Popular education, youth and peasant agroecology in Brazil

M.B Goris,I Silva Lopes,G Verschoor,J Behagel,M.I.V Botelho

doi:10.1016/j.jrurstud.2021.08.003

M.B Goris, I Silva Lopes + Show 3 more

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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2021.08.003

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Abstract

Most young people engaged in agroecology in Zona da Mata Mineira, Brazil, participate in popular education. Popular education is a Latin-American concept that entails transformative learning, among others. Despite the large body of literature on popular education, there is little knowledge about how it supports reflection, enhances situated abilities, and affects relationships between young farmers and nature. This article looks at popular education practices in Zona da Mata in three different places: a family farming high school, a youth organization, and a workers' union school. Each place gives special attention to agroecology. Based on participatory observations, video recordings, films made by youth, interviews and analysis of educational materials this article visualizes how young people become engaged in peasant agroecology through the use of affective experiences, relationship-building, and reflection in popular education. Our findings show that the pedagogic method of alternation used at the family farming high school fosters on-farm learning experiences between young farmers and their parents. At the workers’ union school and at the youth organization intentional leisure activities promoted joy, spirituality, activism and peasant culture, with joy becoming an explicit organizing force. We conclude that, in our cases, popular education positively supports, often in unexpected ways, relations young agroecological farmers have with their parents, nature, and youth from conventional farms.

Highlights

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) state that agroecology is a pathway to address various sustainable development goals (SDGs), to mitigate and adapt to climate change, and to preserve biodiversity (FAO 2018; Diaz et al, 2019)
Various authors state that horizontal pedagogical approaches and transformative learning practices in social movement organizations are key drivers for scaling-out agroecology to increase its uptake among farmers (Schwendler and Thompson 2017; Cacho et al, 2018; Anderson et al, 2019)
The practices of popular education we studied demonstrate that this social pedagogy is an example of an anti-authorian pedagogy (Cole and Mirzaei Rafe 2018)

Summary

Introduction

Various authors state that horizontal pedagogical approaches and transformative learning practices in social movement organizations are key drivers for scaling-out agroecology to increase its uptake among farmers (Schwendler and Thompson 2017; Cacho et al, 2018; Anderson et al, 2019). Transformative learning practices that aim to scale out agroecology in Latin-American are part of what is called “popular edu cation”. Popular education, both in schools and in social movement practices, aims to form subjects that can transform their realities so that these become more socially and environmentally just (Freire 1968; Brandao 2006; Caldart 2012; Brazil 2014)

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