NACLA Report on the Americas

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For An Agriculture That Doesn’t Get Rid Of Farmers

Miguel Altieri

To cite this article: Miguel Altieri (2002) For An Agriculture That Doesn’t Get Rid Of Farmers,
NACLA Report on the Americas, 35:5, 29-34, DOI: 10.1080/10714839.2002.11722533

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Published online: 31 May 2016.

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 REPORT ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
FOR AN AGRICULTURE THAT
DOESN'T GET RID OF FARMERS
Terraceagriculture: reconstructedandenes in Cajamarca,Peru.
AN INTERVIEW WITH MIGUEL ALTIERI
A mong the forms of knowledge-sciences-
developed in the Americas before the
arrival of the Europeans were sophisticated
agricultural systems. The Incas, the Mayas and the
Aztecs all developed systems capable of feeding
large and concentrated populations. The Euro-
pean conquerors partly dismantled the indigenous
systems and tried to substitute European farming
techniques. More recently, would-be modernizers
in Latin America have fostered the spread of U.S.-
style agriculture, which favors large farms, expen-
sive equipment like tractors and the purchase of
ever-growing amounts of pesticides, fertilizers and,
most recently, genetically modified seeds. Propo-
nents say such "scientific" agriculture is the only
way to feed the world's growing population, while
critics charge that the only real beneficiaries are
the corporations that make farm supplies and
equipment. Now, scattered throughout the develop-
ing world, experiments are underway with an
Vol No 5
XXXV, No
Vol XXXV, MARCH/APRIL 200229
5 MARCH/APRIL 2002
alternative approach known as agroecology.
Miguel Altieri, author of Agroecology: The Science
of Sustainable Agriculture, is one of the leading
advocates of this new approach. The Chilean-born
Altieri is a professor of insect biology at the Uni-
versity of California-Berkeley, but he spends
almost half the year in Latin America, working
with hundreds of farmers and nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs) that want to try agroecologi-
cal methods. NACLA Report editor JoAnn Kawell
recently spoke with Altieri about agroecology and
its possible economic, social-and political-impli-
cations for Latin America.
What is agroecology?
Miguel Altieri: We could say that agroecology is
basically just a set of principles on how to design sys-
tems for small farmers. The main motivation for
agroecology is that previous development projects
have failed, top-down development projects have
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 REPORT ON SCIENCE AND
failed, and we need an alternative. What agroecology
does is try to blend traditional knowledge, the
farmer's knowledge, and the principles of modern
agricultural science.
The focus is on peasant agriculture, small farmers.
That's the important form of agriculture in Latin
America-there are only 16 million small farmers in
Latin America and they control only 20% of the land,
but they are the ones who are producing the food that
people eat there, because everyone else is growing for
export. You go to Chile-what are the big farmers
doing? Producing wine, or grapes, or peaches, or
apples for export, nothing for the local populations.
Go to Brazil, what are the big guys doing? Growing
soybeans for the export market. To do what? To feed
the cattle in Europe. It doesn't have anything to do
with the food security of the region. So the ones who
are maintaining the food security, genetic diversity
and the cultural diversity of the land are the peas-
ants-the corporate model of biotechnology is an agri-
culture without farmers.
Agroecology projects are very underfunded pro-
jects, conducted by little NGOs helping here and
there, but they have been able to reach about 4.5 mil-
lion farmers throughout the developing world, farming
about nine million hectares [one hectare = 2.5 acres].
We've participated in a study which shows that by
using agroecological methods you can increase yields
of poor farmers in marginal environments about 100%
while at the same time conserving the soil resource
base and biodiversity.
But if agroecology emphasizes traditionalmethods,
and these are so productive, why are Latin American
farmers stillpoor and still hungry?
