We all have a serious problem when people’s most basic activity – eating – undermines their ability to exist. Yet this is precisely what we have achieved with the advent of modern food. Through the pursuit of cheap food as a ‘good’, we have generated a series of unwanted ‘bads’, such as mass destruction of soils and water systems, erosion of agrobiodiversity, and widescale sickness and death by pesticides, not to mention the constitution of two, rampant pandemics: overweight/obesity and global warming/climate change. Fortunately, growing awareness of the contradictions of modern food is sparking lively counter movements.

We challenge the widespread preoccupation over how agriculture, food, and development should be. Instead, we focus on how everyday experience in agriculture and food is. The work of social movements in the Americas leads us to call attention to the forces of change in people’s everyday encounters with food – not as characterised in concept, but rather as embodied in practice.

The untapped potential of existence

In common food sovereignty discourse, actors are placed in a tidy narrative of oppositions involving marginalised, victimised peasant farmers and helpless consumers facing powerful abstract entities: transnational corporations, the state, science, and out-of-control global food configurations. It is often maintained that processes of food globalisation only can be contained through state regulation.

But can national regulations truly allow citizens to set their own agenda for inclusion and for ending political marginalisation? Which part of the nation-state can be trusted to support people’s actions and their values of environmental sustainability, social justice, dignity, and fair income? In fact, through a growth in hybrid public-private partnerships, institutions in Latin America have systematically neglected people’s experiences, while undermining people’s ownership over the public commons. This is happening, for example, through attempts to regulate, in the name of scientifically informed norms of ‘biosafety’ and hygiene, genetic resources, food processing, manure-based fertilizers, and commercial markets.

While the state certainly is an influential actor in social change, we find the work of people during their less deliberate, informal moments of their day to be of equal, and even greater, importance.

Recently, we met with 23 other researcher-activists working in seven countries of Latin America to exchange and analyse a variety of provocative experiences in food. The resulting casework, assembled in a forthcoming book, is both inspiring and instructive in providing insights into diverse means of existence.

For example: creative building of political clout through increasing citizen investment in agroecology in Ecuador (see box); connecting seemingly disparate people around the flavour and taste of chili in Mexico; and the constituting of healthy, affordable and ‘responsible’ food through an urban-based purchasing cooperative in Valdivia, Chile. As we see in such experiences, people in the street are capable of creating change – a global phenomenon that cannot be explained solely or simply as a form of resistance to ‘the system’.

People’s production, procurement and eating are an influential force

These studies of day-to-day existence in households, fields and on the streets expose how people’s production, procurement and eating are an influential force– be it self-harmful and negative (e.g., overweight/ obesity, exclusion from markets, and degradation of natural resources) or positive (health, equity, and sustainability). The fact that this entrepreneurship happens despite the supposedly overwhelming influences of globalised science and industry calls into question the concern of food sovereignty movements with how to fix and improve government institutions as the necessary pathway to a better future.

The vitality of everyday food

Other examples of inspiring citizen-led innovation in Latin America include the rescue of underutilised, traditional food sources, such as Andean roots and tubers, grains and leafy vegetables, the rise of heirloom seed production and exchange networks and neighbourhood wholesale purchasing groups, and the culinary activity of food preparation and tasting in kitchens across the region. The tremendous diversity and dynamism of such food practices point at the potential of people’s will, inventiveness and self-organisation. This creativity shows that people are capable of mobilising a wealth of knowledge, assets, values and organisation to advance particular sets of interests. They do this through their daily living and being, with or without clear design or approval from authorities.

The change that takes place in people’s lived experiences is often overlooked. One provocative example from research in the Galapagos Islands reveals how family farmers – once the target of criticism from conservationists – effectively block the influx of fresh food from continental Ecuador, which is the primary source of invasive species to the islands. They do this through organic, home-grown and locally marketed foods. These farmers, in fact, protect the environmental integrity of the islands and their valuable tourism industry.

