Author: Ernesto Mendez

New Edition of Agroecology Textbook Features ALC Co-Authors

Hot off the press! The new edition of the foundational textbook “Agroecology” is now available! Congratulations to co-authors Ernesto Méndez (ALC), Vic Izzo (ALC), Steve Gliessman, and Eric W. Engles, and to Andrew Gerlicz (ALC) who provided editorial support!
 
This edition focuses on the transformations necessary for achieving a just and sustainable food system, capturing agricultural, ecological, economic, social, cultural, and political elements of agroecology. It includes new chapters of relevant topics, such as ‘Ecological Pest, Weed, and Disease Management’, ‘Agriculture and the Climate Crisis’, and Urban and Peri-urban Agriculture.
 

The ALC Receives Regional Award for Excellence in Community Engagement Scholarship

The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) today named the University of Vermont (UVM) as regional winner of the 2022 W.K. Kellogg Foundation Community Engagement Scholarship Award in recognition of the extraordinary community engagement of the Agroecology and Livelihoods Collaborative (ALC), as a community of practice working to advance participatory action research (PAR) and agroecology around the world. Read the full article by CALS Communications Manager Rachel Leslie, here. View the video produced as part of the award competition below.

EVENT & MORE: State of the Smallholder Coffee Farmer: Webinar, online platform and report

October 20, 2021 | 11:00 – 12:00 EDT | 10:00 – 11:00 CDT (register below)

With a wealth of available information, has anyone really connected the data dots in coffee? The State of Coffee Smallholder Platform, an open access data resource for coffee farmers and other actors along the coffee value chain, seeks to remove barriers from equitable information sharing to help all value chain actors better assess socio-economic and environmental gaps, outcomes and trends. The platform, along with an accompanying report, will paint a more holistic picture of smallholder coffee farmer livelihoods and communities, while doing so in a way that’s less cumbersome for those gathering and reporting information. Stemming from a partnership between the Agroecology and Livelihoods Collaborative at the University of Vermont, Lutheran World Relief, Heifer International and Statistics for Sustainable Development, this initial pilot focuses on Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala, with the goal of expansion into a larger effort with broader industry support.

Panelists:

  • Rick Peyser, Senior Manager for Coffee and Cocoa, Lutheran World Relief
  • Carlos Barahona, Managing Director at Statistics for Sustainable Development (Stat4SD)
  • Janica Anderzén, PhD candidate in Agroecology, Agroecology and Livelihoods Collaborative, University of Vermont
  • Ernesto Méndez, Professor of Agroecology and Co-Director, Agroecology & Livelihoods Collaborative (ALC) at University of Vermont
  • Ciara McHugh, Statistician at Statistics for Sustainable Development (Stat4SD)
  • Cory Gilman, Strategic Initiatives Manager: Coffee and Commodities at Heifer International
Link to the open access, online platform and research report: https://coffeesmallholder.org/
LINK TO WEBINAR REGISTRATION

BLOG: An Urban Farmer’s Perspective on Agroecology

By: Gabrielle Hayes
Gabrielle Hayes interned with the Agroecology and Livelihoods Collaborative and the Gund Institute for Environment at UVM this summer as part of her degree from Columbia University. Before attending graduate school, she worked in urban agriculture and outdoor education in New York City for 6 years, farming in every borough but Staten Island. She is a founding member of the NYC chapter of the National Young Farmer’s Coalition and lives in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

In March 2020, soon before New York City businesses and schools were shuttered for a long siren-filled spring, I went to my local Trader Joe’s in downtown Brooklyn. The freezers and many of the dried goods shelves were empty. An employee had filled a large section of the produce area, labeled as potatoes and yams, with artichokes. In the mad dash to fill refrigerators and pantries inspired by an unfamiliar pathogen spreading throughout the city, artichokes were apparently the one vegetable New Yorkers were unfamiliar enough with to ignore.

At the time, I was managing and teaching an urban agriculture program for high school students. With the ground still frozen, this meant traveling through the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn to teach students the basics of plant and soil science and to show them seed catalogues with pictures of the purple carrots, red lettuce, and yellow cucumbers that we could grow in whichever community garden they’d be working in. “Tell me what you want to eat! We can grow anything! Except those artichokes. Our growing season is getting longer because of climate change but it’s still too short to start those now.”

