Can 'agroecology' bring food security to Latin America?
Can 'agroecology' bring food security to Latin America?
A home-grown, alternative approach to farming is bad news for pesticides, monoculture and food poverty in Brazil
Camila Nobrega in Rio de Janeiro
Guardian Professional, Monday 28 July 2014 05.54 EDT
Holding rice seeds in her hands, villager Emilia Alves Manduca explains to other smallholder farmers how the community where she lives – Mato Grosso, in the central-west region of Brazil – escaped from poverty and became self-sufficient.
She has travelled more than two days by bus to participate in the national agroecology meeting, in Juazeiro, Bahia. With a shining smile, she says that for the past six years they have grown more than 30 types of crops with no pesticides at Roseli Nunes, in the city of Mirasol D'Oeste, as part of the Brazilian Landless Workers movement.
"I used to work in a big farm, applying pesticides. I had to go to the hospital twice because of the side effects," says Alves.
Central-west Brazil, where most live on soybeans and maize, consists mostly of monocultures. In 2013, the region farmed a record volume of soybeans and maize, producing over 78.5m tonnes. However, most of it is not used to feed the population: it is exported to produce biofuels.
For Alves, a smallholder farmer, her rice seeds are a symbol of the strength of family farming. That seed was a result of an exchange she made with quilombolas (communities descended from slaves) that have selectively bred seeds for more than four generations. This is part of a worldwide movement led by Latin America, called agroecology.
More:
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2014/jul/28/agroecology-latin-america-smallholder-farmers
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