Via Campesina Research Articles

Striving toward a peasant identity

As diverse actors work through disparate food movements seeking to tackle the causes and effects of the global food crisis, Holt-Giménez and Shattuck (2011) call for strategic alliances between progressive and radical trends in the food movement to transform our current food system. This paper focuses on the process of alliance formation by exploring the subjectivities of three of the authors who identify as women farmers and have had opportunities to learn from and engage with peasant movements through their participation in courses, encounters and organizing spaces of La Via Campesina (LVC). These farmers’ goal of striving toward a peasant identity reveals the influence of peasant-to-peasant processes (PtPP) on their conceptions of possible futures, and simultaneously exposes tensions and struggles in agroecology transition within the Canadian context, where capitalist industrial agriculture is the norm. Using the lens of post-structural feminism, we explore the potential for radical peasant movements to influence and inspire the restructuring of our ways of relating with the earth and each other in the global North. Based on this analysis we deepen our understanding of how PtPP can foster South-North alliances which have the potential to engender food system transformation.

Las articulaciones globales del campo colombiano: FENSUAGRO, el Coordinador Nacional Agrario y la Ví­a Campesina

Este trabajo buscó comprender los procesos de articulación global que llevan a cabo los movimientos campesinos colombianos al trabajar articuladamente sus luchas una vez enmarcadas dentro del accionar global de La Ví­a Campesina (LVC). Las relaciones entre los movimientos locales y los globales serán vistas desde una lógica integral de la acción colectiva, que aborda tanto las identidades del movimiento campesino como sus estrategias y formas de organización. Se recurre a herramientas teóricas tanto de los movimientos sociales como de los marcos de acción colectiva. En ese equilibrio, es necesaria una lectura crí­tica del escenario internacional (neoliberal y moderno/colonial) ante el que responden los nuevos procesos de movilización campesina. Mediante una revisión documental acerca del accionar de los mayores movimientos campesinos colombianos parte de LVC, y un trabajo de campo se concluye que las experiencias de creación de plataformas polí­ticas, movilización, organización y formación polí­tico-técnica son muestras de los nuevos campos de acción conjunta campesina en Colombia, América Latina y el mundo en resistencia a un sistema global neoliberal.

Campesina a Campesino: Educación campesina para la resistencia y la transformación agroecológica

En este ensayo abordamos los procesos “de campesina a campesino” (PCaC) como dispositivo educativo y epistémico incluyente donde se articula una agroecología de saberes para la constitución del campesinado agroecológico y la agroecología campesina como proceso de resistencia y transformación desde la perspectiva de las organizaciones y movimientos sociales rurales articulados en La Vía Campesina (LVC). Introducimos primero una idea en desarrollo acerca de la morfología de los procesos pedagógicos en los PCaC, para luego examinar elementos íntimamente imbricados en la constitución del campesinado agroecológico: (1) la metodología CaC stricto sensu, (2) las escuelas campesinas y procesos de educación y formación en agroecología, y (3) los encuentros y procesos organizativos. Finalmente, presentamos algunos elementos para pensar cómo estas estrategias pedagógicas otras contribuyen a la emergencia de un campesinado agroecológico diverso y plural, y una agroecología que trasciende su carácter productivo para convertirse en un proyecto político-epistémico-ontológico plural e inclusivo de transformación agroecológica.

Agroecology and La Via Campesina II. Peasant agroecology schools and the formation of a sociohistorical and political subject

ABSTRACTScaling up of peasant agroecology and building food sovereignty require major transformations that only a self-aware, critical, collective political subject can achieve. The global peasant movement, La Via Campesina (LVC) in its expression in Latin America, the Coordinadora Latinoamericana de Organizaciones del Campo (CLOC), employs agroecology and political training or formation as a dispositive or device to facilitate the emergence of a sociohistorical and political subject, the “agroecological peasantry,” designed to be capable of transforming food systems across the globe. In this essay, we examine the pedagogical philosophies and practices used in the peasant agroecology schools and training processes of LVC and CLOC, and how they come together in territorial mediation as a dispositive for pedagogical-educational, agroecological reterritorialization.

Agroecology and La Via Campesina I. The symbolic and material construction of agroecology through the dispositive of “peasant-to-peasant” processes

ABSTRACTIn this essay, we look at the symbolic and material territorialization of agroecology in La Via Campesina (LVC) through peasant-to-peasant processes (PtPPs) in the broad sense. The most significant examples of the scaling up of agroecology are clearly tied to organizational processes and in our perspective, PtPPs are the motor of these changes. We contend that agroecology, subjects, and territories are articulated in these processes, making up a powerful dispositive or device for agroecological transformation and scaling up. We also introduce a discussion on the emergence of a historical-political subject, the “agroecological peasantry,” within the larger territorial dispute concerning the transformation of the agri-food system and living conditions in the countryside.

