Addressing agroecology through educational farms in the U.S.

My professional path and intuition guided me through agroecological farms along the U.S. in 2021. My journey started in Florida, then I moved to California, Hawaii, Missouri, Tennessee, to lately go back to Peru. I made this decision to travel to these states intentionally. For three months I worked on different plots, visited many farms, met with wonderful people, drove around 1000 miles and, last but not least, understood that access to healthy food is not a gift but a right.

My first job experience in agroecology and food justice

In 2018, I started working on a U.S nonprofit organization that goes by the name MESA. The Multinational Exchange for Sustainable Agriculture (MESA) has dedicated its whole existence to connecting thousands of farmers, activists, and advocates, and help start hundreds of small-scale farming and food justice projects worldwide. MESA is the only US Department of State-designated exchange program sponsor that is solely dedicated to advancing sustainable agriculture. The outcome has been the nearly 1,500 agroecology exchanges among farmers, researchers, activists, and innovators from 33 countries with 260 host farmers through our flagship international exchange program since 1997.

My role at MESA was to recruit and screen young professionals from Peru interested in learning about sustainable agriculture, and to support their onboarding process just before their trip to the US. At the time, I did not realize how much personal and professional transformation and value this experience brought to their lives. For instance, many of the MESA Alumni now offer educational programs on their farms all over Peru. Some of them set up for-profit farms and implemented Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) systems in their hometowns. Few of them now work at international organizations dedicated to advocating for agriculture and food security. But it was not until I created my own learning journey across the U.S. through the WFSC Ambassador grant that I fully understood the deep impact of such an exchange program.

Findings at the agroecological farms in the U.S.

For a long time, it was on my agenda to recreate the experience of the MESA program to have a broader perspective on my work, but also the current U.S. context on sustainable agriculture. The states I selected for my trip reflected the potential hotspots of sustainable farming for MESA for the Latin America and the Caribbean region. Non-profit and for-profit farms that can also offer education programs were always MESA target. We additionally included a seed company and an organic supermarket on our itinerary to broaden the experience of food systems. Overall, I was particularly interested in understanding the key elements of this experience that created this new mindset of working in sustainable food systems. And here is what I got:

As defined, the transition to agroecology requires a social organization that can hold the space to innovative learning and participatory processes. This will guarantee horizontal knowledge transfer and participation. Each MESA host that I visited had a strong commitment to sustain the process of building a healthy, conscious, sovereign, and wealthy community. MESA hosts that are currently host farms, ranches, or education centers that advance sustainable agriculture in the United States, are not only addressing agroecology through different techniques of pest management, soil management, crop rotation, among others. Through a participatory approach, MESA hosts support and bring possibilities for transformative change that are at play in today’s food systems’.

Agroecology integrates farmers knowledge into research through participatory activities that promote reflection and action. This generates long term and intergenerational benefits, such as knowledge transfer and the ability to reevaluate plans across time for a more consistent agroecosystem management. Also, agroecology looks at political economic structures and its impact on power relations along the whole food value chain. Therefore, supporting agroecological based organizations becomes an opportunity to promote a sustainable development transition and to engage more people in being part of an agroecological food system.

Nina and Chuck, a lovely couple located in Kona, Hawaii, attend the farmers market every Sunday to sell their vegetables and coffee (picture: Maria de los Angeles Franco).

Seed company in Mansfield, Missouri: Maria arrived at the perfect time for tasting some tomatoes produced at the greenhouses (picture: Maria de los Angeles Franco).

Sustaining agroecology to ensure food sovereignty

My takeaway from my journey is that knowledge transfer at a farm level goes beyond this repetitive process of understanding food production, but to acknowledge the ability of a human being to create and to share food, knowledge, experiences, culture, dreams, fears, fights, and love. This list of assets should be able to generate income and livelihood for the community members! For example, when I met the different farm communities at each stop of my trip that are part of food production at different levels and holding roles, I realized how much understanding and consciousness they have not only for food security but food sovereignty. By unlocking this ability of being actively part of the food systems, food sovereignty can substantially reduce the dependence of external food supply chains and to reduce hunger. Through agroecology, MESA is building empowered and informed stakeholders that acknowledge the powerful right of people to produce, consume and promote food in an ecologically sustainable way in their territories.

Preparing the field in September to plant some veggies at Empower School & Farm in Umatilla, Florida (picture: Maria de los Angeles Franco)

The ability of MESA to provide this large number of experiences under the umbrella of Agroecology is a key element to cultivate sustainable farming and food systems worldwide. A key to sustain Agroecology is acknowledging its diversity through localization of knowledge, food, region, and more. This means ‘doing different things in different places, and to consider the farm as a home and a community, provision of habitat, and other forms of multifunctionality’. MESA translates and emphasizes this diversity not only through the selection of a suitable hosts in states that match the geographic and climatic conditions of the young professionals’ hometowns, but through its training tracks focused on sustainable farm production, community & education, and innovation & entrepreneurship. These two variables can make a powerful combination not only to understand diversity but to promote the universalization of multiple forms of food production that can be called also Agroeocology.

Chen (China), Marine (Brazil) and Maria (Peru) at a Victory Garden as part of the Empower School & Farm training facilities in Florida (picture: Maria de los Angeles Franco).

Due to the outbreak of Covid-19, the MESA exchange program was put on hold indefinitely and no trips were scheduled during 2020 and 2021. This fact dramatically impacted MESA and its whole list of partner organizations along the U.S. Thanks to my travels between September to December 2021, I had the chance to identify critical lessons to support Latin American and the Caribbean applicants more strategically in a new post-COVID era. For instance, the ability to prepare and to select strong profile candidates before their trip to the U.S. and to identify the most accurate opportunities for their professional development, are key for advancing the agricultural sector in their hometown.

I deeply appreciate the World Food Systems Center at ETH for this wonderful opportunity to finance my journey to the U.S. that dramatically changed my perspective of food production in the 21st century, based on a strong community building through educational programs for the new generations.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Maria is a Peruvian professional in international development with 7+ years of experience in youth empowerment, agriculture, food systems, coffee, and youth. She holds a BSc in Chemistry from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, and a Masters in Coffee Economics and Science from the University of Udine, Italy. Based in Peru, she is a MA candidate in Government and Public Policy with a focus on Sustainable Development and Social Inequalities in the Andean Region from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. Maria’s aim is to keep providing equitable and more inclusive opportunities along the Food Systems worldwide. Her efforts include being the LAC Representative for MESA and the Director of the Center for Innovation in Sustainable Food Systems of Instituto Perucano in Peru. She is currently the MEL Specialist of the ‘Specialty Coffee Community’ USAID project in Peru.