What’s up with AgroecologyNow!?

See below for some highlights of our latest work, including free-to-download articles and videos. Please pass some or all of this on to your networks or to copy/adapt parts for use in newsletters, etc. There are also a number of recent and freely downloadable articles listed at the end of the email. * Posts marked with a star include upcoming events you may wish to join in on.

Announcing a new Column at AgroecoloyNow! - “Agroecology in Motion: Nourishing Transformation”

We have launched a new column at AgroecologyNow!. Our aim is to create a platform for bold ideas relayed through succinct, creative and compelling writing that stretches the boundaries of thinking and action to nourish a transformative agroecology. It will include articles that stimulate reflection and learning, inform political-practical work on agroecology and move people to action. The column will be provocative and inspiring, international in scope and connected with agroecology happenings all over the world. The first article in the column lays the groundwork for future contributions: https://wp.me/p67WNH-GF  

Seeking New Agreements for Working with Nature through Enhancing Agricultural Biodiversity

* Join us at the Oxford Real Farming Conference 2021 

This year the ORFC is going online and global with a 7-day programme (7-13 Jan) of talks and workshops from across the world. The event will give food and farming activists, including producers, researchers, policy-makers and NGOs the chance to exchange ideas, learn from each other and form new alliances.  It will also provide space to organise ahead of the climate ministers and heads of state gathering, COP26, which the UK is hosting in Glasgow in November 2021. AgroecologyNow and CAWR  will be a part of 6+ presentations, workshops and interactive sessions on:

• Agroecology Financing: From Tweaking to Transformation …! 
• Exporting Technofixes, Colonialism and Resistance
• Can agriculture be decolonised? Opportunities and obstacles for agroecology
• Building farmers capacity in the context of urbanisation: political pedagogies for urban agroecology
• Subtle Agroecologies: Farming with the Hidden Half of Nature
• In the Belly of the Beast; Organising for Food Sovereignty in the US

Registration for delegates from majority world countries will be free. View more about our sessions at https://wp.me/p67WNH-Ft and see the wider slate of offerings and get tickets at https://orfc.org.uk. 

Connecting the dots of Agroecology and Food Sovereignty

This podcast discusses food sovereignty and agroecology in different contexts - From poultry plants in the US South exploiting low-wage workers, to the slow violence of pesticides in Punjab causing premature disability to the European food sovereignty movement and peasant rights activism- scholars, Carrie Freshour, Divya Sharma and CAWR’s Barbara Van Dyck join the WBI show to connect the dots of agroecology across places. https://tinyurl.com/yydqqol9.

 

Decolonising the Curriculum? Reflecting on Possibilities and Contradictions at the Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience

The decolonising the curriculum movement represents a profound challenge to universities and a call for introspection and action. This article shares the reflections that emerged at a CAWR workshop to discuss the contradictions and possibilities of enacting decoloniality and equity in the academy. Click here to access our own related multimedia ‘resource list’ onDecolonising the Curriculum. https://wp.me/p6tuKo-1cZ 

* Resourcing and Financing Agroecology - New Page, Resources and Upcoming Webinar

How can transitions towards agroecology be ‘financed’. Our growing stream of research at AgroecologyNow on Financing and Resourcing Agroecology is critically examining the role of public and philanthropic donors in agroecology transitions. We are looking at both the quantity (and often the lack) of funds allocated to agroecology. We are also especially concerned with the quality of financing approaches and specifically how they can support a transformative agroecology. Also, this page lists the growing number of studies that explicitly study the extent to which agroecology is being financed through differentagricultural development and research programs. Visit the website to sign up for two webinars on this stream of research (one on November 26  and another in January as a part of ORFC as mentioned above). View more here: https://wp.me/P67WNH-C8 

Call for Interest for Special Issue - Participatory Action Research in Times of COVID

We are organizing a Special Issue on the topic of “Doing Participatory Action Research (PAR) in a time of COVID and Beyond”. Our idea is to submit it to Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems. We encourage scholar-activists or researcher-practitioners from within social networks and scholarship to co-author work that raises important questions about how we might think about and approach our work differently. Click here for more details:http://www.agroecologynow.com/par-covid/.

Call for Abstracts: Special Issue on Women’s Communal Land Rights - December 11 Deadline 

We are interested in submissions that critically analyze efforts, by a range of actors, to advance communal land rights in different spaces and at different levels, and what this means for women and youth. This will become part of a Research Topic edited by Priscilla Claeys, Stefanie Lemke and Juana Camacho in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, sub-section Social Movements, Institutions and Governance. To check it out and submit an abstract, click here: https://tinyurl.com/y62rnwwu 

Pivoting from Local Food to Just Food Systems in Special Farming Matters Issue on Agroecology and Feminism

They are advancing economic models based on feminist and degrowth economics that move far beyond the profit-motive of capitalist economic logic. This article discusses the surge in interest in ‘local food’ in the wake of COVID. It argues that social movements are doing critical work in coordinating and amplifying the political dimensions of local food by shifting from individual to collective, exclusive to inclusive, and technical to political to confront corporate power and other intersecting oppressions. Read here: https://wp.me/p67WNH-DW. This article was originally published the Farming Matters Special Issue on Agroecology and Feminism published by CIDSE, Cultivate!, and the AgriCultures network. 

