Trees in flower with brilliant red, white and yellow canopies shade a group of farmers picking coffee beans. Four oxen peacefully pull a wagon filled with coffee, potatoes and beans over the hilly slopes. On the veranda of a house, two women scrape the peel from the cassava tubers that they just harvested and toss it aside for the goats to feast on. These sounds softly echo in the green valley, giving a sensation of remote, isolated tranquillity. It seems as if time has stood still and people’s lives have gone unchanged for generations. This is far from the truth. This place, in the Zona da Mata in Minas Gerais, Brazil, is marked by a continuous fight against soil degradation, dependencies on external inputs, and exploitation by landlords, multinational traders and chemical manufacturers. It is a struggle for autonomy. By establishing control over land and re-designing food and farming systems farmers are moving towards food sovereignty.

Land sovereignty

One of the villages in the Zona da Mata that moved towards food sovereign-ty is Araponga. In the past, many farmers in Araponga had no land and worked in sharecropping arrange-ments to produce coffee. They did all the work for only part of the harvest, at the whim of the landlord. They had no say over what to cultivate or how to cultivate the land. From the 1970s onwards, landlords began to implement many of the principles and technologies of the Green Revolution. As a result, sharecroppers were obliged to use agro-toxins, forbidden to grow food crops, and had to weed the land until it was bare.

Things changed in the 1980s when neighbouring families organised themselves in small dynamic groups, each composed of five to 20 families called the Comunidades Eclesiais de Base (CEBs, Basic Ecclesial Communities). These families would meet to pray and sing, and engage in politically-oriented readings of the Bible. The CEBs were linked to the broader Liberation Theology movement that was occurring within the Catholic Church throughout Latin America at that time.

So, we were on our land; we had all the freedom but no harvest

During these discussions, sharecrop farmers began to challenge the status quo. They founded the Arapongan Rural Workers Union to protect the rights of sharecroppers and rural workers. At the same time, farmers affirmed that autonomy could not be attained in a sharecropping arrangement, but only as landowners. This marked the beginning of the Arapongan Joint Land Conquest Movement. Mediated by the union, farmers formed groups and pooled their resources to collectively buy land. They set up lending schemes through which group members could borrow money from other members. Between 1989 and 2010 more than 700 hectares were purchased by more than 150 families. This also led to the return of Arapongans who had migrated to the slums of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Drawn by the movement’s successes, they came back to Araponga to purchase land and make a living as farmers.

The movement for Alternative Agriculture

Nevertheless, while having control over land, the settlers soon found that this did not bring the autonomy they had envisaged. Green Revolution practices had become the default mode of farming in the region. Such practices, including mono-cropping, specialisation in coffee and plough-ing, were leading to land degradation and resulting in yield declines. “So, we were on our own land. We had all the freedom but no harvest,” says João, one of the farmers in the region. The increasing prices of chemical fertilizers on one hand, and of the food in stores on the other squeezed farmers’ income even further. Farmers knew they had to free themselves from the chains of the Green Revolution. But how?

At the time, the Green Revolution started to meet resistance from other sides. Brazil was undergoing a process of re-democratisation. Now that self-organisation was no longer banned, a new generation of civil society organisations was flourishing, including the growing movement for Alternative Agriculture, later coined agroecology.

At the Federal University of Viçosa, located near Araponga, alternative agriculture was also gaining ground. A group of recent graduates approached farmers about working together, and in 1988, the Centre of Alternative Technologies of the Zona da Mata (CTA-ZM) was founded, together with 13 rural worker unions in the region. This moment also marked the birth of new partnership in the Zona da Mata: between the CTA-ZM, the Federal University of Viçosa and numerous peasant organisations, including the Arapongan farmers’ union. The alliance proved important in terms of acquiring support, obtaining legitimacy, fostering experimentation and learning, and stimulating innovation.

Farmers began to cultivate a higher diversity of food crops and fruits

Nested markets

At the Federal University of Viçosa, located near Araponga, alternative agriculture was also gaining ground. A group of recent graduates approached farmers about working together, and in 1988, the Centre of Alternative Technologies of the Zona da Mata (CTA-ZM) was founded, together with 13 rural worker unions in the region. This moment also marked the birth of new partnership in the Zona da Mata: between the CTA-ZM, the Federal University of Viçosa and numerous peasant organisations, including the Arapongan farmers’ union. The alliance proved important in terms of acquiring support, obtaining legitimacy, fostering experimentation and learning, and stimulating innovation.

