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-153
AgroecologyNow! Features
Gaza’s food systems under siege
AgroecologyNow’s Georgina McAllister recently visited Gaza, where she works on Gaza Foodways, a transdisciplinary research project with over 160 women producers as well as civil society and academic partners. This piece applies the lens of Gaza’s rich food culture to past and present attacks on its territorial food systems. It considers how the 15-year blockade, the annexation of farmland and fisheries, and regular airstrikes that target farming and other essential infrastructures have shaped Gaza’s contemporary food system and stretched it to breaking point. https://wp.me/p67WNH-14b
Harvesting is an act of indigenous food sovereignty
In this blog AgroecologyNow’s Jessica Milgroom and her co-author Simone Senogles argue that for Indigenous Peoples the very act of harvesting, hunting, and fishing is a powerful assertion of food sovereignty. In this context, food sovereignty is about relationships and responsibility rather than rights. It is a pathway of responsibility to plant and animal relatives, respect for mother earth, relationship with self and community. Read this article here: https://wp.me/p67WNH-11f
Putting Indigenous knowledge into practice for climate change: the Tribal Adaptation Menu
Indigenous knowledge offers invaluable insights for how to approach climate change. In this article co-authors Jessica Milgroom and Annette Drewes describe a tool called the Tribal Adaptation Menu that provides a set of concrete, practical strategies, approaches and tactics for ways to incorporate indigenous thinking into planning, policy, research and interventions for researchers, policy-makers and practitioners. It also describes the fundamental shifts in thinking and relating to the natural world that offer a key to effective climate adaptation. Read article here: https://wp.me/p67WNH-13p
Spirituality is deeply anti-systemic: An interview with Indigenous thinker Antonio Gonzalez from the Aj Mayon Collective, Guatemala
In this article, part of AgroecologyNow’s Food Sovereignty and Spirituality series, indigenous thinker and activist Antonio Gonzalez from Guatemala talks about the importance of spirituality in Indigenous Peoples’ struggles to recover and affirm their identity and defend their territories. He shares the journey he undertook with the Aj Mayon Agroecological Collective to link agriculture with culture and rekindle ancestral knowledges and practices. He recalls his first encounter with the “mistica” and distinguishes the mistica from Mayan spiritual practices: Read article here https://wp.me/p67WNH-12i
AgroecologyNow co-delivers first Autumn School on ‘ways of knowing for agroecological transitions’
As part of the RISE ATTER project, the AgroecologyNow team co-designed and delivered a 7-day autumn school at Monkton Wyld Court in Dorset, UK. The main objective of this week-long collective space was to bring together researchers and practitioners from across the world who want to exchange, learn and advance their thinking and practice on agroecological transitions. Read full account here: https://wp.me/p67WNH-13A
Ecofeminism, agroecology, food sovereignty and African philosophy: Exploring values in contemporary social movements
In this blog, Frederique Bosque, masters’ student at Wageningen University (Netherlands), examines the potential overlaps between values embodied in African worldviews. The article is based on ideas conveyed by African thinkers in a course on African philosophy, and values promoted by social movements on ecofeminism, agroecology and food sovereignty who are fighting for radical food system transformation. Read article here: https://wp.me/p67WNH-10R
Solidarity statement in support of the Maasai Indigenous Peoples of Loliondo and Ngorongoro Conservation Area in Tanzania
Maasai Indigenous Peoples have preserved their environment and lived in coexistence with their local wildlife for centuries. Now the Tanzanian Government is arguing that they are a threat to the environment, and that the only way to protect it is to remove the people from their ancestral lands. Around 160,000 Maasai Indigenous Peoples are currently affected by the unilateral decision of the Government of Tanzania to forcefully evict them out of their ancestral lands to promote tourism and trophy hunting. Read how civil society networks in Africa are standing with the Maasai: https://afsafrica.org/stop-forced-eviction-of-maasai-from-ngorongoro/
AgroecologyNow! Publications (click through to access)
- McAllister, G. Gaza’s food system has been stretched to breaking point by Israel. The Conversation
- Anderson, C.R., McCune, N., Buccini, G., Mendez, V.E., Carasco, A., Caswell, M., Blume, S., & Ahmed, F. (2022). Working Together for Agroecology Transitions. Perspectives on Agroecology Transitions – No. 3. Agroecology and Livelihoods Collaborative (ALC), University of Vermont.
