solidarity with the MST of Brazil, the peasant
movements of Bolivia, the Mapuches of Chile,
the indigenous peasants of Chiapas’, amongst
other groups, as an example of international
peasantry.
A BRIEF CONCLUSION
In this chapter we have reviewed several move-
ments in countries of the south based on an
explicit agroecological awareness. These move-
ments are very different from the small neo-rural
postmodern organic farming movements of the
United States and Europe. We are still far from
being able to provide a complete taxonomy of
such movements in the south, and in fact nobody
seems yet able to provide a whole picture. So,
this chapter gives some detailed information on
some cases but only a very brief (superficial, and
second-hand) view of other cases. However,
there are some undoubted developments a new
network such as Via Campesina has arisen; many
agronomists now write theses and books on
agroecology based on peasant knowledge; the
debates on Farmers’ Rights, biopiracy, in situ
coevolution of agricultural biodiversity reach
public opinion. The agricultural policies of the
United States and the European Union (protec-
tionism against some imports, large export subsi-
dies for many other products undermining world
peasant agriculture) are under attack. There is a
confluence of views from peasants groups in the
south and from some circles in the European
Union against such policies. In Europe this is
characterized as the Agrarwende, against subsi-
dized exports but in favour of subsidies to farmers
based on the multifunctionality of agriculture. In
the south, subsidies to agroecological peasants
would 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 require
an international agreement, perhaps based on a
notion of paying back an ecological debt from
north to south for so many cases of biopiracy.
Under the discussion on agroecology lurks a
large question that is still outside the political and
economic agenda. Has the march of agriculture
in the past 150 years in Western countries been
wrong? What is the agronomic advice that should
be given not only in Peru or Mexico, but even
more in India, in China? Should they preserve
34-Cloke New-3295.qxd 7/29/2005 1:33 PM Page 477
NEW SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND AGROECOLOGY
their peasantries or should they get rid of them in
the process of modernization, development and
urbanization? Compared to 100 years ago, and
because 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 time
scales. In some interpretations, modern agricul-
ture is characterized by lower energy efficiency,
genetic and soil erosion, ground and water
pollution. From another point of view, in the
language of economics, modern agriculture
achieves increased productivity. Another, non-
equivalent, description of agricultural develop-
ment will emphasize loss of indigenous cultures
and 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 decide
on an agricultural policy in the presence of such
opposite, legitimate points of view? The role of
the rural social scientist that we have adopted is
to study experiences of peasant agroecological
movements and extract theoretical principles for
two purposes: first, to help design participatory
strategies of local development, second, to inter-
vene in the policy discussions at higher levels on
the role of agriculture in today’s world. The
worldwide peasant agroecological movement is
now an actor in these debates, as seen very
clearly in the World Social Forums of Porto
Alegre both in 2001 and 2002. The wider scene
is the worldwide movement against neo-liberal
globalization in all its aspects (financial, trade,
environment, politics), a network of networks, in
which 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
477
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 the
Andalusian 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 a
description 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
34-Cloke New-3295.qxd 7/29/2005 1:33 PM Page 478
478 NEW RURAL RELATIONS
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 from
1995 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 productive
recuperation 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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