I also taught them the difference between local and industrial food systems. Many students were first-generation Americans with family in Ecuador or Trinidad or Mali. They told me stories of the local market or the fruit trees and chickens outside their family’s home in the place they called “my country”. The students whose connections outside of the U.S. had been severed had a harder time visualizing a local food system. But they understood what I meant when I explained that the burdens and benefits of the industrial system are not evenly distributed. Many had been to the Upper East Side of Manhattan on school trips or had witnessed opulence on their television screens. Yet they lived with the pollution-filled air that results from the Bronx being the entry point for most of New York City’s food or they shopped at supermarkets that restock the produce section so infrequently your chances of finding carrots or an unwrinkled pepper are slim to none.

I taught them that growing your own food means gaining power. It frees you from reliance on the international supply chains that restrict the varieties sold in supermarkets to ones that travel well and that are subject to break down, as they did during the early days of the pandemic. I dreamed that some may become interested in farming as a profession and hoped more realistically that they may learn to love their local community garden or to experiment with growing tomatoes on their fire escape.

The experience of farming in food apartheid[i] neighborhoods shaped my understanding of the American food system. I received a daily reminder that this system, while lauded for its productivity, has succeeded neither in

 eliminating hunger nor providing universal access to the nutritious food needed to maintain bodily health. In my classes at Columbia University, where I am currently studying in pursuit of a Master’s in Public Administration – Development Practice, we talk of “structural transformation”. This is the idea that for a country to escape widespread poverty, there must be an increase in agricultural productivity such that labor is freed up to work in other industries. This spurs urbanization and, ultimately and desirably, reduces the number of farmers, and the value to the economy of their agricultural labor, effectively to zero. Disregarding that the equivalence of economic growth to progress is a Western invention, the assumption that farmers inevitably disappear in the process of raising living standards is a fallacy. To provide one example: Ireland, whose GDP per capita is higher than that of the United States, recently enacted a sustainable food policy intended to increase the value of its agricultural sector by providing support to, not encouraging the elimination of, family farms[ii]. The share of employment in agriculture there is 4.8%, compared with 1.4% in the United States [iii].

The ethos of structural adjustment, this idea that rural areas should be emptied, underpins much of the funding, research and efforts that have been devoted to agricultural development over the past several decades, despite the evidence provided by the United States that a likely outcome is inequitable and unsustainable food systems. The Green Revolution in Asia, while rightfully praised for reducing hunger and perhaps saving the lives of millions through increased agricultural productivity, also led to the suicides of an estimated 15 million farmers over the past 60 years [iv]. The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, which has received roughly $1 billion in funding over the last 15 years, has failed to improve food security in the relevant countries, and failed to increase yields by even one third of their original goal [v]. It is clear that the assumption that we need only to create high yielding seeds or provide fertilizer to increase agricultural productivity and therefore improve lives, is not accurate.

This is why I find hope in agroecology. Its adaptable principles that lead, over time, to increased yields and improved ecosystem health, align with what I was taught at The Farm School, where I completed a year-long residential and experiential learning program. Central Massachusetts receives enough rain that we had no need for irrigation save in emergency situations. The specific practices that we used will not apply in arid environments. But the agroecological principles used to design those practices (such as nutrient cycling, promoting biodiversity, and integrating animal and vegetable growing systems) translate to diverse settings.

The agroecology movement, exemplified by the work of La Via Campesina, aims to advance food sovereignty by addressing political and economic factors that limit its existence. Defined in the 2007 Nyéléni Declaration as “the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agricultural systems”, a world in which food sovereignty is realized looks nothing like the United States.

Garden education programs like the ones I’ve managed exist in urban areas as an antidote to the crises of physical, mental and environmental health wrought by structural transformation pushed to its maximum degree. The industrial food system of the United States is not broken. It was designed to exploit land, resources and bodies in pursuit of productivity and profit and it has succeeded spectacularly. It is not a system that requires only tweaks to become “climate-smart”. It is not a system that can be replicated in every climate, landscape and form of government. It is not a system that should be replicated at all. Agroecology provides a path to designing food systems that are culturally and environmentally appropriate, sustainable for people and the planet. In this time of increased focus on food systems and their interaction with our rapidly changing climate, may those with the power to shape the future learn from the past.