- Tittonell, P., El Mujtar, V., Félix, G.F., Kebede, Y., Laborda, L., Luján Soto, R. & de Vente, J. (2022) Regenerative agriculture—agroecology without politics? Front. Sustain. Food Syst. 6:844261.
- Félix, G.F. & Sanfiorenzo, A. (2022) Learning Agroecology Online During COVID-19. Front. Sustain. Food Syst. 6:821514.
- Vandermaelen, H., Dehaene, M., Tornaghi, C., Vanempten, E., & Verhoeve, A. (2022). Public land for urban food policy? A critical data-analysis of public land transactions in the Ghent city region (Belgium). European Planning Studies. Paper published open access online.
- Claeys, P., Lemke, S. & Camacho, J. (2022), ‘Editorial: Women’s Communal Land Rights‘, Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, vol. 6, 877545, pp. 1-3.
Highlighted Publications, Events and Updates From our Networks
- Online course: Agroecology, Food Sovereignty and social movements (University of Vermont, registration open now, course starts in January 2023, duration: 4 weeks)
- Conference: 9th International Congress of Agroecology: Raising local agroecology-based food systems. Conference dates: January 19-21, 2023, Sevilla, Spain. Mixed online & in-person format.
- International Association of the Commons (IASC) Biennial Conference: ‘The Commons We Want: Between Historical Legacies and Future Collective Actions’. Nairobi, Kenya, June 19-24, 2023. Deadline for paper submission: December 12, 2022, registration: February 28-April 30, 2023. For more details visit conference website: https://2023.iasc-commons.org/
- Call for submissions Food Zine: Food is central to our lives and has endless different meanings to each of us. Through this zine, we hope to gather writing, art, and more from our wider community on our relationships to food; how it nourishes our minds and bodies individually, as well as bonding us to our closest friends and chosen family. It will also be an exploration into how food allows us to create and participate within the community itself, and a consideration of the socio-economic, political, and historical contexts that produced our food and contemporary food cultures. Deadline for submissions: December 31, 2022. Click here for details. (The Rights Collective)
- Report: Smoke and Mirrors: Examining competing framings of food system sustainability. (IPES Food)
- Report & Podcast: Food Barons 2022: Crisis Profiteering, Digitalization and Shifting Power (ETC Group, Spanish translation forthcoming). Jim Thomas, ETC research director gives a clear and inspiring introduction in to the report in this podcast episode of Tech won’t save us
- Briefing: Food Crisis Response Entrenches Corporate Influence (FIAN International)
- Press release: Time for coordinated action to address the food crisis and create a global plan – UN expert (OHCHR). See also The Right to Food and the COVID-19 pandemic – Interim report of the Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Michael Fakhri
- Letter to African governments and civil society to defend UN Committee for Food Security: COVID 19 & Conflicts: Impacts on Africa’s Food Sovereignty (Also available in Portuguese and Arabic)
- Webinar: Regulating Gene Editing: A Case for Public Engagement (The Bigger Conversation). See also report ‘Voices from the Ground – Public Engagement in the Regulation of Agricultural Gene Editing’.
- Article: Ukraine Is Showing the World How Small Farmers Can Fix Our Broken Food System (newrepublic.com)
- Article: Systemic Problems Require Systemic Solutions (Foodtank)
- Documentary: Les Artisans du bon pain: Portrait Nicolas Supiot, paysan boulanger en Bretagne, France. (ARTE, available online in French and German and with subtitles in Spanish and Italian until December 31, 2022)
- Report: The Attraction of Agroecology and the barriers faced by new entrants pursuing agroecological farming and land work (Landworkers’ Alliance, UK)
- Letter: “Write fewer papers, take more risks’: Researchers call for ‘rebellion’ against academic convention (news.educ.cam.ac.uk)
- Online magazine: Soberanía alimentaria, biodiversidad y culturas, Verano 2022 (Soberanía Alimentaria magazine in Spanish)
- Thematic Newsletter on Food Sovereignty and Agrobiodiversity, September 2022 (Nyeleni, also available in French and Spanish)
- Online Open Access Book: Labelling and certification schemes for Indigenous Peoples’ foods (FAO, Alliance of Bioversity, CIAT)