Latin America is rolling back on its eco-farming promises

THE world map, beamed on a large display screen, shows a stark contrast between Latin America and the rest of the world.

The map indicates nations that have laws and policies supporting eco-farming techniques, a practice known as “agroecology”. Fewer than 30 countries worldwide have such laws, and more than half of those that do are in Latin America.

In practice, campaigners told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, some Latin American governments are ignoring these laws and policies or even rolling them back.

“For the last three years ... we have been losing resources to sustain agroecology policies,” said Maria Noel Salgado, a Uruguayan farmer and co-ordinator with the Agroecological Movement of Latin America and the Caribbean (MAELA), a network of indigenous people and small-scale farmers and fishermen.

“The laws are there but there are no resources. We now have a lot of governments who only believe in the power of markets and biotechnology,” she added, referring to the rise of conservative leaders across the region.

Agroecology, as its name implies, shuns chemical inputs. Instead it uses nature-friendly methods such as planting trees on farms and rotating crops to improve the soil and protect against pests.

The map showing Latin America apparently leading the way was the centrepiece at an international meeting on agroecology in early April, organised by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

The laws and policies that are now in place in the region are the result of decades of campaigning by farmers and campaigners, Angela Cordeiro, a Brazilian agronomist, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation at the meeting.

“Despite the fact that we have a very strong agribusiness sector in Brazil ... civil society and social movements managed to influence some laws,” Cordeiro said.

Ross Mary Borja, director of Ecuador-based charity EkoRural, said her country’s progressive laws were due to pressure: it’s 2008 constitution, which includes specific rights for nature, was a result of constant campaigning by her group and others.

In December, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, an intergovernmental grouping of 33 countries, agreed to strengthen policies “that contribute to the development of agroecological family farming.”

However, the implementation of laws that support agroecology and sustainable agriculture has been uneven, said Jean-Francois Le Coq of the French Agricultural Research Centre for Development, a French government agency.

Nicaragua has not implemented its agroecology law at the grassroots level, and Costa Rica has only partly implemented its law to promote organic agriculture, said Le Coq, whose organisation in 2017 studied how agroecology is practised in eight Latin American countries.

There is a gap between what is written in law and what happens on the ground, campaigners say.

Despite Ecuador’s constitutional protection for nature, for example, its biodiversity is under threat from industrial agriculture, oil exploration, mining and poverty, activists said.

Stephen Sherwood an organic farmer from EkoRural, said the Ecuador government’s motives are suspect. He says the government offers farmers free synthetic fertilisers and pesticides.

Ecuador’s agriculture ministry did not respond to requests for comment.

Borja said support for family farmers to follow an agro-ecology path is key given that they produce 60 to 70% of food consumed in Ecuador. That holds true elsewhere too: FAO figures show smallholders in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa provide up to 80% of the food supply.

Meanwhile in Brazil, the national policy on agroecology is in limbo, said Cordeiro, and austerity measures are affecting the Food Acquisition Program, a public procurement programme based on buying produce from local family farmers. A change in government has caused support for agroecology to wane, she added.

In a statement Brazil’s ministry of agriculture acknowledged government purchases had suffered budget cuts, but insisted its commitments to agroecology were “concrete”, and said the national policy had been in force since its publication in 2012.

Changes in governments, dominance of industrial agriculture and the power of agrochemical businesses play a role in the challenges agroecology is facing in Latin America, but there is hope, said Le Coq, who is based in Colombia.

Although agroecology remains smallscale, many policies are in place, he said, and there is growing recognition it could help to solve the region’s environmental and social challenges.