A New Harvest Una nueva cosecha
How the Covid-19 Pandemic is Accelerating Agroecology and a Return to Local Food Systems
This past spring, people in Patagonia began growing. They turned over grass patches to create garden beds; secured nylon over newly built greenhouse frames; planted rows of food in freshly worked soil, one numinous seed at a time. The Southern Hemisphere spring arrived more than eight months after the appearance of Covid-19, and the subsequent growing revolution couldn't be less of a coincidence.
Some people find they simply have more time at home to start a garden, while others are concerned about their ability to afford food in the coming months as the pandemic-struck economy continues to struggle. Some are worried that grocery store shelves may present scarcities, while others are beginning to value nutrition as a key component of health and building a strong immune system. In rural areas and urban centers, among rich and poor, in Patagonia and around the world, the individual motives may vary but the underlying cause of this new-found growth is the same: the Covid-19 pandemic has rocked the global economy and industrialized food system like never before, along with people's faith in it.
In Patagonia in particular, where the raw ingredients for building alternative, localized food systems abound – ingredients like clean water, workable soil, and local know-how – individuals and entire communities are cooking up solutions and returning to their agricultural roots.
Since the pandemic began, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has promoted non-conventional agriculture as part of the solution to interruptions in the global food chain spurred by Covid-19. This is a big shift from how governments and corporations have viewed food production and distribution over the past 60 years. Beginning in the late 1950's, the Green Revolution transformed agriculture throughout the world by touting mechanization, consolidation, and specialization as the new, more efficient way to grow food, never mind its capitalist motives. Since then, human populations around the world have grown dependent on a system that ships food across the planet – first as a raw product, then as a processed and packaged one – in dizzying quantities at a breakneck pace.
Chile and Argentina are big players in this international food game. Chile is a net food exporter, with agri-food shipments second only to mining. Still, food imports are steadily growing each year, with the country importing $3.7 billion worth of consumer-oriented agricultural products from around the world in 2018. Similarly, that same year, four of Argentina's top five exports in terms of dollars were food products: corn, soybean meal, soybean oil, and wheat. And though most of Argentina's import economy is related to vehicles and petroleum, interestingly, its fifth largest import in 2018 was soybeans: the product used to produce two of the top exports listed above.
Critics of the global agribusiness food system have argued that a heavy focus on efficiency and centralized operations have resulted in sacrificing flexibility and resiliency within that same system. With global travel restrictions and a diminishing global GDP due to Covid- 19, interruptions in this international supply chain have been inevitable and are
predicted to be just the beginning of effects still to come. According to Carlos Furche, a former agriculture minister during the center-left Michelle Bachelet government, “The Chilean government will need to redefine medium and long- term strategies that will enable Chilean agriculture to adapt to the new conditions, which are likely to be marked by trade restrictions, changes to global food demand and the transformation of the globalization paradigm to which the Chilean agri-food sector was once joined successfully.” In other words, business as usual is not an option for post-covid-19 industrial agriculture.
UC Berkeley professor and agroecologist Miguel Altieri has long analyzed this “business as usual” approach, dedicating his career to exposing its faults and promoting agroecology as a viable alternative. Most commonly defined as applying ecological concepts and principles to the design and management of sustainable agricultural systems, Altieri (see “Interview with Miguel Altieri” in this issue) emphasizes the concept of agroecology also must necessarily consider the social and political context. Chronic hunger demonstrates why, which he says is “not so much a consequence of yields being too low or of global supplies being unable to meet demand” but it rather is “due to poverty, deficient food distribution, food waste, lack of access to land and other factors.” Indeed, while big agribusiness contends that conventional agriculture is needed to feed a growing world population, expected to increase by 2 billion people over the next 30 years, the non- profit Agroecology Fund has study after study that shows agroecology also increases crop yields while also fomenting ecological services like soil regeneration, water preservation, and biodiversity conservation.
