Testimony

Sometimes, we need to see things worsen before seeking community-based responses and more transformative changes.

About a year after moving to a low mountain valley in northern Nicaragua as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I noticed a dramatic agricultural change. Farmers managing the productive alluvial soils along the Pueblo Nuevo River were rapidly replacing corn and beans subsistence crops and their small-scale production of tomatoes, peppers, and cabbage sold into local and regional markets with tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum). With demand for premium cigars booming in the U.S.A. and elsewhere, northern Nicaragua's cigar manufacturing businesses wanted more production of the high-quality tobacco leaves used to wrap the cigars and partnered with selected banks, brokers, and agrochemical companies to expand their production through contract farming.

Like earlier iterations of the Green Revolution, but with a 1990s twist, they promised local farmers higher prices and a guaranteed market for an export crop, but this time, it was not even a food crop. The pesticides promoted to ensure that the tobacco leaves had little to no damage were among the most toxic, including endosulfan (an off-patent organochlorine insecticide that is now being phased out globally due to its acute impacts on human health and potential for bioaccumulation). As agrochemical use increased in this small town, the new tobacco business contracted workers to harvest oaks, pines, and other trees from the fragmented forest and shade coffee grown in the surrounding mountains to build drying sheds for the tobacco leaves. Deforestation for construction and expanded tobacco production fields eliminated valuable biodiversity hosted by these forests and shade trees used in coffee farming, increasing the risk of landslides after hurricanes and extreme weather events. The local health centre invited me to a meeting to discuss strategies to reduce the rapidly growing number of people suffering from pesticide poisonings (e.g., burns, dizziness, fevers, nausea, and worse) and the rising use of agrochemicals to commit suicide.

Unfortunately, stories like this are not unique to Nicaragua, and they did not stop happening in the late 1990s. Global pesticide use has continued to increase in low and middle-income countries (Shattuck et al. 2023), and the cumulative health impacts of modern food systems, including malnutrition and food insecurity, are staggering. A recent United Nations update on Sustainable Development Goal 15, Life on the Land, which aims to protect, restore, and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and biodiversity loss, finds that countries are falling short on their goals.

We knew there must be a better way- a way rooted in the respect for human dignity and a reverence for all forms of life. As Pope Francis reminds us in Laudato Si', "The global food system is broken. It doesn't work for those who work the hardest – small farmers – and it's a major driver of the climate emergency." Before he continues to identify the promise of diversification, he declares, "It is imperative to promote an economy which favours productive diversity and business creativity. For example, there is a great variety of small-scale food production systems which feed the greater part of the world's peoples, using a modest amount of land and producing less waste, be it in small agricultural parcels, in orchards and gardens…" (129)

These experiences and a commitment to forming more just and reciprocal relationships linking society and nature started my long-term path to seeking participatory approaches that respond to these problems without reproducing the same processes that initially created these damages. The practical next steps involved working with organized smallholder farmers, including the coffee growers that maintained the forests and shade trees in the mountains above Pueblo Nuevo. We soon found thatfair trade cooperativesoffered a powerful partner to address some of these environmental challenges as, together with so many other organizations, they promoted organic agriculture that eliminated the use of toxic agrochemicals, improved soil health, and helped to conserve biodiversity. However, coffee alone was not enough, as our research uncovered the persistence of seasonal hunger among many farmers, even those linked to sustainable markets, leading to university partnerships with farmers and cooperatives that use agroecology to diversify farms and landscapes as a strategy to improve food security and nutrition, conserve biodiversity and enhance environmental sustainability (to learn more about our collaborative efforts see this video)

Agroecology emerged as a response to large-scale chemically dependent specialized agricultural production and the narrow packages of pesticides, fertilizers, irrigation, and loans accompanying this project. Agroecology approached from different positionalities, is science, a social movement, and practice guided by principles and participatory approaches to transform food systems.

Agroecology is a principles-based approach that draws on Indigenous and local knowledge and ecology and agricultural sciences to foster diversified farming and inclusive food systems (XX). Selected farmers, social movements, advocates, alternative market makers, allied researchers, enterprises, and government agencies are using agroecology to transform food and farming systems in ways that sustain and restore biodiversity, reduce water pollution, eliminate toxic agrochemical usage, and improve the health, nutrition, and climate change resilience of millions and people in this growing movement for change. I close with my selection of promising examples of agroecology-informed change processes.

● In addition to the Central American story above, hundreds of thousands of smallholder farmers, cooperatives, local organizations, and sometimes allied universities, nonprofits, and other agencies promote agroecology throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.

● In India, over one million farmers use agroecology-based regenerative practices inCommunity-Managed Nature FarmingandZero-Budget Nature Farminginitiatives that reduce debt, build soil fertility, decrease or eliminate agrochemical usage, improve yields, and build climate resilience.

● In Africa, agroecological farmers, youth, and allies have organized a continental movement for agroecology and food sovereignty. At the same time,collaborators in Malawaihave used agroecology-based training to improve gender relations and food and nutrition security.

● In Europe and the U.S., organizations support community-based food justice efforts, link agroecology and human health, and explore changes to government policies.

● The global certified organic farming area reached 96 million hectares in 2022. The number of organic producers also significantly rose, surpassing 4.5 million (IFOAM 2024).

Readers can find more examples through a series of reports from the IPES-Food andtheFuture of Food's synthesis of the potential to scale these approaches. Jesuits, the Catholic church, and faith-based organizations are already involved in many of these processes, supportingfarmer-to-farmer exchanges, buildinguniversity-community partnerships, and advocating for farming and global food justice in ways inspired by St. Francis. Still, more coordination across institutional work on Catholic land and meeting emergency food needs and beyond could make it a more potent force for the common good.