Agroecology Now! Transformations Towards More Just and Sustainable Food Systems Colin Ray Anderson Janneke Bruil M. Jahi Chappell Csilla Kiss Michel Patrick Pimbert Agroecology Now! Colin Ray Anderson • Janneke Bruil M. Jahi Chappell • Csilla Kiss Michel Patrick Pimbert Agroecology Now! Transformations Towards More Just and Sustainable Food Systems Colin Ray Anderson Janneke Bruil Centre for Agroecology, Water and Cultivate! Collective Resilience Bennekom, The Netherlands Coventry University Wolston, UK Csilla Kiss Centre for Agroecology, Water and M. Jahi Chappell Resilience Centre for Agroecology, Water and Coventry University Resilience Coventry, UK Coventry University Coventry, UK Michel Patrick Pimbert Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience Coventry University Coventry, UK ISBN 978-3-030-61314-3 ISBN 978-3-030-61315-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61315-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2021. This book is an open access publication. 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The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We are grateful to Jessica Milgroom for inputs, editing and ideas that helped to shape this book in the late phases of its development and to Annelie Bernhart, Chris Maughan and Diana Quiroz for their helpful con- tributions and comments on particular sections. We greatly appreciate the support and inputs of Beate Scherf, Maryam Rahmanian, Remi Cluset, Emma Siliprandi, Soren Moller and Caterina Batello at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). We also thank colleagues who prepared the substantial and detailed case studies on aspects of agroecology transitions that we drew on for boxes and sections: Mindi Schneider, Xu Ye, Chantal Jacovetti, Julia Wright, Iain MacKinnon, Graciela Romero Vasquez, Pedro Lopez Merino, Patrick Mulvaney, Nils McCune. And further thanks are due to Million Belay and Jan Douwe van der Ploeg for reviewing and commenting on earlier drafts. We would like to express our appreciation to the participants of an international workshop organized to review this text and discuss the role of agroecology in transitions to sustainable food systems: Mindi Schneider, Claire Lamine, Paulo Petersen, Marta Rivera Ferre, Paola Migliorini and Andrea Ferrante. Thank you to the 14 FAO staff who attended the international workshop and offered their feedback on this text. This workshop, and the interactions around the topic more generally, was a rich exchange largely because it drew together the perspectives on agroecology transitions of the team at Coventry University’s Centre for Agroecology, To access supplementary learning materials, videos, podcasts and more visit: https://www.agroecologynow.com/transformation. v vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Water and Resilience (CAWR), who had been intensely studying agroecology transitions with those of external reviewers and FAO staff members. The debates have been energizing, often surprising and a great learning experience for all, and have greatly improved both our thinking and this book. Finally, we would like to thank the diligent professionals who helped to bring this book to fruition. Our gratitude goes out to Barbara Kiser for her diligent and thoughtful review and close edit of our initial manuscript and to the team at Palgrave Macmillan—especially G. Nirmal Kumar, Joanna O’Niell and Rachael Ballard. Coventry, 2020 Colin Ray Anderson Janneke Bruil Michael Jahi Chappell Csilla Kiss Michel Pimbert CONTENTS 1 Introduction 1 Part I Agroecology and Sustainability Transformations 9 2 Origins, Benefts and the Political Basis of Agroecology 11 3 Conceptualizing Processes of Agroecological Transformations: From Scaling to Transition to Transformation 29 Part II Domains of Agroecology Transformations 47 4 Domain A: Rights and Access to Nature—Land, Water, Seeds and Biodiversity 49 5 Domain B: Knowledge and Culture 67 6 Domain C: Systems of Economic Exchange 87 7 Domain D: Networks 103 vii viii Contents 8 Domain E: Equity 113 9 Domain F: Discourse 129 Part III Drilling Down on Power and Governance in Agroecology Transformations 151 10 Power, Governance and Agroecology Transformations 153 11 Refexive Participatory Governance for Agroecological Transformations 175 12 Conclusion 191 Index 197 LIST OF FIGURES Fig. 1.1 The flm Agroecology: Voices from Social Movements exemplifes the book’s primary theme: the struggle to advance agroecology as an alternative to the dominant food regime. View video here: https://www.agroecologynow.com/video/ ag/ (Photo credit: Authors) 3 Fig. 2.1 Indigenous Lepcha farmers in Sikkim saving traditional seeds adapted to place and deeply tied to cultural practices (Photo credit: David Meek) 13 Fig. 2.2 FAO’s ten elements of agroecology (Source: FAO 2018, The 10 Elements of Agroecology. http://www.fao.org/3/ i9037en/i9037en.pdf. Reproduced with permission) 15 Fig. 3.1 Steve Gliessman’s 5-level system has been used to conceptualize agroecology transition. The agronomic emphasis in early agroecology was historically focused on transition at the level of the farm, emphasizing understanding and enabling changes in farm practices (levels 1–3). In recent years, the reconceptualization of agroecology at broader scales and political agroecology as the basis for food-system change has centred analysis on levels 4 and 5. Our analysis in this book focuses on levels 4–5 to interrogate the wider social, political and economic dynamics that underlie the potential for food system transformation and its relationship with agroecological practices 32 ix x List of Figures Fig. 3.2 Within each domain, there are factors, dynamics, structures and processes that constrain agroecology (orange examines these dynamics within six arrows), and those that enable it (blue arrows). Our analysis shows interdependent domains of transformation (see Fig. 3.4) 42 Fig. 3.3 (Left) Domains of transformation are depicted here as defnable interfaces between niche and regime superimposed onto a simplifed version of Frank Geels and Johan Schot’s (2007) multi-level perspective fgure 43 Fig. 3.4 These six domains of transformation, within which agroecology comes into confict with the dominant corporate food regime, are critical sites of intervention in pursuit of agroecology transformations. The extent and depth of agroecological practices on farms and in territories are shaped by processes of governance, power and control as they manifest in and across these domains 44 Fig. 5.1 Transformative agroecology framework by Anderson et al. (2019) involves a pedagogical approach that places practice as a central component of all training. It however integrates four pillars (the orange segments) to provide the ‘connective tissue’ to the political project of food sovereignty (the yellow circle) 70 Fig. 5.2 Campesino a campesino learning in Latin America 72 Fig. 5.3 Malian farmers at the Nyéléni International Center for Training in Peasant Agroecology (Photo credit: Colin Anderson) 75 Fig. 6.1 CSA members of Little Donkey farm (Beijing, China) harvesting carrots (Photo credit: Jan Douwe van der Ploeg) 90 Fig. 8.1 How agroecology and sustainable diets are complementary concepts that can address inequality and contribute to sustainable and just food systems (Source: Pimbert and Lemke (2018), concepts based on Rosset and Altieri (2017) for agroecology, Burlingame and Derini (2012) for sustainable diets and Collins (Collins 2000) for intersectionality) 119 Fig. 9.1 Discourse around agroecology is shaped by different frames that can have both enabling and disabling effects on political agroecology. Some frames, towards the top end of the fgure, are much more enabling, while the frames towards the bottom are more likely to have a disabling effect. Other frames, in the middle, are more ambiguous 131 List of Figures xi Fig. 10.1 Interventions can infuence niche-regime