[E-rundbrief] Info 1415 - Forum for Agroecology - Declaration

[Matthias Reichl]

E-Rundbrief - Info 1415 - Via Campesina: Declaration of the 
International Forum for Agroecology, Nyéléni, Mali, 27 February 2015.

Bad Ischl, 9.3.2015

Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit

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Declaration of the International Forum for Agroecology

(http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php/main-issues-mainmenu-27/sustainable-peasants-agriculture-mainmenu-42/1749-declaration-of-the-international-forum-for-agroecology)

Nyéléni, Mali, 27 February 2015

We are delegates representing diverse organizations and international 
movements of small-scale food producers and consumers, including 
peasants, indigenous peoples and communities (together with hunters 
and gatherers), family farmers, rural workers, herders and 
pastoralists, fisherfolk and urban people. Together, the diverse 
constituencies our organizations represent produce some 70% of the 
food consumed by humanity. They are the primary global investors in 
agriculture, as well as the primary providers of jobs and livelihoods 
in the world.

We gathered here at the Nyéléni Center in Sélingué, Mali from 24 to 27 
of February, 2015, to come to a common understanding of agroecology as 
a key element in the construction of Food Sovereignty, and to develop 
joint strategies to promote Agroecology and defend it from 
co-optation. We are grateful to the people of Mali who have welcomed 
us in this beautiful land. They have taught us through their example, 
that the dialogue of our various forms of knowledge is based on 
respectful listening and on the collective construction of shared 
decisions. We stand in solidarity with our Malian sisters and brothers 
who struggle – sometimes sacrificing their lives – to defend their 
territories from the latest wave of land grabbing that affects so many 
of our countries. Agroecology means that we stand together in the 
circle of life, and this implies that we must also stand together in 
the circle of struggle against land grabbing and the criminalization 
of our movements.

BUILDING ON THE PAST, LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

Our peoples, constituencies, organizations and communities have 
already come very far in defining Food Sovereignty as a banner of 
joint struggle for justice, and as the larger framework for 
Agroecology. Our ancestral production systems have been developed over 
millennia, and during the past 30 to 40 years this has come to be 
called agroecology. Our agroecology includes successful practices and 
production, involves farmer-to-farmer and territorial processes, 
training schools, and we have developed sophisticated theoretical, 
technical and political constructions.

In 2007 many of us gathered here at Nyéléni, at the Forum for Food 
Sovereignty, to strengthen our alliances and to expand and deepen our 
understanding of Food Sovereignty, through a collective construction 
between our diverse constituencies. Similarly, we gather here at the 
Agroecology Forum 2015 to enrich Agroecology through dialogue between 
diverse food producing peoples, as well as with consumers, urban 
communities, women, youth, and others. Today our movements, organized 
globally and regionally in the International Planning Committee for 
Food Sovereignty (IPC), have taken a new and historic step.

Our diverse forms of smallholder food production based on agroecology 
generate local knowledge, promote social justice, nurture identity and 
culture, and strengthen the economic viability of rural areas. 
Smallholders defend our dignity when we choose to produce in an 
agroecological way.

OVERCOMING MULTIPLE CRISES

Agroecology is the answer to how to transform and repair our material 
reality in a food system and rural world that has been devastated by 
industrial food production and its so-called Green and Blue 
Revolutions.  We see agroecology as a key form of resistance to an 
economic system that puts profit before life.

The corporate model over-produces food that poisons us, destroys soil 
fertility, is responsible for the deforestation of rural areas, the 
contamination of water and the acidification of oceans and killing of 
fisheries. Essential natural resources have been commodified, and 
rising production costs are driving us off the land. Farmers’ seeds 
are being stolen and sold back to us at exorbitant prices, bred as 
varieties that depend on costly, contaminating agrochemicals.  The 
industrial food system is a key driver of the multiple crises of 
climate, food, environmental, public health and others. Free trade and 
corporate investment agreements, investor-state dispute settlement 
agreements, and false solutions such as carbon markets, and the 
growing financialization of land and food, etc., all further aggravate 
these crises. Agroecology within a food sovereignty framework offers 
us a collective path forward from these crises.

AGROECOLOGY AT A CROSSROADS

The industrial food system is beginning to exhaust it's productive and 
profit potential because of its internal contradictions – such as soil 
degradation, herbicide-tolerant weeds, depleted fisheries, pest- and 
disease-ravaged monocultural plantations – and it's increasingly 
obvious negative consequences of greenhouse gas emissions, and the 
health crisis of malnutrition, obesity, diabetes, colon disease and 
cancer caused by diets heavy in industrial and junk food.

Popular pressure has caused many multilateral institutions, 
governments, universities and research centers, some NGOs, 
corporations and others, to finally recognize “agroecology”.  However, 
they have tried to redefine it as a narrow set of technologies, to 
offer some tools that appear to ease the sustainability crisis of 
industrial food production, while the existing structures of power 
remain unchallenged.  This co-optation of agroecology to fine-tune the 
industrial food system, while paying lip service to the environmental 
discourse, has various names, including "climate smart agriculture", 
"sustainable-" or "ecological-intensification", industrial monoculture 
production of "organic" food, etc.  For us, these are not agroecology: 
we reject them, and we will fight to expose and block this insidious 
appropriation of agroecology.