The endless examples of sustainable food production, equitable exchange, and responsible consumption in the region and beyond, often in the absence of state-based sanction and sometimes in the midst of heavy antagonism, speak to people’s flair and ability to independently pursue their own agenda.

This is why we pose a challenge to the orthodox vision of social change around agriculture and food that prioritises the state and, to a lesser extent, science, as the primary vehicle to institutionalise agroecology and food sovereignty. Instead, we believe that needed change must come from the social, material and political relations generated through practice.

Coming together through daily practice

Researchers, activists and policy makers often distinguish between jobs and processes (production, circulation, and eating), administrative units (farms, markets, government agencies, cooperatives and organisations) and countries. In everyday food practice, however, such boundaries are blurred, generating ebbs and flows of information, images and properties. Everyday experiences of (ir)responsible production, circulation, and consumption break down the classical boundaries used to categorise society. What is left are people brought together by a shared necessity to eat.

Empirical research on how agroecology networks and consumer movements organise and work find that people do not necessarily obey classical boundaries of geography, social status or scientific standards of ‘best practice’. This raises questions over commonly held beliefs about how people self-identify and experience life. In other words, is the world still (if it ever was) primarily assembled around dividing lines such as North-South, rich-poor and urban-rural?

In effect, these dichotomies blind the owner to the rich goings-on in food. Studies of changing patterns of nutrition in Northern Ecuador and Mexico, for example, reveal how contemporary food mobilises minds and bodies in endlessly nuanced ways. Meeting one another over a meal, migrating rural families, foreign retirees and well-off nationals in these countries build social relationships and life together regardless of class, nationality or age.

Therefore we must identify an agenda of change in agriculture and food that includes renewed scrutiny of daily food practice – in the family, neighbourhood and social networks as well as in the administrative bureaucracies of the state, industry and science. The multiple means of existence found in and enabled through food, reveals a vitality that despite, and even because of seemingly insurmountable forces, provides hope and inspiration for healthier, more equitable, and sustainable futures.

Ecuador’s national food sovereignty law and the 250 Thousand Families Campaign

The Colectivo Agroecológico, Ecuador’s national agroecology collective, played a central role in influencing Ecuador’s ground-breaking 2008 Constitution, which stipulates a national policy transition from food security (understood as merely meeting people’s basic needs) to food sovereignty (an emancipatory force for democratic change). Among other things, the Constitution says the state must guarantee the free flow of seeds, promote peasant farming and agroecology. Furthermore, it prohibits intellectual property rights on agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge, as well as the use of GMO crops and seeds.

Leaders from the agroecology movement drafted a series of subsequent legislative measures on food sovereignty, including bills for the protection of genetic resources, agrobiodiversity, and the promotion of ecological farming. Nevertheless, little meaningful family-level change has been achieved. In fact, in many ways, the public agenda of food sovereignty is losing ground.

For example, in September 2012 President Correa stated this was a “grave mistake” and proposed an amendment to remove this “technological straightjacket” that “jeopardised the country’s food security.” Drawing on sketchy scientific evidence and in the name of advancing the country’s food sovereignty, Correa argued that GMOs would not be the product of some foreign private industry, but rather, they would still be an expression of food sovereignty because they would be “our [Ecuador’s] GMOs” – produced by Ecuadorian scientists in a publicly funded research institute.

Other examples relate to the country’s recent land, water and seed laws, all of which of which seek to limit citizen ownership and control of traditional common pool resources, opening the door for privatisation and a deepening of agricultural modernisation.

In people’s hands
The Colectivo concluded that the logic of modern, industrialised food had become so influential in national politics that it was no longer realistic to expect government officials to represent the public interest, so it decided to place the responsibility for a transition to food sovereignty in people’s hands. In October 2014 the Colectivo launched its ‘250,000 families!’ campaign, aiming to inspire a critical mass of 5% of Ecuador’s population to join a ‘citizen’s agenda’ of food sovereignty. The Colectivo estimates that the combined purchase of these families in farmer-sold, Andean-based, agroecological food would represent an investment of about US$300 million per year.