MA: Basically, the problem is the inequity of access
to land. We're talking about 16 million peasant family
units. That's about 75 million people; that's the popu-
lation where the poverty's concentrated, and the aver-
age farm size is between 1.2 and 1.5 hectares. You
can't demand too much from that little land, especially
marginal land. About 80% of the small farmers, the
peasants, in Latin America are concentrated in the
marginal lands: hillsides, semi-desert areas, etc. Obvi-
ously the agricultural potential of those areas is very
low, they should be used for other purposes, like for-
est or grasslands. The main way to revive and have a
productive peasant agriculture would be, first, land
reform and second, appropriate support for these
farmers, in terms of agroecological technologies, cred-
it, and social services that come along with rural
development.
But all the efforts that were made, starting with the
Green Revolution and all the extension programs have
bypassed the peasantry. More than 80% of Latin
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TECHNOLOGY
American peasants did not adopt high yielding vari-
eties, or the pesticides or the fertilizers promoted by
the Green Revolution. The reason wasn't that these
people were ignorant; it had an ecological basis,
because these technologies would increase the risk for
them.
Can you explain what the Green Revolution was?
MA: The Green Revolution started, in the late '40s,
early '50s, as an attempt by the Rockefeller Founda-
tion to modernize Mexican agriculture. Rockefeller
put together a team of people to go to Mexico to
report on how to modernize. When they came back
they recommended that the way to do this would be to
bring technology from the North, from the United
States, Iowa-type, Ohio-type agriculture, using hybrid
crops and making use of the technology package that
implies, to push yields. There was one professor from
Berkeley, Carl Sauer, who passed away many years
ago, who was on that team: He'd done a lot of
research on Mexican agriculture, and he wrote a
minority report, saying, basically, "if a bunch of
agressive American agronomists are going to go to
Mexico and bring Ohio-type agriculture to small farm-
ers, this is what's going to happen." He predicted the
impacts of the Green Revolution, the breakdown of
cultures, the breakdown of the traditional systems, the
erosion of the traditional varieties-they kind of fired
him, and the Green Revolution proceeded.
Give us some examples of places where traditional
systems are still in use.
MA: Traditional systems are almost intact in small
areas-microcosms-which total about 3 million
hectares in Latin America, mainly in Mesoamerica,
the Andean region and the lowland tropics. One sys-
tem in Mesoamerica would be the chinampas, there
are about 40-60 hectares left in an area near Mexico
City. A chinampa is a raised field that is surrounded
by water canals, it's a system that was developed by
the Aztecs and has withstood the test of time. It's an
integrated agricultural/aquaculture system.
Meaning it produces both crops andfish?
MA: Right. The raised fields are built with the
mucky sediment from the bottom of the canals, it's
very rich in organic matter; some of the nutrients from
the raised fields fall into the water and enrich the
water for the fish, a lot of algae and weeds start grow-
ing there, and before they suffocate the fish, the farm-
ers put that organic matter back on the raised field as
mulch. It's a self-sustaining system, and they've been
able to obtain anywhere from three to six tons per
hectare, which is pretty comparable to any average
maize [corn] field in the United States.
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 REPORT ON SCIENCE AND
Mexican chinampa: an integratedaquaculturelagriculturesystem developed by the Aztecs.
What kind of crops do they grow in the chinampas?
MA: They now grow about 20 different crops, but
originally it was mostly maize. Now they have mostly
commercial crops like flowers that they sell in Mexico
City. But the [chinampas] system is collapsing. One,
because of urban sprawl, and also because of the
water quality. Mexico City uses the water and returns
it contaminated, and so the systems are breaking
down, not because the systems don't work, but
because of external forces.
How about systems in the Andes?
MA: The most traditional system in the Andes is
the terraces, the andenes. The main crop is potatoes,
and there are places where the terrace system is still
in place where the productivity of potatoes is very
high. The diversity of potatoes is also very high, they
don't grow one variety of potato, they grow 60 or 70
varieties in one terrace and that provides resistance
to environmental problems, like drought or frost or
disease, because one variety might suffer, but many
others would survive.