AgroecologyNow! Publications (click through to access)

• Alvarez Febles, N. and Félix, G. 2020. Hurricane María, Agroecology and Climate Change Resiliency. In B. Tokar and T. Gilbertson (Eds.), Climate Justice and Community Renewal. London: Routledge. [contact authors for pdf].
• Anderson, C.R. and Anderson, M. 2020. Resources to Inspire a Transformative Agroecology: A Curated Guide. In Transformation of Our Food Systems, eds. H.R. Herren, B. Haerlin and IAASTD+10 Advisory Group. Berlin/Zurich: Zukunftsstiftung Landwirtschaft/Biovision. P. 169-180. 
• Anderson, C.R. Milgroom, J. and M.P. Pimbert. 2020. Pivoting from Local Food to Just Food Systems. Farming Matters. 36.1. P. 43.
• Arora, S., Van Dyck, B., Sharma, D. & A. Stirling. 2020. Control, care, and conviviality in the politics of technology for sustainability, Sustainability. Science, Practice and Policy, 16:1, 247-262.
• Claeys, P. and Peschard, K. 2020. Transnational Agrarian Movements, Food Sovereignty, and Legal Mobilization in the Oxford Handbook of Law and Anthropology. [contact authors for pdf]    
• Duncan, J. and Claeys, P. 2020. Gender, COVID-19 and Food Systems: impacts, community responses and feminist policy demands. CSM Women’s Working Group.
• Herren, H.R., B. Haerlin and IAASTD+10 Advisory Group. Transformation of Our Food Systems. Berlin/Zurich: Zukunftsstiftung Landwirtschaft/Biovision.www.globalagriculture.org. 
• Lemke, S. and Claeys, P. 2020. Absent Voices: Women and Youth in Communal Land Governance. Reflections on Methods and Process from Exploratory Research in West and East Africa,Land, 9(8), 266. 
• Pimbert, M. P. 2018. Constructing Knowledge for Food Sovereignty, Agroecology and Biocultural Diversity. In M. P. Pimbert (Ed.), Food sovereignty, agroecology and biocultural diversity. (pp. 1-56). London: Routledge.
• Pimbert, M. P. 2018. Democratizing knowledge and ways of knowing for food sovereignty, agroecology and biocultural diversity. In M. P. Pimbert (Ed.), Food sovereignty, agroecology and biocultural diversity. (pp. 259–321). London: Routledge.

 

Highlighted Publications, Events and Updates From our Networks

• Call for contributions: e-zine - Our Food, Our Right: Recipes For a New Normal(Community Alliance for Global Justice)
• Call for papers: Sustainability and Political Agroecology - special issue in Sustainability Journal
• Declaration: Glasgow Agreement - People’s Climate Commitment 
• Guidebook: Cooking Up Political Agendas: A Feminist Guide on the Right to Food and Nutrition For Women in Rural Areas [Friends of the Earth International, FIAN International, Crocevia]
• Interactive resource: Earth to Table Legacies 
• Policy Briefing: CIDSE Agroecology & Finance Briefing [CIDSE]
• Research Brief:  The Right to Land and Other Natural Resource  [Geneva Academy]
• Film: InsightShare documentary ‘Living Cultures: Decolonising Cultural Spaces’ 
• *Film and online screening event: The feature film GATHER tells the story about Indian resilience and the renaissance of Native food systems.https://www.nativefoodsystems.org/ - Join on-line screening event on Dec 4 here or access film here.
• Webinar recording: Winona LaDuke and Leah Penniman in Conversation[Schumacher Centre for New Economics Webinar]
• Video: Transnational Law Institute Focus Seminar on  Food (in-)security and activism during and “post” COVID-19. Webinar recording with interventions from Michael Fakhri, Jessica Duncan, Priscilla Claeys, William Moseley, Stefano Prato and Shalmali Guttal, organized by Matt Canfield. 
• Report: The right to food in the context of international trade law and policy [UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food]
• Report: ‘Junk Agroecology’: The corporate capture of agroecology for a partial ecological transition without social justice [TNI]
• Report: False Promises: The Alliance for the Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)[multiple publishers]
• Report: Money Flows: What is holding back investment in agroecological research for Africa? [Biovision, IPES Food, Institute of Development Studies]
• Guidebook: Direct Sales and Short Supply Chains: An introduction to models and management for farmers and growers [Landworkers’ Alliance, UK] 
• Case study collection: Direct Sales and Short Supply Chains: Bringing the Market Back into Farmers’ Hands [Landworkers’ Alliance, UK]
• Report: Shortening Food Supply Chains in UK: Roads to Regional Resilience  [Soil Association & Friends Provident Foundation, UK]
• Report: The Added Value(s) of Agroecology : Unlocking the potential for transition in West Africa [IPES Food, International], version en français
• Article: Food for All or Feeding the Data Colossus? The Future of Food in a Digital World [ETC Group].
• Article: Correcting misperceptions of Agroecology
• Article: Meek, D. and Khadshe A. 2020. Food sovereignty and farmer suicides: bridging political ecologies of health and education. The Journal of Peasant Studies. 
• Article: The Failure of GMO Cotton in India 
• Article: The future of agroecology in Canada: Embracing the politics of food sovereignty
• Book: Meek. D. 2020. The Political Ecology of Education: Brazil's Landless Workers' Movement and the Politics of Knowledge.
• PhD Opportunity: Focusing on food systems and social justice at UVermont.
• *Conference: VIII Latin American Congress of Agroecology, 25-27 of November, online