__________________

Footnotes

[i] I use the term “food apartheid”, coined by farmer and food justice activist Karen Washington, instead of the more commonly used “food swamp” or “food desert” to connote the man-made nature of this phenomenon.  Swamps and deserts are vital ecosystems.

[ii] Though positive in comparison to what is happening in the United States, this is not an agroecological policy and it  has been criticized for not doing enough to address water pollution or to protect biodiversity.

[iii] https://foodsystemsdashboard.org/countrydashboard

[iv] Ayanthi Karunarathne, David Gunnell, Flemming Konradsen & Michael Eddleston (2020) How many premature deaths from pesticide suicide have occurred since the agricultural Green Revolution?, Clinical Toxicology, 58:4, 227-232, DOI: 10.1080/15563650.2019.1662433

[v] Wise, Timothy A. . “Failing Africa’s Farmers: New Report Shows Africa’s Green Revolution Is ‘Failing on Its Own Terms.’” Global Development and Environment Institute – Tufts University, July 2020. Working Paper No.20-01. https://sites.tufts.edu/gdae/files/2020/07/20-01_Wise_FailureToYield.pdf

BLOG: Designing functional PAR processes: the perspective from NFNA

Designing functional PAR processes: the perspective from NFNA

By Martha Caswell, ALC Co-Director

One of the most important components of participatory action research (PAR) is the Action. Where it falls in the cycle varies: sometimes the action can emerge as a result after careful analysis of the data; or it can be a catalyst earlier in the process, centering the value proposition that both the researchers and community members should be receiving real benefit from the effort. 

On a sunny Thursday morning in June, at the New Farms for New Americans (NFNA) farm near the Ethan Allen Homestead, Action rolled in. There it was, hitched to the back of a red pickup. To most eyes, it looked like a simple structure. A shed maybe? Or, as one farmer remarked walking by, “a break room?” But, as with most things, there is more to this structure than meets the eye.

Carpenter Linsey Brunner (left) and NFNA Program Specialist Alisha Laramee (right), discuss the best placement for the shade structure (Photo credit: Martha Caswell)

For the past three years, Alisha Laramee, program specialist for NFNA, has been participating in the Urban and Peri-Urban Agroecology initiative with UVM’s Agroecology and Livelihoods Collaborative (ALC). We are currently in the second year of a USDA Hatch grant to explore the expression of agroecological principles in urban and peri-urban spaces in Burlington. Our partners include NFNA, the Vermont Community Garden Network, UVM’s Catamount Farm, and the Intervale Center. Alisha has been cautiously interested in this project but is also judicious with her time and energy. She gives all she has to the farm and farmers. When we have been able to fit into that equation, it’s been great. But Alisha has been a strong advocate for her priorities, and there isn’t a lot of room for theoretical conversations about whether or not what’s happening on the farm counts as agroecology. 

For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, New Farms for New Americans (NFNA) is an agriculture program for refugees and immigrants based in Burlington, VT. NFNA supports farmers and gardeners to grow culturally significant crops, increase access to food, land, and agricultural resources, and learn about growing food in Vermont. They facilitate ongoing work with over 275 refugee clients from various countries in Africa and Asia. NFNA has sites in multiple locations, including the Ethan Allen Homestead (2.5 miles from downtown Burlington) and the Intervale (among others), representing mostly peri-urban contexts.

The Ethan Allen site is a secluded, peaceful spot along the Winooski River, with full sun and the rich alluvial soils that come from being in the flood plain. The drawbacks of this site include a high risk for floods and the fact that it is difficult to access without your own transportation. Early on, Alisha mentioned the problems they faced with flooding, pointing out the eroding riverbank, asking if buffer strips or hedgerows might be effective adaptations to consider. As conversations continued, we worked to align what Alisha was identifying as needs with the dimensions of agroecology as defined through the CIDSE principles, and discussed two priorities: the first was improving pollinator presence (an environmental consideration), and the second was the need for a shade/supply area to encourage gathering and sharing tools/knowledge (socio-cultural consideration). 