The campaign finds it not necessary to ‘mould’ or ‘educate’ these 250,000 families to practice responsible consumption, as this untapped resource already exists in the country. Instead, the campaign views its task as helping to identify and connect these families and inspiring them to publicly share experiences. This is being achieved through food fairs, gastronomic events, creative communications and sensorial workshops. The latter consists of innovative and playful tests through which people get reconnected to the flavour, feel, smell and sound of food. This has proven to awaken powerful memories, motivations and desires in them.

Two years on, tens of thousands of families from all walks of life have joined the campaign. Once dependent on the politics of the state, a growing number of families are now working together to eat well, healthily and locally, and in direct relation with producers – not just as individual households, but also as a collective, household-, field- and street-level force of vitality and democratic food.

Stephen G. Sherwood (ssherwood@ekorural.org) is Researcher of Knowledge, Technology and Innovation at EkoRural (Ecuador) and Wageningen University (the Netherlands). Myriam Paredes is Professor in Rural Territorial Development at the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO, Ecuador). Myriam and Steve are active in the Colectivo Agroecológico in Ecuador. Alberto Arce is Associate Professor of Sociology of Development and Change at Wageningen University (the Netherlands), and Associate Professor at the Faculty of Agronomy at the Universidad de Chile.

In May 2017, the authors will publish a book entitled ‘Agriculture, Food, and Social Change: The Everyday Vitality of Latin America’ (UK: Routledge/Earthscan Press).

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Despite growing appreciation for the importance of locally-led change processes, the development “outsider” – be it the technical expert or the externally funded intervention, private industry, or simply “the system” – continues to lay at the centre of policies. Institutions have become self-referential and entrenched in certain problematic ways of thinking and doing.

Fortunately, as shown in recent critical reviews, such as the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), rural development is undergoing increasing scrutiny and change. Where is it going?

Agricultural modernisation

Since the 1950s, the evolution of planned interventions on behalf of the poor and disparaged has followed two general pathways. With the support of private foundations like Rockefeller and Ford, pioneers, such as the plant breeder Norman Borlaug, convinced governments to invest in industrial-era technologies (biotechnology, fertilizers and pesticides), bringing forth an external input, technology-centred model emphasising “technology-transfer” (or Development 1.0).

About the same time, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) spearheaded post-World War II relief and re-construction efforts; while churches and religious groups became involved in “capacity-building” tied to the independence movements in Africa and Asia and agrarian reform in Latin America. Over time, NGOs established a school of thought emphasising people- and process-centred approaches, all of which can be described as “participatory development” (or Development 2.0).

Such development discourses are the product of influential socio-technical regimes, in their collective efforts to set agendas and policy. For example, social networks organised around competing interests are generating the on-going debates over the nature of hunger and poverty as a “lack” of production or efficiencies, thereby justifying a call for better technology, such as genetically modified crops or “market chain” innovation.

Development 1.0 led to the creation of the national agricultural research and extension centres, as well as of the international agricultural research system.

Development 2.0 grew with the rise of rural development NGOs. These two traditions did not emerge in a social vacuum and, in fact, they continually influence one another. Despite disparate origins, over time they arguably have become part of a common ideology of “agricultural modernisation”: market-based production, the intermediation of relationships through money and financial systems, and reliance on exogenous knowledge and technology. While each owns its own ideals of environment and public good, in practice, both Development 1.0 and 2.0 emphasize universal notions of “best practice”, rationality, and profit.

While it is difficult to generalise about their short- and intermediate-term effects, people largely agree that Development 1.0 and 2.0 have fundamentally altered the course of global agriculture and food, leading to new forms of land tenure and planting schemes, management of soils, water and seeds, exchange, social relationships and aspirations of rural people and their families.

Meanwhile, there is little doubt that agricultural modernisation also has contributed to unwanted outcomes. People across the planet are dealing with associated problems – deforestation, degradation of soils and water systems, erosion of on-farm biodiversity, proliferation of pests, exclusion from markets and rising climate variability – that fundamentally undermine their food systems and well-being.