That diversity exists not so much as a result of the
ecology; cultural rituals maintain diversity; for
example, a work ritual called the minka: Farmers
from one area work in another area, and they get
paid in potatoes by the farmers who are hosting the
Vol XXXV,
Vol No 5
XXXV, No 5 MARCH/APRIL 2002
MARCH/APRIL 2002
TECHNOLOGY
minka. Or when people marry, they get different
kinds of potatoes as gifts. The survival of these many
varieties is important not just for the survival of the
farmers but also for the survival of agriculture,
because it ensures genetic diversity. In order to main-
tain that genetic diversity, it's important to maintain
cultural diversity, because if you destroy these rituals,
the way people are relating, you break down the
genetic diversity.
Is there a particulararea where you've been work-
ing on terraces?
MA: In the Huancayo and Cajamarca areas of Peru
There are still microcosms, not the whole area, but
there are still small areas. NGOs, including Peru's
CIED [Center for Research, Education and Develop-
ment], have reconstructed hundreds of hectares of
andenes.
How about tropicalagriculturesystems?
MA: In the lowland tropics, in the Amazon for
example, but also in southern Mexico, you will find
agro-forest systems, which are basically home gar-
dens, huertosfamiliares,which could be less than half
a hectare surrounding the household where you would
have anywhere between 80 and 200 different trees,
herbs, shrubs and a few domestic animals. These sys-
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 REPORT ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

tems have a huge amount of diversity and are key for Bolivia, in the Lake Titicaca area. Waru warus are
food security. very similar to the chinampas-they are raised fields
surrounded by water that comes from Lake Titicaca.
The image that most people have of tropical agri- But the main effect is that the water absorbs the heat
culture is that it's mostly slash and burn agriculture. during the day and releases it at night; that changes
Is that accurate? the microclimate one or two degrees, enough to off-
MA: Well, slash and burn is very prevalent, mostly set frost, which is very common at that altitude.
in the highlands, but it's diminishing because of the Those systems disappeared because the Spanish
problem of land access, and population growth. Orig- thought the crops that they were growing, like
inally slash and burn was a very sustainable system. quinoa, were pagan crops. And for other reasons
The key thing is that in the tropics there's a lot of related to the Conquest, those cultures collapsed, and
leaching of nutrients from the soil, the nutrients are the waru warus were abandoned. A few years ago
tied up in the biomass, that is in the plants, so if you some anthropologists, some archeologists, and some
want to have fertile soil, you have to incorporate people from NGOs there started doing some work
vegetation into the soil; then that vegetation decom- reviving the systems. There were archeological
poses and releases the nutrients. So what the farmers records that showed that the systems had existed.
did originally was to clear a small plot of land, burn Then they started interviewing the elderly of the
it. That releases the nutrients in the vegetation. The communities, and they started trying to revive the
soil has enough fertility for about three years, then systems. There are now more than 200 hectares of
they would abandon that piece of land, and come waru warus, which have been reconstructed. They're
back maybe 15 years later to the same piece of land growing their traditional crops again. The contribu-
so they could allow the forest to regenerate. That tion of modern science was just to find a way of
system is considered sustainable. It's prevalent in reconstructing how this was done. No modern scien-
Asia and Africa, too. As long as you have long fal- tific breakthrough has been made that makes it possi-
lows [periods during which the fields aren't cultivat- ble to grow crops at those altitudes in the midst of
ed] the system works very well. That's a very eco- frost.
logically rational way of managing tropical
agriculture. The problem is that the fallows became But agroecology isn't entirely a preservation of
shorter and shorter because of lack of access to land, traditionalsystems?
population growth, not so much because people are MA: No. It's possible to preserve the systems, if
reproducing like crazy, but because there's been a lot the farmers want, because agroecology is participato-
of movement of people into areas where slash and ry-that means farmers are at the center of the
burn is being used- for example, some of the prob- research agenda. But in most places where we're
lems in the Brazilian Amazon, in Rond6nia, it was working, traditional systems do not exist anymore,
mostly landless people that they were bringing from they have been destroyed, basically the work is to try
the south to the Amazon; they were people without a to rescue what was there before, and if it's not there,
culture of tropical agriculture, they were doing slash to use agricultural principles that governed how sus-
and burn without knowledge and without allowing tainable agriculture was practiced in other areas with
long fallows. You can still find microcosms of sus- similar conditions.