Partnering with co-PI Stephanie Hurley and ten of her students from the Ecological Landscape Design course in the Plant and Soil Science Department worked with Alisha and developed designs for the NFNA farm site and its surroundings. Student designs included options for creating riparian buffers, floodplain wetlands and earthworks to increase flood resilience; pollinator gardens provide nectar and pollen to a biodiverse array of pollinator species and potentially increase crop production; and ideas for structures to provide much-needed shade for the farmers, and to be multifunctional for equipment storage, group gatherings and a safe place for children to play. 

Alisha reviewed the design options considering which would meet the criteria that the community had shared; they wanted shade, but since many of the participants carry trauma from their time in refugee camps visibility (being able to see what was going on inside of the structure at all times, from all sides) was also critical. The potential cost of a shade structure with these many benefits was a significant concern. The Winooski Park District required that the structure be mobile, for seasonal use and in the event of floods. Graduate Student Josh Taylor, has been working closely with Alisha as part of his dissertation research, and he and Alisha applied for and were awarded a City Market Seedling Grant to support the construction of the shade structure. That’s when the wheels really started rolling. Originally the project was going to be a community build with the farmers, but COVID-19 removed that possibility. In an effort to see the shade structure through to completion, Alisha contracted RG Builders LLC, a small, local business to complete the build. Carpenter Linsey Brunner (pictured above) donated all of the hours she dedicated to this project, and after recently completing the UVM Master Gardeners program, is eager to consider other ways she can contribute to NFNA’s mission. 

Farmers picking up donations from Red Wagon Plants (Photo credit: Martha Caswell)

Sounds good, you might say to yourself, but how does this connect to research? There are several answers to this. The first is that we have found that the most important research question isn’t always the first to emerge. I was visiting Alisha on the day when the shade structure was delivered, but instead of talking about the shed, we talked about the devastation farmers were facing from pest and disease pressures in their plots. We realized that VEPART could potentially work with NFNA to identify ecological and integrated pest management (IPM) strategies that would help them be more resilient to the threats they are facing. We also hopeful that the shade structure will be a site for future workshops and focus groups, which will give us the opportunity to assess participant opinions about how the structure impacts their time at the farm. Because of all of this, we see this Action as a catalyst, that has been participatory, and has provided us good cause for reflection and reassessment of our research directions.

We also value in the co-production of knowledge that has happened among all of us throughout this process. NFNA has just been awarded a highly competitive USDA Urban Agriculture Grant and in the coming year, they will partner with VCGN to develop a leadership and mentorship program. We see lots of potential for continued cross-pollination among people and ideas as this PAR process continues to unfold. It’s not unusual for PAR projects to diverge slightly from their original paths. As noted in a recently published paper “…participatory research projects, which aim at transformative impacts in complex settings beyond knowledge products and learning, need to sustain high intensities of actor interactions in knowledge coproduction throughout all research phases to achieve their sustainability impact goals.”1

That’s our end goal. Prioritizing research, and learning alongside our partners, but never at the expense of the community. Alisha says working with the ALC and thinking about agroecology helps her to ‘see with new eyes’, and she also continues to say – “call it what you want, I just want to do right by the farmers.” 

1 Tribaldos, T., C. Oberlack, and F. Schneider. 2020. Impact through participatory research approaches: an archetype analysis. Ecology and Society 25(3):15.https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-11517-250315

NEWS: ALC Antiracism and Justice Statement

ALC Antiracism and Justice Statement

Being part of the ALC means committing to a process of inquiry and reflection that is both individual and collective. For several years, we have worked as a community of practice (CoP) to define norms, interrogate our own positionality and responsibilities, and make commitments to be agents of change both in our personal and professional realms. Given the growing awareness about systemic racism, we thought it was a good time to write a public statement about our position on broad issues of justice. We wrote the following statement together, as a community of practice, which reflects our values and articulates our commitments.