And there were more experiments. Farmers began to cultivate more and a higher diversity of food crops (e.g. cassava, maize, beans and vegetables) and fruits (e.g. mango, avocado, banana and papaya). Some of these were cultivated as part of an agroforestry system. Soon, food processing started. For example, sugar cane was processed into raw sugar, avocado into soap, milk into cheese and maize and cassava into flour. Farmers’ diets gradually improved and they became much less dependent on purchased food. As one farmer said: “In the time of my father’s generation we experienced no hunger, but we did not have the variety of food that we have now.”

Many of these farmers nowadays produce a surplus of food. Together with CTA and UFV, they created so called ‘nested markets’. These are local markets that are governed by farmers’ and citizens’ own values, where farmers can sell their surplus. A farmer shop was established in the centre of the town of Araponga and an open farmers’ market is now organised every week. Market networks where farmers could sell directly to citizens in the larger city of Viçosa were also set up. Urban people value these markets because products are fresh, free from pesticides, and inexpensive. One farmer said, “we did not know that the people in Araponga ate so many bananas.” Urban citizens in Araponga used to buy bananas from external markets.

A way of life

Today, the agroecology alliance continues to struggle against corporate control over production and consumption by strengthening and creating nested markets, and by fostering innovation and exchange between farmers, researchers and activists. They work in Araponga and many other municipalities in the Zona da Mata. Together with other movements, united under the National Agro-ecology Articulation (ANA), they run awareness raising campaigns. They also advocate for public policies that reward farmers who produce environmental or social benefits for society and call for regulations that put limits on agro-industry and their destructive effects on public health, the environment and the farming community.

In Araponga, moving towards food sovereignty was a two-pronged process of gaining control over land and redesigning farming to be independent from dominant markets and technologies. It was through self-organisation, the pooling of resources, forging partnerships with other organisations and (re)connecting with nature that, a seemingly powerless group of sharecroppers took the food and farming system into their own hands.

They gained the capacity to re-establish control over, and re-design these systems. Crucial in this process was the establishment of an institutional environment that protected farmers from external interests, that enabled them to experiment and innovate with agroecology and that guarded the peace, nature, and ways of life that flourish in the Arapongan countryside.

Leonardo van den Berg (Leonardo.vandenberg@gmail.com), Magriet Goris, and Heitor Mancini Teixeira are PhD candidates at the Federal University of Viçosa conducting action research embedded in the agroecology movement. Irene Cardoso and Izabel Maria Botelho are professors at the same university. Irene is also chair of the Brazilian Agroecology Association and a board member of ILEIA.

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Friesland, in the north of the Netherlands, is a region with a strong cultural identity and its own language. In it lies the Northern Frisian woodlands, a diverse area covering 50,000 hectares. Beside the woodlands, small fields surrounded by hedgerows and belts of alder trees (Alnus spp.) further characterise the local landscape.

For generations, this has been maintained by the collective work of farming families. It stands in stark contrast with many of the monotone farming landscapes seen elsewhere in the Netherlands – the product of decades of government promoted agricultural industrialisation and scale enlargement.

These policies are one of the reasons why the Netherlands has become the second largest net exporter of agricultural produce in the world (in money terms), but this has had its down side. It has been associated with vulnerability for large scale outbreaks of animal diseases and increasing pollution. It has also led to land grabbing and deforestation elsewhere in the world as it relies heavily on imported soybeans and other animal feeds. Rather than seeing these as expressions of a deeper underlying crisis in agriculture and food, the Dutch government has responded with a series of policy measures directed only at symptomatic relief. But these measures are not always in tune with the priorities of Dutch farmers. They provoked resistance amongst dairy farmers in the Northern Frisian Woodlands, and marked the beginning of a long-lasting struggle for autonomy and sustainable production.

Their initiative brought together farmers, civil society, entrepreneurs, research institutes and the government itself in developing new values. The result has been not just the preservation of the unique landscape, but also greater sustainability and improved profitability of local farms.