Development 3.0: Self-organisation

Though the future may seem bleak, we find reason for hope. Despite the tremendous institutional influence of Development 1.0 and 2.0, we do not find pure forms of agricultural modernisation in farmers’ fields, homes or communities. Short of romanticising local practice, we see that people, their families and social networks largely work outside the formalised institutional environment of development. As such, peoples’ practices continue to be richly nuanced and diverse, where one can find both highly worrisome trends as well as promising opportunities.

In the coming editions of Farming Matters we will share experiences from a highly prominent, though commonly neglected third pathway in development: family- and community-level innovation embedded in peoples’ daily interactions and practices (Development 3.0). We will present our studies on how people, operating in families and social networks, have managed to creatively forge relatively sustainable and healthy food practices in the face of the seeming hegemony of agricultural modernisation.

The crux of Development 3.0 is to approach rural development as something that ultimately emerges from locally distributed and resolved social processes, however tricky and messy, rather than as something that can be fixed. Then, one subsequent institutional challenge becomes the re-thinking of science, policy and professionalised development vis-à-vis the undeniable self-organisation of continuities and change.

While we, as researchers and development practitioners, still struggle to step outside of our own institutional biases and constraints, faced with the pressing challenges of modern social and environmental decline, we agree with others that a fresh perspective on development is urgently called for.

Like its predecessors, Development 3.0 is filled with contradictions and challenges, but there is strong evidence that development practice is already undergoing change in the hands of emerging networks of development actors, in particular families and food counter-movements.

Drawing on on-going work in Latin America, our colleagues and we will contribute a series of articles on the richness of peoples’ daily practices and show why this social heterogeneity is so central to the past, present and future of agriculture, food and environmental management. Through grounded experiences in families, communities and other collectives, we will explore how, through sheer grit, creativity and flair, people go about their daily living and being.

In particular, we will shed light on “positive deviance”: those cases where families have generated promising alternatives to the norms of practice in soil and water management, agrobiodiversity, family nutrition, the circulation and sale of products as well as in the shaping of public opinion and policy. The focus on positive deviance is meant to provide a central reference point for understanding how change evolves and spreads through peoples’ day-to-day practices and self-organisation.

Stephen Sherwood, Cees Leeuwis and Todd Crane

Stephen Sherwood (stephen.sherwood@wur.nl), Cees Leeuwis and Todd Crane work at the department of Knowledge, Technology and Innovation (KTI)/Centre for Integrative Development, Wageningen University, the Netherlands.

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The establishment of strong and efficient partnerships can contribute enormously to family farming, in many different ways. All efforts to enhance learning, however, must ensure that local people remain in control of the process. External agents need to be very aware of the role they want to take and of the role they are in effect taking.

While facilitators of technologycentred approaches tend to preoccupy themselves with “what farmers do not do” and on “how to get them to farm differently”, a people-centred approach seeks to help farmers understand what they do and why as a source of inspiration for continuity and change. This must be our point of departure when looking at partnerships, or at the role that “outsiders” play in promoting learning that is founded on local experience.

Critics of externally led rural development rightfully raise serious concerns over the influence of outsiders in local development. We call special attention to the moral and ethical obligations that an externally based organiser – be it a farmer from another community or someone from a nearby city or another country – is as transparent as possible about her or his worldview, motivations and agenda in seeking a partnership for change.

This edition of Farming Matters presents a diversity of learning-based approaches. Here, I highlight a handful of ideas on rural education that came to mind upon my perusal of the articles, before summarising some thoughts on effective partnerships for learning.

Culture as the seedbed of learning

In his provocative book, “A short history of progress”, the anthropologist Ronald Wright explains that, from a biological perspective, humans are no smarter today than they were 10,000 years ago. In other words, an ice-age child could be reared in a modern family and, afforded the right nurturing and opportunities, he or she could perform perfectly well and have every bit the same chances as any child in excelling in school and becoming a medical doctor. This insight is a sharp criticism of most modern education programmes, but it is consistent with the sort of approaches that ILEIA has been championing for the last 26 years.

