Abstract
Agroecology is increasingly seen to contain solutions that can be used for wider societal transformation. While debates have mainly focused on reformist versus revolutionary strategies, less attention has been paid to how such strategies connect to peasant demands and how they can be combined for agroecological transformation. In this article we study transformation by the agroecology movement in Brazil through the theoretical lens of political articulation. We show that peasants’ local demands for land, alternative farming and local markets were mobilised in an institutional politics to gain policy support and in a populist politics to create movements that pose a systemic challenge to authority. We then argue that the political viability of wider societal transformation lies in the ability to create movements and organisations that politicise peasants and embrace local demands. We conclude that attention should not only be paid to individual strategies and their immediate effects but also on how diverse politics combine, to build the material and symbolic capacity of the movement and their potential for transformation over the long run.
Highlights
Agroecology is increasingly promoted by researchers and policy makers to transform agriculture and food systems (Elzen et al, 2017; FAO 2009)
To explore the significance of the findings for societal transformation and scaling, we contrasted the results of the analysis with the literature on agroecology, on how it engages with reformist and revolutionary strate gies for transformation
This article shows how processes of transformation take shape through the political articulation of agroecology in Brazil. It shows that grievances stemming from abusive sharecropping arrangements, decreasing income and pesticide contamination were articulated in local demands for land, markets and sustainable farming practices. These local demands were further articulated in an institutional politics to acquire policy support as well as in a popular politics to create move ments that challenge agribusiness’ control over land, markets and policy resources
Summary
Agroecology is increasingly promoted by researchers and policy makers to transform agriculture and food systems (Elzen et al, 2017; FAO 2009). Journal of Rural Studies 89 (2022) 140–148 engagement with powerful, institutional agents such as large NGOs, research institutes, government organisations and/or businesses risks undoing agroecology from its political content – thereby weakening its capacity to realise structural change, making it vulnerable to co-optation and dependent on the goodwill of politicians (Rivera-Ferre 2018; Gir aldo and Rosset 2017; Levidow et al, 2014) This would reduce agroecology to a technical innovation for the fine-tuning of industrial agriculture, and disconnect agroecology from local peasant de mands and the structural patterns of inequality in which they are situ ated, including the distribution of land, the control over markets, and the democratic process within the state itself – patterns which continue to favour agri-business (Holt-Gimenez et al, 2021, Gonzalez de Molina, 2013; Anderson et al, 2019, Petersen 2012). We conclude that attention should be paid to individual strategies and their immediate effects and on how diverse politics combine, to build the material and symbolic capacity of the movement and their potential for transformation over the long run
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