Trapped in a landscape

Governmental policy measures in the 1980s to tackle the effects of acid rain and nitrogen leaching on nature reserves were highly prescriptive. Hedgerows were for instance declared acid sensitive and severe limitations were put on agricultural activities nearby. Farmers were literally trapped in the dense hedgerow landscape they have positively managed for generations.

“We cherish the landscape, it is part of our identity.”

In addition, farmers were no longer allowed to spread manure on the land as they always had done, but had to inject it into the soil. Farmers felt they were being treated unjustly, and the new rules and regulations threatened the continuity of many farms.

The farmers knew that they could combine nature conservation and maintain farms and landscape if they were allowed to do it in their own way. Some farmers were considering removing hedges before the rules came into force, others negotiated and convinced municipal and provincial authorities to have the hedgerows exempted. In exchange, farmers promised to maintain and protect the hedges, ponds, alder rows and sandy roads in the area. This gave rise to the first two territorial cooperatives in the Netherlands, the Eastermars Lânsdouwe and the Vereniging Agragrisch Natuur en Landschapsonderhoud Achtkarspelen. Four other organisations were formed soon afterwards, and in 2002, the overarching Noardlike Fryske Wâlden (Northern Frisian Woodlands, NFW) cooperative was founded, with a membership of more than 1000 farmers as well as private individuals, including almost 80% of all farmers in the area.

Bringing farming into nature, and vice versa

Farmers strengthened their way of dairy farming by integrating nature and landscape elements in their farming practices.
Environmental conservation has traditionally been the role of nature organisations, so farmers needed to gain support from other farmers and local government before they could begin to actively manage the landscape ‘for nature’. The NFW was able to convince and align with civil society organisations, especially nature organisations, and set two trajectories in motion. One focused on maintaining and improving the landscape and nature, and the other on developing a path for sustainable farming.

To overcome the new legislative barriers, the cooperative negotiated with the government and developed a detailed ecological and landscape management plan. They convinced the officials and were able to obtain exemptions from several asphyxiating regulatory schemes.

The result was that farmers are now managing about 80% of the natural and other landscape elements in their area. This includes not only more than 300 km of hedgerows, but also 3800 km of alder wooded bank rows, 400 ponds, 7500 hectares of collectively protected areas to support meadow birds and 4000 hectares for geese. Cooperative activities resulted in improvements for the whole region and far beyond the participating farms, including the strengthening of the rural economy, improved product qualities and more trust and cooperation between farmers and other residents. The government recognised the uniqueness of the Northern Frisian Woodlands, which they recently declared a national landscape. The biodiversity has grown richer, and the attractive landscapes are opening up new opportunities for rural tourism and recreation which are taken up by the cooperative by for example by restoring ancient sandy paths as walking trials or cycle tracks.

Although farmers were somewhat familiar with this way of managing the land, they also learned much and strengthened their way of dairy farming by integrating nature and landscape elements in their farming practices. In the words of one farmer: “If you manage the landscape well, biodiversity increases. You get for instance more grass species, which positively affects the cows’ health. And careful maintenance of the tree belts attracts more birds. They eat the insects that destroy the roots of the clumps of grass. So the more birds there are, the less insecticide you need. Nature and landscape management is thus economically advantageous. That is what I learned in the course of time.”

The economic benefits are all the more important as although farmers receive some compensation from EU and the government for about half the area under landscape management, this hardly pays for the time they spend on these activities. Most of the subsidies that are available for nature conservation continue to be allocated to environmental organisations, and farmer-managed landscapes still tend to be taboo among policy makers and within mainstream farmer organisations.

Better manure, less fertilizers

A government regulation obliging farmers to inject slurry into the soil triggered the second trajectory. The reasoning was that slurry or manure applied on the surface more easily washes away to pollute the environment. It also releases ammonia, which causes acidification and nitrogen pollution that can be especially harmful in protected areas. But farmers were sceptical. With small field and high groundwater levels in the spring, their land was not suited to the heavy machinery needed for slurry injection. The nutrients would also be lost into the groundwater so requiring ever more fertilizer to maintain yields. Farmers argued that injecting slurry would kill soil life, and that they could improve the situation by producing better quality manure.