The real solutions to the crises of the climate, malnutrition, etc., 
will not come from conforming to the industrial model. We must 
transform it and build our own local food systems that create new 
rural-urban links, based on truly agroecological food production by 
peasants, artisanal fishers, pastoralists, indigenous peoples, urban 
farmers, etc.  We cannot allow agroecology to be a tool of the 
industrial food production model: we see it as the essential 
alternative to that model, and as the means of transforming how we 
produce and consume food into something better for humanity and our 
Mother Earth.

OUR COMMON PILLARS AND PRINCIPLES OF AGROECOLOGY

Agroecology is a way of life and the language of Nature, that we learn 
as her children. It is not a mere set of technologies or production 
practices.  It cannot be implemented the same way in all territories. 
  Rather it is based on principles that, while they may be similar 
across the diversity of our territories, can and are practiced in many 
different ways, with each sector contributing their own colors of 
their local reality and culture, while always respecting Mother Earth 
and our common, shared values.

The production practices of agroecology (such as intercropping, 
traditional fishing and mobile pastoralism, integrating crops, trees, 
livestock and fish, manuring, compost, local seeds and animal breeds, 
etc.) are based on ecological principles like building life in the 
soil, recycling nutrients, the dynamic management of biodiversity and 
energy conservation at all scales.  Agroecology drastically reduces 
our use of externally-purchased inputs that must be bought from 
industry.  There is no use of agrotoxics, artificial hormones, GMOs or 
other dangerous new technologies in agroecology.

Territories are a fundamental pillar of agroecology. Peoples and 
communities have the right to maintain their own spiritual and 
material relationships to their lands. They are entitled to secure, 
develop, control, and reconstruct their customary social structures 
and to administer their lands and territories, including fishing 
grounds, both politically and socially. This implies the full 
recognition of their laws, traditions, customs, tenure systems, and 
institutions, and constitutes the recognition of the 
self-determination and autonomy of peoples.

Collective rights and access to the commons are a fundamental pillar 
of agroecology. We share access to territories that are the home to 
many different peer groups, and we have sophisticated customary 
systems for regulating access and avoiding conflicts that we want to 
preserve and to strengthen.

The diverse knowledge and ways of knowing of our peoples are 
fundamental to agroecology.  We develop our ways of knowing through 
dialogue among them (diálogo de saberes). Our learning processes are 
horizontal and peer-to-peer, based on popular education. They take 
place in our own training centers and territories (farmers teach 
farmers, fishers teach fishers, etc.), and are also intergenerational, 
with exchange of knowledge between youth and elders. Agroecology is 
developed through our own innovation, research, and crop and livestock 
selection and breeding.

The core of our cosmovisions is the necessary equilibrium between 
nature, the cosmos and human beings. We recognize that as humans we 
are but a part of nature and the cosmos We share a spiritual 
connection with our lands and with the web of life. We love our lands 
and our peoples, and without that, we cannot defend our agroecology, 
fight for our rights, or feed the world. We reject the commodification 
of all forms of life.

Families, communities, collectives, organizations and movements are 
the fertile soil in which agroecology flourishes. Collective 
self-organization and action are what make it possible to scale-up 
agroecology, build local food systems, and challenge corporate control 
of our food system. Solidarity between peoples, between rural and 
urban populations, is a critical ingredient.

The autonomy of agroecology displaces the control of global markets 
and generates self-governance by communities. It means we minimize the 
use of purchased inputs that come from outside. It requires the 
re-shaping of markets so that they are based on the principles of 
solidarity economy and the ethics of responsible production and 
consumption. It promotes direct and fair short distribution chains. It 
implies a transparent relationship between producers and consumers, 
and is based on the solidarity of shared risks and benefits.

Agroecology is political; it requires us to challenge and transform 
structures of power in society. We need to put the control of seeds, 
biodiversity, land and territories, waters, knowledge, culture and the 
commons in the hands of the peoples who feed the world.

Women and their knowledge, values, vision and leadership are critical 
for moving forward. Migration and globalization mean that women’s work 
is increasing, yet women have far less access to resources than men. 
All too often, their work is neither recognized nor valued. For 
agroecology to achieve its full potential, there must be equal 
distribution of power, tasks, decision-making and remuneration.

Youth, together with women, provide one of the two principle social 
bases for the evolution of agroecology. Agroecology can provide a 
radical space for young people to contribute to the social and 
ecological transformation that is underway in many of our societies. 
Youth bear the responsibility to carry forward the collective 
knowledge learned from their parents, elders and ancestors into the 
future. They are the stewards of agroecology for future generations. 
Agroecology must create a territorial and social dynamic that creates 
opportunities for rural youth and values women's leadership.

STRATEGIES

I. Promote agroecological production through policies that…

1. Are territorial and holistic in their approach to social, economic 
and natural resources issues.

2. Secure access to land and resources in order to encourage long term 
investment by small-scale food producers.

3. Ensure an inclusive and accountable approach to the stewardship of 
resources, food production, public procurement policies, urban and 
rural infrastructure, and urban planning.