The Agroecology and Livelihoods Collaborative is a community of practice where we strive to understand systems and, in this work, we are confronted with our individual and collective roles in oppression and destruction. We hold ourselves and each other accountable as we work to transform and heal our agrifood system – using collaboration to find co-liberation. This requires us to confront our discomfort and set aside our egos, with the goal of living our values instead of just talking about them. We know this takes time, energy, effort, humility, and, above all, deep listening and reflection. 

 We center anti-racist work while challenging all forms of oppression. We commit to following the lead of our BIPOC members, supporting the collective protagonism of those that have historically been excluded or marginalized, responding to the demands and calls for social change, showing up in solidarity, and striving to be accomplices in this long-overdue transformation of society. We will learn, unlearn, and imagine with genuine curiosity and care, we will remember that joy and struggle must accompany each other, and we will stay true to this process recognizing that it is not a destination, but a journey.

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NEWS: ALC Coffee Diversification Project featured by the UVM College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS)

For Coffee Farmers, Diversification Key to Sustainability​​

The UVM College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS), recently featured the work of the ALC’s project ‘Assessment of Diversification Strategies in Smallholder Coffee Systems of Mesoamerica’, a Participatory Action Research (PAR) and agroecology process, in collaboration with a diversity of partners from Mexico, Nicaragua and the U.S. Please visit the CALS website to read more.

Statement and Petition in Support of the Movement for Black Lives from The Agroecology Research-Action Collective (ARC)

Statement and Petition in Support of the Movement for Black Lives from The Agroecology Research-Action Collective (ARC):

The ALC has had a relationship with the Agroecology Research-Action Collective (ARC), since its early beginnings around 2016. ARC and ALC share very similar missions and principles. We join our ARC colleagues today in expressing our grief and solidarity with the racial and social injustices against people of color in the United States and the world. These feelings are eloquently presented in the recent statement and petition by ARC “In Support of Black Lives”. We invite you to read the essay and sign the petition in the ARC website by clicking on the link below: https://agroecologyresearchaction.org/in-support-of-the-movement-for-black-lives/

Blog on the ALC’s ‘Assessment of Diversification Strategies in Smallholder Coffee Systems of Mesoamerica’ project

Blog on the ALC’s ‘Assessment of Diversification Strategies in Smallholder Coffee Systems of Mesoamerica’ project

ALC Coordinator Martha Caswell and the ‘Coffee Diversification’ team just published a blog on the website of the French Agropolis Foundation, one of the funders of the project under the umbrella of the ‘Thought for Food Initiative’ Check it out here

The ALC has been working with a diversity of partners, including coffee cooperatives in Mexico (CESMACH) and Nicaragua (PRODECOOP), the Community Agroecology Network (CAN), a grassroots NGO based in California, and faculty and students from the following universities: 1) the ALC at the University of Vermont; 2) Santa Clara University, in California; 3) members of the Agroecology Group at El Colegio de la Frontera Sur (ECOSUR) in Chiapas, Mexico; and 4) the Universidad Nacional Agraria (UNA) in Nicaragua. Using a Participatory Action Research Approach (PAR), we are collectively working and co-creating knowledge on how different diversification strategies may affect food security, climate change resilience, livelihood performance and gender inequity at the household, community and regional scales.

Voices from the Fall 2019 Advanced Agroecology Class- Fourth delivery

Voices from the Fall 2019, Advanced Agroecology Class, at the University of Vermont (UVM)- fourth delivery

Every fall, for the last 10 years or so, I have been learning with the Advanced Agroecology class, at the University of Vermont (UVM). The course seeks to engage students in a diversity of learning experiences, ranging from scientific reading to farm work. One new addition this semester was to ask students to write a blog on an agroecology topic. In the next few weeks we will be sharing selected blogs from the class, providing an opportunity to glean into the bright minds and opinions of the young people that engaged with agroecology this semester. In this last contribution, Brianna Arnold  engages the movement dimension of agroecology and discusses the Milk with Dignity initiative, in Vermont, which focuses on supporting farm worker rights in the dairy sector.  Enjoy !!