Negotiations with the government on this point were equally successful and resulted in a temporary exemption from the rules in 1995, based on an ‘experiment’. The cooperative agreed with the government that they would actively explore alternative ways to reduce nitrogen leaching. But due to political changes in 1998, the cooperative could only maintain the exemption if the experiment became ‘scientific research’. This resulted in the nutrient management project including 60 farmers and scientists of various disciplines.

As a result of this experiment, an unconventional perspective in developing new practices was developed, called kringlooplandbouw or ‘closed-loop farming’ based on natural cycles. This improved nitrogen efficiency on the farm and landscape level. Manure improvement was the starting point, with farmers giving their cattle more fibrous feeds such as grass and less protein such as soybean concentrates. Straw and microbial additives were also mixed with the manure. This produced more solid and higher quality manure resulting in less nitrogen losses to the environment. Special muck-spreaders were also developed that were suitable for small fields. Farmers also reduced the use of chemical fertilizers, but as there were improvements in soil biology, grass yields even increased. Healthier cattle, higher milk quality and better manure were the result, thereby completing the cycle.

Today, this approach has spread, with many experts and farmers coming to the Northern Frisian Woodlands to learn, the cooperative has taken up an educational role and regularly organises guided tours and presentations.

Learning in ‘field laboratories’

These Frisian farmers continue to develop new practices, using their own as well as external resources. New knowledge is gained and disseminated through a wide range of methods, including nature conservation and landscape management courses, and excursions to other farms in and outside the region.

Less conventional methods of learning by doing are often combined with small study groups where experiences are exchanged, where farmers discuss their successes and failures.

Another innovative method is farmer-led scientific research. Farmers raise the questions, the research is carried out on their own farms, and results are discussed between farmers and scientists as well as within the communities.

Much of what is learnt in these ‘field laboratories’ builds on traditional knowledge. Regional characteristics such as hedgerows and alder trees have always been a self-evident part of the farm. Knowledge about local crops and cattle breeds has also passed down through the generations as a base for local agrobiodiversity. The territorial cooperative takes advantage of this wealth of knowledge and also created a system to spread it further among other farmers.

A landscape of possibilities

Farmers in the Northern Frisian Woodlands have shown that together with others, they can achieve both sustainable farming systems and environmental and nature policies objectives, by integrating landscape management into their daily activities. This forms part of a novel strategy of reducing costs, and improving own resources such as manure and grassland. “The general feeling is that the costs for fertilizer and fodder have decreased substantially. We have also become more innovative; we now dare to follow pathways that are not yet advocated by experts,” says one participating farmer.

By building alliances with civil society organisations and researchers, and by lobbying and negotiation, farmers have shown how they are able to deviate from imposed, top-down regulations, and to experiment themselves. They made the room needed to search for locally adapted and tailor made solutions, but which also materialised into a new self-organised form of landscape governance. The different way in which the cooperative has been able to connect with local, regional and national authorities clearly shows the potential for farmers to exert political influence at all these levels. The internal organisation developed over the past 25 years and the extended network with NGOs and government at all levels, has given the territorial cooperative considerable strength, and it can deliver where others fail. The level of participation is very high, very much strengthening social capital as it has developed.

The Dutch Ministry of Agriculture invited the NFW and four other cooperatives to test new methodologies. Since the territorial cooperatives had convincingly proven their capacity for self-regulation, they were more that able than other institutions, and many of their proposals are now integrated in official policy. It shows that by taking the lead, the position of farmers in today’s societies can be greatly strengthened.

Since 2003, the NFW has worked on other aspects of the regional economy and its sustainability, such as green energy, improving product quality, animal welfare, and cost reduction strategies. A territorial contract was then created together with stakeholders in the area and signed by parties including the provincial government, ministries and academic institutions. Although the NFW continue to swim against the tide, now that farmers have taken their landscape back into their own hands, they know that everything is possible.

Sabine de Rooij, Leonardo van den Berg and Douwe Hoogland

Sabine de Rooij (sabinederooij@gmail.com) is independent researcher in rural development issues.

Leonardo van den Berg (l.vandenberg@ileia.org) is Research Officer for ILEIA, the Netherlands.

Douwe Hoogland is the chair of the Northern Frisian Woodlands cooperative.

This article draws on the work of NFW (2014), de Rooij (2010), and van der Ploeg (2008).