The global pandemic has also exposed how the agro-industrial food system disproportionately impacts the poor and people of color. In the United States, between 50 to 75 percent of all field workers – estimated to be more than 1 million people – are undocumented immigrants who live in fear of deportation. Ironically, with the advent of Covid-19, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security gave these illegal farmhands “essential worker” status, simultaneously recognizing their important role in the American food supply while denying their citizenship and also obligating them to continue working in conditions that often involve a high risk of exposure to the virus.
Workers in large-scale meat production have also been affected by adverse working conditions, and in the United States, by May 2020 almost half of the Covid-19 hotspots were related to meat packing plants, with over 14,800 meat workers infected across 31 states. This resulted in the shutdown of many meatpacking plants and subsequently high meat prices.
Zoonotic diseases – animal infections passed to humans – have been linked to industrialized meat production practices around the world. Covid-19 is a zoonotic virus, and though not linked to factory farming like the swine flu was, it is directly linked to human pressure on the environment and our need to feed a growing population. Zoonoses, which may be bacterial, viral, or parasitic, are notoriously hard to trace; it's believed that Covid-19 originated as a bat-borne virus, not unlike the 2002 SARS coronavirus outbreak in China that was traced to civets in local meat markets that carried the virus, also from a bat originally. While these diseases are often derived from animal-based food, they're also spread through deforestation and population growth, which has put wild animals in closer contact with humans than ever before.
A final problem with the ‘ business as usual' approach is that the
“In Patagonia, where the raw ingredients for building alternative, localized food systems abound, entire communities are returning to their agricultural roots.”
agro- industrial food system contributes significantly to climate change, one of the biggest long-term threats to human health. According to a 2019 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), emissions associated with the production, processing, and distribution of food account for more than one-third of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. This sizable carbon “food print” means that more energy is required to grow and bring food to our tables than the raw caloric energy that same food provides us; the very definition of unsustainable.
Challenges in Patagonia
Fortunately, much of Patagonia is still wild and home to more protected areas than industrial agriculture. Still, the region is enmeshed in the global food system as residents depend heavily on food produced outside the region. This may come as a surprise, given the rural nature of Patagonia and its land-based history of small-scale agriculture, livestock production, and artisanal fisheries. Yet over the past 20 years, the number of productive, family-owned farms has declined, populations have grown, and road connectivity has increased, thus heightening residents' dependence on food products from farther away while also making it easier for corporations to begin setting up shop here.
In Chilean Patagonia, urban and small-town supermarkets are stocked once a week by trucks that travel hundreds of miles with food and other goods. Frozen packaged beef from Uruguay and Brazil is sold in towns that once relied on their own cattle production; apples and pears are shipped from Chile's Central Valley while local orchards on old farms fall into disrepair. Meanwhile, fjords along the Pacific coast are seeing more industrialized salmon farm concessions every year, farther and farther south.
In Argentine Patagonia, wide valleys and a rain shadow effect lend themselves naturally to agricultural production in some areas; in others, agroindustry has forced it upon them. In Neuquen province,
for instance, home to tourist destination San Martin de los Andes, over 8,500 hectares of desert were transformed to agricultural production in 2012. That project, reliant on one of the country's largest irrigation systems, produces transgenic corn and soy crops destined for agrofuels. Just to the south, in the Rio Negro and Chubut provinces, fruit is big business with hundreds of thousands of tons of berries, apples, and pears grown each year, a significant percentage of which is exported.
And yet, as you'll find in this issue of Patagon Journal, examples of sustainable agriculture and local food systems are growing in Patagonia as well.
Creating the alternative
Mauricio Gonzalez Chang, professor of agroecology at the University of Aysén in Coyhaique, sees young people as
the main driver of local food systems development in Patagonia. Mauricio has worked with students throughout the Aysen region – not only university students but also high schoolers and grade school kids who've undertaken garden projects and enlisted his help. “Young people are proving that things can be different, that they can make an intergenerational change,” he says. To illustrate the point, Mauricio points to a social sciences class from Altos de Mckay High School in Coyhaique that built a greenhouse to combat local poverty. He's partnered with Valle Simpson's rural school where teachers are using agroecology as a pedagogical tool to teach science, math, social studies, and language arts. The teachers themselves are in their mid-20s, Mauricio emphasizes, and are part of the generational shift.