Ernesto Méndez, Professor of Agroecology and ALC Co-Director, Department of Plant and Soil Science and Environmental Program

Got Milk with Dignity? Local Program Demonstrates Importance of Agroecology as a Movement

By Brianna Arnold, Plant Biology major and Anthropology minor

You may feel good about your dairy products coming from grass-fed, pasture-raised cows. But the cows don’t milk themselves. For decades, migrant dairy workers in Vermont have been overlooked and ignored. Migrant Justice is working to get their voices heard.

A crowd of about 50 gathered in Leddy Park on Thursday, October 3rd to celebrate and expand Migrant Justice’s Milk With Dignity (MD) – or Leche con Dignidad – campaign. Among those gathered were migrant dairy workers, dairy farmers, Migrant Justice employees, and supportive Vermonters and students. Several migrant workers, with the help of interpreters, praised the two-year old program for its accomplishments, including transitioning Ben & Jerry’s entire supply chain to operate according to the MD code of conduct and cooperate with the Milk with Dignity Standards Council (MDSC). The speakers also reminded us there is still much work to be done, namely getting more buyers of dairy products to participate in the MD Program. With that goal in mind, on the second anniversary of Ben & Jerry joining the program, Milk with Dignity announced its new campaign for Hannaford to sign on, too. So far, Hannaford CEO Mike Vail has made no response.

 

On October 3rd, 2019 a crowd united in front of Hannaford Supermarket to pressure the company to join the Milk with Dignity Program (Photo by Jacob Dawson/VTDigger).

So, why is the MD Program necessary to begin with? Too many migrant dairy workers in Vermont are overworked, underpaid, and underserved. According to Migrant Justice’s website, a survey of nearly 200 workers conducted in 2014 reveals that the average worker labors 60-80 hours per week and 40% of workers are not given any days off. 28% work for seven hours or more without having a break to eat and 15% are not afforded eight hours off work to sleep and rest. 40% of workers are paid less than Vermont’s minimum wage of $10.78 per hour and 20% have their paychecks withheld illegally. Inappropriate and irresponsible housing conditions is another major issue for migrant workers; 15% live in overcrowded housing and 15% lack adequate heating. At the Milk with Dignity event on Thursday, farmworker Jose Luis Cordova Herrera explained that he used to share a room with 2-3 other men in a house that hardly had any space to cook, eat, or rest. Though he wished to express his concerns to his boss, he was afraid that if he spoke up he could lose his job. Now, supported by the MDSC, farmworkers like Herrera are able to advocate for themselves without fearing persecution.

A diagram by Migrant Justice breaks down how Milk with Dignity operates through building working relationships with various actors while amplifying the voices of migrant farmworkers.

Unfortunately, the problems migrant workers face don’t end at the farm’s edge. In fact, for many, they get worse. Countless family members of farmworkers rarely or never leave their homes for fear of dealing with an unfamiliar world, failing to communicate effectively, and potentially getting detained or even deported. One woman I met recently told me that she never leaves her house, which, like many other migrant homes, is located right on the dairy farm. You can see the cows lined up in stalls from her kitchen window. Her husband does all the shopping and brings home groceries and any needed household items. Although this woman has lived in Vermont for nearly half a year, she’s not familiar with any of the surrounding area, and she’s not the only one. A friend of mine who visited a different migrant family’s home said the mother knew nothing about Burlington and was unaware that the University of Vermont even existed. The isolation migrant workers and their families experience is tragic, especially in a state that prides itself on its inclusivity for people of diverse backgrounds.

Though I’m sure there are exceptions, I would not describe most large dairy farms in the US as agroecosystems. They often lack diversification, fail to prioritize workers’ wellbeing, and are generally not all that sustainable. That being said, we can still use agroecological values to critically evaluate how such farms operate in order to locate opportunities for them to evolve. According to the CIDSE Principles of Agroecology, the socio-political movement dimension of agroecology encourages us to consider impacts of the production, processing, distribution, and consumption of food on both nature and society. It’s not enough to analyze dairy farming practices from ecological or economic perspectives; we must also pay attention to and support the lives and livelihoods of those most directly involved in and impacted by the industry. By creating safe spaces to hold conversations about farmworkers’ rights, advocating for improved worker livelihoods, and taking action within the migrant community and greater Vermont community, Migrant Justice is doing just that.