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Innovative policies in Brazil, such as the Zero Hunger Programme, have significantly reduced poverty in the past decade. Yet, land distribution remains a serious challenge: 46% of all land is controlled by 1% of the population. In Araponga, farmers have not only been able to acquire land: they have increased their options in a sustainable manner.

Since 1987, more than 200 landless families have purchased land covering a total area of more than 700 hectares. This has not gone unnoticed and is being replicated in neighbouring municipalities. Thanks to their agency, or their capacity to act, these seemingly powerless peasants are refuting the commonly-held idea of “the disappearing peasantry”. They have embarked upon a “quest for space” which, over the course of time, has proved successful.

The “quest for space”

This change grew out of the dissatisfaction of sharecroppers and rural wage labourers in Araponga, a municipality with just over 8000 inhabitants in the Zona da Mata region, in the state of Minas Gerais. Sharecroppers cultivate land owned by a landlord, in exchange for a share of the harvest. The life of a sharecropper involves hard physical labour and long working days with little control over their harvest or income. Many sharecroppers receive less than half of the harvest (in some cases, they only receive one-eighth of the harvest, despite being promised half in agreements), while they do all the work and are not even allowed to choose which crops to plant or how to carry out farming activities. They are often expected to do extra tasks without extra payment. Rural wage labourers often work under even worse conditions. Some have tried to escape the situation by moving to the city, but many find that life there is even harder.

Farmers became increasingly interested in change after the Comunidades Eclesiais de Base (CEBs) were established in 1979. A Catholic priest trained interested community members to become lay leaders, and form small groups of 5 to 20 neighbouring families, who’d meet twice a week to pray, sing and discuss their everyday problems. The CEBs were one of the products of Liberation Theology, a doctrine that has been embraced by large segments of the Brazilian Catholic church since the mid-1960s. Its advocates argue that, rather than limiting themselves to prayers on an individual level, people could develop a deeper relationship with God by joining hands and helping poor communities. The objective of the CEBs was to promote social justice by helping small communities of Christians to become more autonomous.

In Araponga, the establishment of the CEBs increased farmers’ agency in two important ways. First, it led to a social/ cultural redefinition of their way of thinking. Whereas sharecroppers had understood their relationships with their landlords as God given, they started to believe that they could (and, in the name of social justice, should) change them.

Second, it led to an expansion in networks: whereas sharecroppers had previously only had close contacts with their relatives, they now began to establish relationships of trust with other CEB members, which included both their neighbours and members of other CEB groups in and outside the municipality. These sharecroppers began to imagine that the space they were seeking could perhaps be found by establishing their own farms.

Control over money, land and labour

To establish these farms, sharecroppers and wage labourers first had to obtain financial capital and land. This was not easy, as most of them did not have enough money to purchase land. Several people started saving, but soon realised that, given their low earnings, this would take a very long time. A few began to borrow money from their relatives, friends and CEB colleagues. This strategic use of relationships of trust and reciprocity spread, and soon became common practice.

Another problem that they encountered was that most of the land was owned by landlords. While some landlords were selling land, they were only selling the areas degraded by their poor farming practices. These areas of land were very large and too expensive for most people.

Moreover, most landlords did not trust the sharecroppers. Three brothers, Alfires, Aibes and Niuton Lopes, successfully purchased land for one of them by putting all their money together. Gradually, this type of purchase, known as the “conquista de terras em conjunto”, became common. Groups of people, mostly consisting of CEB members who trusted each other, started pooling their finances, purchasing a large piece of land and dividing it amongst themselves. To avoid raising the landlord’s suspicion, those who already owned land or a small car posed as the buyer.

The third obstacle was labour, which was needed for harvesting coffee. To solve this problem, an old traditional practice called “troca de dias” was revived. Through this system, farmers mobilised a group of people to harvest on a particular day in exchange for their providing help on another day. This approach was also later used for other tasks, such as weeding. With all these means of production under control, the farmers further increased their capacity to act.