tainable slash and burn-in southern Mexico for What we have to do is empower the poor so they
example, in Chiapas. But in most areas I think that have the capability to feed themselves. What needs
the fallows have shortened so much, that the sys- to be done is, first, land reform. And second, equip
tem's not sustainable any more. the farmers with agroecological knowledge and tech-
niques. NGOs alone can't do this; there have to be
You say that agroecology combines traditionaland huge institutional reforms so that the public appara-
modern methods, can you say something about the tus supports what the peasants really need. One
contributionof modern methods? example of a place where this is happening is in
MA: That's an interesting question, because some- Brazil, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, where Gov-
times the only contribution that modern science has ernor [Olivio] Dutra, of the PT [Workers' Party] has
is to show that what traditional farmers have been made agroecology public policy-the research insti-
doing is correct-we do the research and we find that tutions and universities there had people who studied
what these people developed were optimal systems. agroecology, these people are now in power and
Let me give you a concrete example: The waru using agroecology as a tool for family farming.
warus, systems found about 4,000 meters above sea In Brazil there are 4.3 million family farmers who
level that exist in the Puno area of Peru and in control about 30% of the land but produce 80% of
NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS
32 NACA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS
 REPORT ON SCIENCE AND
Greenpeace activists protestholding a sign that reads "74% say No! to Genetically Modified Foods on My Plate!" in front
of the Congress building in Brasilia, Brazil.
the cassava and about 70% of the beans and about
60% of the maize. Their responsibility in food secu-
rity, as in the rest of Latin America, is critical.
What Dutra and the PT have seen is that the family
farmers play a key role in food security; they see
that the revival of small farms in the countryside is
key to reversing poverty, because many people are
migrating to the cities, but the cities are becoming
pockets of poverty. What are they going to do with
all those people? They want to revive agriculture and
add other industries that are going to add value to the
agricultural products, bring education, bring all the
services that have to come along; that's their strate-
gy, that rural development plays a key role in the
development of the state. So it's not so much that the
family farmers represent a huge economic force; but
they represent a social and ecological and cultural
force.
I think what they are doing is very wise-the pub-
lic sector, which is shrinking everywhere in Latin
America, due to neoliberal policies, should focus on
the poor, because the rest are being taken care of by
03 the corporations. So for example in Chile, why is the
0o national agriculture institute helping big farmers?
0
Why don't they work with small farmers? The corpo-
a rations have their own technical assistance. Agroe-
Vol XXXV, No 5 MARCH/APRIL 2002
TECHNOLOGY
cology is not just a development method, but also a
resistance to globalization, a tool for social move-
ments to become much more autonomous. Brazil's
MST [Landless Rural Workers Movement] is now
using agroecology on land they've taken over. The
Zapatistas use agroecology-it is the technological
flag of the resistance movement.
Is it possible for large scale commercialfarms and
small farmers to coexist? Isn't Rio Grande do Sul a
big commercial soybean producing region?
MA: Yes, it is. And coexistence is possible. The
MST is the strongest movement in Brazil, including
in Rio Grande do Sul; they are taking over land
there. So you will have large scale agriculture that's
corrected by land reform-and when it's corrected,
then you will have the coexistence of large, medium
and small scale agriculture.
Do you see genetically modified crops as having
any role at all in the systems you are talking about in
Latin America?
MA: Well, agroecology emerged as a critique of
top-down approaches like the Green Revolution,
which bypassed the small farmers, and did not really
help them. And the same thing is going on with
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 REPORT ON SCIENCE AND
biotechnology; it's top down, it's not participatory.
What we're saying is that in order for the technology
to be useful, first of all it has to be participatory, that
is, the peasants get involved in the research process
and they bring their knowledge-they are the ones
who decide what is to be done, and all the other agen-
cies, NGOs and research centers should be just facili-
tating the process.
Biotechnology did not emerge at all as a response to
the needs of the poor; it emerged as a tool for some
corporations to control the food system. Because they
are able to engineer crops that require the use of their
other products: like [Monsanto's] Roundup Ready
soybeans; it's patented and requires the use of one
particular herbicide, Roundup [also made by Monsan-
to]. So in that sense this technology has nothing to do
with the needs of the poor.
