Abstract

FUENTES PONCE, Mariela H.; RODRIGUEZ SANCHEZ, Luis Manuel; PINHEIRO, Sebastião  and  MACEDAS JIMENEZ, Juan Ubaldo. Beyond the labels: Closer to agriculture. Inter disciplina [online]. 2018, vol.6, n.14, pp.113-127.  Epub Feb 15, 2021. ISSN 2448-5705.  https://doi.org/10.22201/ceiich.24485705e.2018.14.63383.

Mexico has been classified as a net food importer, being the fourth largest importer in the world; about 80% of the population is urban and 20% lives in the countryside. To perform agricultural production to satisfy the need of heathy and good quality foods in our country is not an easy task, especially when capitalism imposes a single agricultural praxis homogenizing model, and a single model to generate and extend the knowledge about agriculture, subordinated to the current agro-food global system. Agroecology arose as a paradigm that pretends to offer an alternative to the hegemonic model of industrial agriculture proper of the agribusiness. Nevertheless, in several Latin American countries the agroecological practice and discourse are being driven and co-opted by the same global agro-food system. It has tended to adapt itself to the hegemonic and totalizing model, but now with a biocultural matrix associated to nature conservancy and to the commoditization of indigenous cultural values and knowledge, all of this within a global market. Thus, we need to re-appropriate and dignify the agriculture, considering that its main objective is food production generating, parallel to a cultural identity process. This is a collective process in which participate not just the peasants or producers, nut also academics, ngo’s, technicians and consumers that appropriate the knowledge generation process without despising any wisdom, in a way accord to local and regional conditions. One of the key aspects to achieve this is to work in the empowering of the peasantry and the reappropriation of the activity of the “ultra-social” activity by the peasant family. This implies that diverse academic sectors link themselves with the goals of the communities, working jointly with the peasants and propitiating the development of their own capabilities, knowledges, technology and organization; providing tools to systematize experiences, decode and anticipate the environmental and economic reality that the global agrofood system seeks to impose.

Keywords : agroecology; agriculture; peasant knowledge; agro-food system; agri-business.