A favourable environment

Agency

The idea of (farmers’) agency emerged in opposition to the “structuralist” line of thought, which argued that human behaviour is determined by large structural forces – and which predicted that the forces of capitalism would lead to the disappearance of the peasantry. In his “Central problems in social theory” (1979), Anthony Giddens argued that, “within the limits of information, uncertainty and other constraints (e.g. physical, normative or politico-economic), social actors are ‘knowledgeable’ and ‘capable’. They attempt to solve problems, learn how to intervene in the flow of social events around them and monitor continuously their own actions, observing how others react to their behaviour and taking note of the various contingent circumstances.” “Agency” refers then to the capacity to act which is embodied in the individual.

In “Development sociology: Actor perspectives” (2001), Norman Long took a different stance by arguing that agency is only manifested, and can only become effective, when individuals interact: “[…] the capacity to act also involves the willingness of others to support, comply with, or at least go along with particular modes of action. Hence […] agency entails a complex set of social relationships […] made up not only of face-to-face participants but also of components acting at a distance that include individuals, organisations, relevant technologies, financial and material resources, and media-generated discourses and symbols. […] How they are cemented together is what counts in the end.”
Several other organisations emerged from the CEBs and conquista efforts. In 1989, the Sindicato dos Trabalhadores Rurais (the Arapongan Farmers’ Union) was founded. It began by offering legal support to sharecroppers and wage labourers who were involved in a dispute with a landlord. Later, the union also helped farmers to secure their land rights and acquire the necessary legal property documents for their land. Other organisations began to be established. The Cooperativa de Crédito started to offer small, interest-free loans to farmers, making it possible for them to borrow money to purchase inputs.

The Associação dos Agricultores Familiares de Araponga (or the Araponga Farmers’ Association) was established to purchase seeds, fertilizers, and other inputs in bulk, and sell them to farmers. A regional “umbrella” association was also founded together with other farmers’ unions in the Zona da Mata region to lobby at higher levels to change policies that worked against peasants. In short, the “quest for space” led to a growing number of organisations, all of which, together, created a more favourable environment for peasants.

Yet despite these developments, the future still looked grim for many farmers. Most were mono-cropping coffee, and relied almost exclusively on commodity markets for their inputs, produce and food. With the prices of fertilizers and purchased food increasing, and the coffee price remaining stable, farmers’ incomes were being squeezed. Moreover, their practices were degrading the land. A group of several farmers’ unions (including the Araponga Farmers’ Union) joined forces with a group of recent graduates from the University of Viçosa and founded an NGO, the Centro de Tecnologias Alternativas Zona da Mata (CTA-ZM) in 1987.

A formal alliance was formed between CTA-ZM, several university departments and the farmers’ union, to analyse the possibilities for promoting farming practices based on agro-ecological principles. As a result, farmers have turned their coffee plantations into agro-forestry systems and now produce for their own consumption. They have also devised several other practices, such as green manuring and multi-storey intercropping – all of which have improved their soil and secured their livelihoods.

Dealing with future threats

When external threats to land arose, farmers in Araponga were well prepared to fight them off. In 2001, the establishment of a nature reserve, the Parque Estadual Serra do Brigadeiro, threatened to displace several farmers. The Arapongan Farmer’s Union and several other organisations were able to renegotiate the contours of the park with state authorities so that most of the farmers could remain. In 2007, when a large corporation was planning to buy a plot of land in the community, several farmers organised themselves and jointly purchased the land so that the area would remain free of actors that they did not trust.

Farmers in Araponga have shown what a seemingly powerless group of sharecroppers and rural workers can do. Driven by a quest for space, their agency has contributed to the establishment of new organisations, social relations and arrangements that give them control over key resources. This helps them to ward off external threats and establish diversified agricultural production, with a long-term perspective and in accordance with their own norms, values and quality standards.

Araponga has shown that considerable change is possible when family farmers have a strong drive, are able to mobilise and expand their networks of social relations, create a protective environment to secure their rights and devise innovative practices. NGOs and government organisations can play a key role in facilitating this.

Text: Leonardo van den Berg, Fabio Faria Mendes and Ana Paula Teixeira dos Campos
Leonardo van den Berg (leonardo.vandenberg@gmail.com) conducted research for the Universidade Federal de Viçosa, Brazil, and now works as project co-ordinator of the development organisation OtherWise in the Netherlands.

Ana Paula Teixeira de Campos is a PhD student at the Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Fábio Faria Mendes works as Associate Professor at the History Department, Universidade Federal de Viçosa, Brazil.

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