There are people arguing, well, but look, there are
applications that could be useful-but if a public orga-
nization, let's say a Bolivian research center, devel-
oped a variety of potato that was going to be distrib-
uted to the poor and was, say, viral resistant, when
they were ready to release it, then you are going to
have to deal with about 20 corporations that are going
to come down and claim property rights-because the
associated [genetic engineering] technology is patent-
ed; when you put in the gene that has the particular
feature you want, you have to use patented technology
to insert it and mark it. This is what happened exactly
with two varieties of papaya, one developed by a gov-
ernment agency in Brazil and another by a public uni-
versity in Costa Rica; they could not release them
because they had to negotiate the patents with 20 dif-
ferent corporations. That's what happened with Gold-
en Rice, this rice that is engineered to have the vita-
min beta carotene; the Rockefeller Foundation funded
the research for ten years, and then when they were
ready to release Golden Rice they found out that there
were complicated issues with the patents, so that's
why [the Swiss company] AstroZeneca came in and
bought it. What they're saying now is "we're going to
give Golden Rice to the poor for free," but we can't
allow feeding the poor in Latin America to be a ques-
tion of whether corporations have good will or not.
Agroecology empowers people to become agents of
their own development.
But the other problem with biotech, with GMOs
[Genetically Modified Organisms] is that they are
emerging at the expense of other agriculture, because
of genetic pollution, we are seeing it already with the
local maize varities in Oaxaca [Mexico]. When we
grow transgenic crops that have a special trait, the
gene for that trait doesn't necessarily come from other
plants, it might be from a bacteria, from a frog, from
anything.
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TECHNOLOGY
You put that gene into a plant because you think it's
going to express one particular trait, like resistance to
an herbicide, or to a pest; well, that gene expresses
itself throughout the plant and especially in the pollen.
So when the pollen is blown by wind or carried by
pollinators and goes through a normal process of
crossing with wild relatives-that is, plants that are
botanically related to the crop-there's a high proba-
bility of encountering wild relatives in Latin America
because there are many centers of origin [of domesti-
cated plants] that are loaded with wild relatives and
local varieties-so there's going to be exchange of
genes. And the wild plants are going to acquire the
trait-they could become superweeds, and take over,
or they might become less fit and just disappear. So
that's a danger.
The GM crops are novel crops-they don't exist in
nature, they would never exist in nature if humans had
not manipulated them. They've manipulated them by
overcoming biological barriers; people say, "but peo-
ple have been domesticating and improving plants for
a long time." Yeah, they have, but through the normal
co-evolutionary processes that exist in nature. Here
we have crossed biological barriers and found ways to
use viruses and other things that would serve as trans-
porters of these genes.
So what's happening in Oaxaca, the center of origin
of maize, an area with a lot of diversity of maize, and
teosinte, which is a wild relative, is that they were
using GM corn for animal feed, supposedly. This GM
corn-called Bt corn-is resistant to insect pests. It
started contaminating other corn varieties because of
exchange of genes [through pollination]; researchers
in Oaxaca found the presence of GM material in tradi-
tional varieties and wild relatives. We don't know
what the consequences could be, they could become
superweeds, or they could disappear because they lose
fitness. What is more worrisome is that they'll conta-
minate everything so that there's nothing we can do
later on-regulation will come too late, farmers are
going to lose their traditional crops. Organic farmers
are also being contaminated; this is happening in
Canada, with canola. The farmers lose their organic
certification, because organic crops aren't allowed to
have any contamination by GMOs. So this is imposing
itself-it's like Microsoft-it's imposing itself all
over the genetic material of Latin America, and that's
unacceptable. We need to contain the purity of farm-
ing systems the way farmers want them-it's irre-
versible, once you release the genes into the environ-
ment, it's irreversible. U
More information about agroecology and Miguel
Altieri's work in Latin America can be found at:
http://www.CNR.Berkeley.EDU/%7Eagroeco3/
http://www.agroeco.org/
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