At the university level, many of Mauricio's students are already familiar with agroecological practices because they grew up with them. “The practices used by many families in the region are agroecological; they just didn't know there was a name for it,” he says, referring to practices like intercropping, fertilizing with animal manure, and using natural pest controls. According to Mauricio, the fact that agroindustry hasn't yet made its way to Chilean Patagonia presents ideal conditions for continuing and expanding “clean horticulture.”
Young people in Chile and Argentina who want to pursue a career and lifestyle in sustainable agriculture have more educational opportunities now than ever before. The University of Chile in Santiago, Frontera University in Temuco, and the University of Aysén in Coyhaique all offer degrees in agroecology. At the moment, Mauricio is transitioning to a new faculty position at Valdivia's Austral University, typically known for its focus on conventional agriculture, where he is tasked with introducing coursework in agroecology. In Argentina, the University of La Plata offers alternative agriculture courses as part of its agricultural engineering degree, while the best-known programs in organic crop production and agroecology are at the Rio Negro National University in Bolsón. Nearly all of these programs have developed over the past ten years.
In addition to formal educational opportunities, informal instances to learn about alternative agriculture abound, including the widespread availability of online courses and workshops prompted by the Covid-19 pandemic and the tendency to study online. Huerto Cuatro Estaciones, based near the rural Aysen village Puerto Guadal, began offering such an online training series this year for current and aspiring farmers. Once travel restrictions are lifted, people can also coordinate visits to agroecological “lighthouses,” functioning demonstration farms around the world that teach visitors the principles of agroecology. In Chile, the best-known agroecological lighthouse is in Yumbel, near Concepción, run by Agustín Infante, president of the Chilean branch of the Latin American Scientific Society of Agroecology (SOCLA) and part of the Centro de Educación y Tecnología (CET) Bio Bio. Agustín used regenerative agricultural practices to transform a parcel of the dry coastal range into a highly productive system. Their farm receives an average of 5,000 visitors a year. In Argentina, a network of socio-technical agroecological farms in the Buenos Aires province are a source of information and inspiration for those seeking to increase large-scale agriculture crop yields through the implementation of agroecological practices.
Slow food, forming local systems
The slow life prompted by Covid-19 has afforded people around the world more time to reflect on the role of food in their lives and to connect more closely with it. In many ways, this slow food mentality is embodied in tra
ditional Patagonian culture. It's not uncommon to wait several hours for a lamb to roast over an open fire or to enjoy a slowcooked cazuela soup made with local chicken, potatoes, squash, and cilantro. Along the Pacific coast, residents are accustomed to waiting patiently while a curanto – shellfish, sausage, and milcao patties – are steamed between hot rocks and nalca leaves in a pit in the ground. Any Patagon will tell you, good things are worth waiting for.
It's this relaxed quality of rural life that is enticing city residents to exchange their crowded, bustling existence for a slower, healthier one. While urban migration has been the dominant global trend for the past several decades and overall continues to be, rural migration is also happening with increased frequency, especially as cities are hit hard by Covid-19. Dubbed “la nueva ruralidad,” or “new ruralism,” this phenomenon is gradually transforming rural demographics in Latin America, providing both challenges and opportunities for creating local food systems. Although the newcomers from the cities typically don't have a background in agriculture, which can disrupt traditional land-based culture in some rural areas, they are often seeking a rural lifestyle to connect with nature and healthy living, creating a new market for nearby agricultural producers.
These new local markets and alternative models to the dominant food system are as varied and diverse as the communities that create them. In general, they have short food supply chains, reducing the path from farm to table. Grower cooperatives, farmers' markets, community-supported agriculture, and school gardens are all examples of ways to boost awareness about the benefits of eating locally while creating opportunities for residents to do so.
Each local food project, tailored to the nuances of the growers and consumers that form it, may feel isolated or small in scale, but Mauricio Gonzalez reminds us of the importance of staying connected. “In the end it's important to form networks, to realize that you're not alone in this and that there are a lot more people doing the same thing, making progress toward a more just food system. Perhaps silently but making progress all the same.”