Source: Georges Félix

AgroecologyNow! works with partners in social movements, civil society, governments and research institutions to promote a transformative agroecology for food sovereignty and social justice: www.agroecologynow.com

See below for some highlights of our latest work and highlights from our networks, including free-to-download articles, videos and other resources. Please feel free to copy/adapt parts for use in newsletters, etc. or share the entire update via this link: https://wp.me/P67WNH-1aP

AgroecologyNow! Features

New policy brief: Saying No to development-forced displacement and resettlement: myths and alternatives

A new policy brief co-authored by Jessica Milgroom from AgroecologyNow calls for a halt of projects that cause displacement.  Displacement causes irreparable harm, and well-intended resettlement policies and practices perpetuate and justify further displacement. This brief busts 5 myths about resettlement and argues that new policies are needed that prioritise human-scale development that does not require displacement and resettlement. Click here to read the brief: https://wp.me/p67WNH-18u

New podcast episode: Where Indigenous feminisms and food sovereignties meet

AgroecologyNow in collaboration with CIDSE has launched the second episode of its podcast miniseries entitled ‘A Journey through feminist agroecology’. The new episode explores the link between food sovereignty and Indigenous feminisms as a decolonial project of reparations and reconstruction in the context of North America. Read our blog and access the episode here: https://wp.me/p67WNH-15U

Ecofeminism and meat substitutes: A critical discussion

In this blog Anouk Dijkman, student in the MSc Programme of Agroecology, Water and Food Sovereignty at Coventry University (UK), applies a critical, ecofeminist lens to question narratives that promote modern meat substitutes as a solution to the climate crisis and injustices embedded in patriarchal, capitalist societies. Click here to read the article: https://wp.me/p67WNH-19s

CSAs as spaces of care and self-exploitation: a feminist perspective from the UK

In this blog Amy Willoughby, CSA farmer and student in the MSc Programme of Agroecology, Water and Food Sovereignty at Coventry University (UK), provides a critical, feminist perspective on her personal experience working in Community Supported Agriculture and research findings on opportunities and challenges for women in the CSA movement in the UK context. Click here to read the blog:https://wp.me/p67WNH-1ag

Launch of open access special issue: Participatory Action Research in a time of COVID and beyond

For researchers undertaking Participatory Action Research (PAR), COVID-19 posed many questions about how to continue to engage in collaborative, horizontal and participatory research in the face of COVID travel and meeting restrictions. However, the pandemic also created opportunities for new ways of involving grassroots communities, shaping research priorities and addressing power relations in research, that bear important lessons for PAR post-COVID. In 2021 AgroecologyNow researchers George McAllister, Nina Moeller, Priscilla Claeys and Stefanie Lemke (also University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna) were joined by Sandra Bhatasara (University of Zimbabwe), Jo Howard (IDS, UK) and Katharine McKinnon (University of Canberra) to co-edit a special issue in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems. Researchers and activists grappling with the practice, ethics and challenges of PAR share insights from research conducted in Europe, Africa, South-East Asia and the Pacific region, Central Asia, and the Caribbean at the height of the pandemic. Click here to find out more and access all articles for free: https://wp.me/p67WNH-192

Call for contributions: Policies for agroecology to support healthy and just food systems

Do you have experiences, examples, stories or insights about how  policy can support (or undermine) agroecology? Consider submitting an article to the first issue of the newly named magazine, ‘Rooted: Agroecology, Cultures and Foodways’ (formerly ‘Farming Matters’). Submission deadline: August 10, 2023. Rooted is published by Cultivate!, the Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience of Coventry University and the Institute for Agroecology at the University of Vermont. We work in close collaboration with LEISA Revista de Agroecología and AS-PTA’s Revista AgriCulturas. We proudly carry forward the long legacy of Farming Matters magazine. Click here for details: https://wp.me/p67WNH-19g

Agroecology blooms in Vermont: Announcing the UVM Institute for Agroecology

​​​​The University of Vermont (USA) launched a new Institute for Agroecology (IFA) that works with and for farmers, Indigenous people, social movements, and communities who are driving change in Vermont and around the world. Through research, learning, and action, IFA mobilizes knowledge to nurture agroecology research, practice, and movements. Click here to find out more: https://wp.me/p67WNH-18P. You can read more about the institute in this editorial written by Steve Gliessman (New leadership for the agroecology movement) in the Journal of Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems.

Agroecology must open up to other dimensions of transformation

Interview with Michel Pimbert, director of the Research Institute for Sustainability, Equity and Resilience at Coventry University (UK) and AgroecologyNow member, Clara Nicholls, professor at University of California-Berkeley (US)  and Gloria Guzmán, researcher at Pablo Olavide University, Spain on the role and need for activist-scholarship in agroecology for food system transformation. https://wp.me/p67WNH-18d

Agroecology – A promising alternative to the biodiversity crisis in agriculture and industrial food systems

In this article co-authors Colin Anderson, Ernesto Mendez, Patrick Mulvany and Faris Ahmed remind us that agroecology builds biodiversity into agriculture and food systems and it should be a focus of global biodiversity conservation efforts. They argue that parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), including the last iteration of talks at COP15 in Montreal, need to expand the debate to include agroecology and agricultural biodiversity as important pathways for biodiversity conservation and as such form part of the Global Biodiversity Framework. Read article here: https://wp.me/p67WNH-15y

Agroecology transitions and ways of knowing – Autumn school report 

The school co-convened by AgroecologyNow as part of the ATTER project was an attempt to highlight the importance of the diversity of knowledges that exists in territorial food systems. The organisers and the participants explored multiple methods and tools that can support agroecological transitions at different scales and which have potential to transcend the subordination of nature and of people along intersectional lines of race, class, caste, disability/ability, sexuality, and gender. Click here to read the full report: https://wp.me/p67WNH-1a2

AgroecologyNow! Publications (click through to access)

Highlighted Publications, Events and Updates From Our Networks