Wright convincingly argues that knowledge is not stored in the brain; rather, it is embedded in culture. Similarly, farmers belong to communities of practice and, as such, they contribute to and learn from unfolding histories. In this sense, learning is about routine – reproducing age-old traditions expressed, for example, in a certain way of planting. But agriculture, of course, is not static. Each time a farmer drops her seed it falls into an ever-changing world. Learning is also about change – occasionally breaking with timehonoured practice and giving birth to future tradition.

Cultivating the human farm

The Honduran educator and farmer-philosopher, the late Elias Sanchez, inspired a passion for popular education in thousands of community organisers. Elias argued that, at the most basic level, learning involves “cultivating the human farm”. He summarised learning as the process of managing the “head”, the “heart” and the “hands”. His ideas were based on a fundamental tenet of individual learning described by Benjamin Bloom as “domains of knowledge”: cognition (mental skills – the ability to associate, comprehend, and think creatively), affective capacity (the ability to grow emotionally and have feelings, to value and find inspiration for action), and psychomotor skills (the ability to perform manual and physical skills). Accordingly, effective learning involves the simultaneous “cultivation” of each. Neglect the head, heart or hands, Elias said, and learning is incomplete – the human farm collapses.

In this issue, Winarto and colleagues (p. 10) explain how outsiders helped Indonesian farmers to “read” and interpret rainfall patterns, demonstrating why it is important for them to understand the multiple aspects of the “human farm”. They also show why it is important to understand that the “human farm” does not emerge and operate exclusively through the activities of an individual. Rather, it involves the family, which is a part of communities of neighbouring human farms. These, in turn, seamlessly interact in networks of other activities around food. Thus, learning in agriculture is very much a collective enterprise, and as such, effective partnering in peoplecentred development requires special attention to the social aspects of agriculture.

Social transformation

The tradition of “participation” in development is rooted in the tradition of non-formal, popular education and life-long learning pioneered by Nikolaj Grundtvig, founder of the Danish Folk Schools in the 19th century.

This groundbreaking work influenced similar rural peoples’ movements throughout Europe. A century later it directly inspired activity across the world, such as that supported by James Yen’s Mass Education Movement in China, Paulo Freire’s adult literacy programmes in Brazil, Myles Horton’s Highlander Folk Education Center in Appalachia in the United States, and countless other examples.

Such examples show that if well managed, and if planned as part of a democratic spirit that respects local tradition and the right to self-determination, partnering can help people break through their preconceived notions of what is possible. Beyond mere participation in learning activities, local control over the learning agenda is central to democratic change. This means that an external facilitator must be continually aware of his or her own role in the community.

Partnering for learning

As a first step towards assuring democratic facilitation, a practitioner needs to carefully manage how he or she goes about promoting change. In particular, locally led learning processes need to:

• help individuals in understanding themselves as learners (through open discussion of learning styles and processes of critical reflection);
• encourage individuals to expand their learning experiences and styles (overcoming barriers and exploring new strategies);
• employ a variety of instructional approaches (so that participants experience different ways of interacting and learning);
• create an environment in which tolerance and diversity can thrive; and
• create a climate in which collaboration exists (where participants work with one another as resources).

Admittedly, arriving to a community with a partnership in mind and a learning agenda in your pocket can be problematic. For an outsider, effective partnering for development begins first and foremost with reflective practice and honesty. This means understanding and being up-front with one’s own worldview, biases, agenda and motivations for seeking a partnership for change. It then involves the capacity to work shoulder-to-shoulder with others — both as individuals and in collectives — to mobilise their single most valuable resource for continuity and change: people.

Text: Stephen Sherwood

Stephen Sherwood, a family farmer in Ecuador, teaches part-time at Wageningen University’s Communication and Innovation Studies Group. He is also co-founder of Groundswell International (www.groundswellinternational.org), a partnership of grassroots practitioners dedicated to rural transformation.
E-mail: ssherwood@ekorural.org

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