Peasant and indigenous transnational social movements engaging with climate justice

ABSTRACTThis article offers a comparative account of the engagement of two key transnational social movements, the agrarian movement La Via Campesina (LVC) and the International Indigenous Peoples’ Forum on Climate Change (IIPFCC), in global climate discussions, particularly the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Since 2007 these movements have each developed their own framing of climate justice and sought political and legal opportunities to advocate rights-based policies. LVC has advanced a development paradigm grounded in food sovereignty and agroecology, and IIPFCC has sought to increase indigenous participation in United Nations climate schemes and regain control over ancestral territory.

Broadening the Land Question in Food Sovereignty to Northern Settings: A Case Study of Occupy the Farm

Land access is an accepted corollary to food sovereignty, long promoted by the transnational agrarian movement La Via Campesina (LVC). LVC's land access politics have evolved with increased incorporation of diverse perspectives, but remain largely focused on achieving ‘integral agrarian reform’ in the global South. Here, I take a case where food sovereignty activists (‘Occupy the Farm’ (OTF)) occupied land owned by a public university in California, the USA, in order to broaden food sovereignty's land access considerations beyond the South, and to analyze conditions where political actions (including occupations) can help achieve changes in land access regimes. The OTF action was successful in challenging cultural norms about property and achieving access, partly due to the occupation having foregrounded multiple appealing narratives that invited participation and wider support. These narratives included agroecology versus biotechnologies; community/public access versus privatization; participatory versus bureaucratic governance structure; and green space/food production versus urban development. The article tests the use of the ‘land sovereignty’ frame in expanding food sovereignty's land politics, to encompass land contestation contexts globally and deal with the particular conditions surrounding lands. The case indicates that land occupations in the North are potentially useful—but uncertain, and very context-dependent—tactics to promote land and food sovereignty.

Food Sovereignty and the Recognition of New Rights for Peasants at the UN: A Critical Overview of La Via Campesina's Rights Claims over the Last 20 Years

This article explores how human rights framing by the transnational agrarian movement La Via Campesina (LVC) has evolved over the last 20 years. It discusses how the movement has worked towards institutionalizing new categories of rights, such as the ‘right to food sovereignty’ and the ‘rights of peasants’, thereby contributing to the creation of new human rights standards at the United Nations (UN). It also critically addresses some of the challenges the movement has been confronted with when framing its demands in terms of rights. Its overall argument is that LVC has managed to tap the potential of the rhetoric of rights to find common ground, thanks to its innovative use of non-codified rights. This has enabled activists to ‘localize’ human rights and make them meaningful to their various contexts. However, it contends that further advancing the movement's goals will require serious consideration of some of the key limits of the human rights framework.

Agroecological Formación in Rural Social Movements

Among the many sectors currently engaged in struggle against the corporate food system, small farmers play a particularly important role—not only do they constitute a legitimate alternative to global agribusiness, but also they are the heirs to long traditions of local knowledge and practice. In defending peasant agriculture, rural social movements defend popular control over seeds and genetic resources, water, land and territory against the onslaught of globalized financial capital. A framework called food sovereignty has been developed by the international peasant movement La Via Campesina (LVC), to encompass the various elements of a food system alternative based on reclaiming popular resource control, defending small-scale agriculture and traditional knowledge, rebuilding local circuits of food and labor, and recovering the ecological processes that can make farming sustainable. Recognizing the need to develop “movement people” capable of integrating many ecological, social, cultural and political criteria into their organizational activities, LVC increasingly has articulated processes of popular education and consciousness-raising as part of the global social movement for agroecology and food sovereignty. Given the enormous diversity of organizations and actors in LVC, an underlying feature known in Spanish as diálogo de saberes (roughly the equivalent of “dialogue between ways of knowing”) has characterized LVC processes of education, training, formation and exchange in agroecology. The diálogo de saberes takes place at the level of training centers and schools of the LVC organizations, as well as the larger scale of agricultural landscapes and peasant territories. The interactions between peasant, family or communal farmers, their organizations, their youth and their agroecology create social processes that assume the form and dynamic of a social movement in several countries of Latin America.

Food sovereignty movement activism in South Korea: national policy impacts?

The transnational agrarian movement La Via Campesina (LVC) seeks to reestablish food sovereignty authority within national borders by removing agriculture from the WTO system. The WTO is a membership organization of participating nation-states that have agreed to abide by the rules of the WTO governance regime. Nominally, at least, changes in these governance rules must be approved by the nation-state members. This paper examines the extent to which South Korean affiliate organizations of LVC, the Korean Peasant League and the Korean Women Peasants Association, have been successful in placing food sovereignty issues on the national agri-food policy agenda in South Korea that challenge the WTO’s neoliberal global governance regime for agriculture. In effect, the success of transnational movements like LVC in challenging global institutions may rest on how well their member affiliates are able to play domestic agri-food politics.