4. Promote decentralized and truly democratized planning processes in 
conjunction with relevant local governments and authorities.

5. Promote appropriate health and sanitation regulations that do not 
discriminate against small-scale food producers and processors who 
practice agroecology.

6. Promote policy to integrate the health and nutrition aspects of 
agroecology and of traditional medicines.

7. Ensure pastoralists’ access to pastures, migration routes and 
sources of water as well as mobile services such as health, education 
and veterinary services that are based on and compatible with 
traditional practice.

8. Ensure customary rights to the commons. Ensure seed policies that 
guarantee the collective rights of peasants’ and indigenous peoples’ 
to use, exchange, breed, select and sell their own seeds.

9. Attract and support young people to join agroecological food 
production through strengthening access to land and natural resources, 
ensuring fair income, knowledge exchange and transmission.

10. Support urban and peri-urban agroecological production.

11. Protect the rights of communities that practice wild capture, 
hunting and gathering in their traditional areas – and encourage the 
ecological and cultural restoration of territories to their former 
abundance.

12. Implement policies that ensure the rights of fishing communities.

13. Implement the Tenure Guidelines of the Committee on World Food 
Security and the Small-scale Fisheries Guidelines of the FAO.

14. Develop and implement policies and programs that guarantee the 
right to a dignified life for rural workers, including true agrarian 
reform, and agroecology training.

  II. Knowledge sharing

1. Horizontal exchanges (peasant-to-peasant, fisher-to-fisher, 
pastoralist-to-pastoralist, consumer-and-producer, etc.) and 
intergenerational exchanges between generations and across different 
traditions, including new ideas. Women and youth must be prioritised.

2. Peoples’ control of the research agenda, objectives and methodology.

3. Systemize experience to learn from and build on historical memory.

III. Recognition of the central role of women

1.  Fight for equal women's’ rights in every sphere of agroecology, 
including workers’ and labour rights, access to the Commons, direct 
access to markets, and control of income

2.  Programs and projects must fully include women at all stages, from 
the earliest formulation through planning and application, with 
decision-making roles.

IV. Build local economies

1. Promote local markets for local products.

2. Support the development of alternative financial infrastructure, 
institutions and mechanisms to support both producers and consumers.

3. Reshape food markets through new relationships of solidarity 
between producers and consumers.

4. Develop links with the experience of solidarity economy and 
participatory guarantee systems, when appropriate.

V. Further develop and disseminate our vision of agroecology

1. Develop a communications plan for our vision of agroecology

2. Promote the health care and nutritional aspects of agroecology

3. Promote the territorial approach of agroecology

4. Promote practices that allows youth to carry forward the permanent 
regeneration of our agroecological vision

5. Promote agroecology as a key tool to reduce food waste and loss 
across the food system

VI. Build alliances

1. Consolidate and strengthen existing alliances such as with the 
International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC)

2. Expand our alliance to other social movements and public research 
organizations and institutions

VII. Protect biodiversity and genetic resources

1.  Protect, respect and ensure the stewardship of biodiversity

2. Take back control of seeds and reproductive material and implement 
producers’ rights to use, sell and exchange their own seeds and animal 
breeds

3. Ensure that fishing communities play the most central role in 
controlling marine and inland waterways

VIII. Cool the planet and adapt to climate change

1. Ensure international institutions and governments recognize 
agroecology as defined in this document as a primary solution for 
tackling and adapting to climate change, and not “climate smart 
agriculture” or other false versions of agroecology

2. Identify, document and share good experiences of local initiatives 
on agroecology that address climate change.

IX. Denounce and fight corporate and institutional capture of agroecology

1. Fight corporate and institutional attempts to grab agroecology as a 
means to promote GMOs and other false solutions and dangerous new 
technologies.

2. Expose the corporate vested interests behind technical fixes such 
as climate-smart agriculture, sustainable intensification and 
“fine-tuning” of industrial aquaculture.

3. Fight the commodification and financialization of the ecological 
benefits of agroecology.

We have built agroecology through many initiatives and struggles. We 
have the legitimacy to lead it into the future. Policy makers cannot 
move forward on agroecology without us. They must respect and support 
our agroecological processes rather than continuing to support the 
forces that destroy us.  We call on our fellow peoples to join us in 
the collective task of collectively constructing agroecology as part 
of our popular struggles to build a better world, a world based on 
mutual respect, social justice, equity, solidarity and harmony with 
our Mother Earth.

The International Forum on Agroecology was organized at the Nyeleni 
Center in Mali, from 24 to 27 February 2015 by the following 
organisations: Coordination Nationale des Organisations Paysannes du 
Mali (CNOP) as chair; La Via Campesina (LVC), More and Better (MaB), 
Movimiento Agroecológico de América Latina y el Caribe (MAELA) , 
Réseau des organisations paysannes et de producteurs de l’Afrique de 
l’Ouest (ROPPA) , World Forum of Fish Harvesters and Fishworkers 
(WFF), World Forum of Fisher Peoples (WFFP), World Alliance of Mobile 
Indigenous Peoples (WAMIP).


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