from the Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development |
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Special section of commentaries that emerged from the U.S. Agroecology Summit 2023 |
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The JAFSCD spring issue contains a collection of commentaries that emerged from the U.S. Agroecology Summit 2023 (held in Kansas City, Missouri, in May 2023). The editors of this special section were misidentified in our JAFSCD News Flash on May 14 featuring the collection of commentaries. Colin Anderson was not a guest editor. In addition to Antonio Roman-Alcalá, Karen Crespo Triveño, Ana Fochesatto, Catherine Horner, and Ivette Perfecto also served as guest editors. Unfortunately, the original error by JAFSCD unintentionally obscured the labor of women who co-edited this special section, particularly women of color.
JAFSCD apologizes for this error and thanks all the guest editors for supporting this collection of commentaries, which provides insights into the dynamics of organizing in the U.S. toward agroecology, within research and outside of it. |
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As explored in the introduction to the special section, titled Toward care-full plural agroecologies: Lessons from the U.S. Agroecology Summit 2023, the collection offers points of generative conflict and difficult conversation, which may help move practitioners and researchers alike toward greater alignment through reflective thinking. The commentaries have only been edited for readability, in order to present an authentic diversity of voices.
“Agroecology”—a term used to describe the science, practice, and social movements of sustainable and socially just food systems—has not circulated as much in the so-called United States as it has abroad. But that is changing. In addition to an uptake of the term and its principles by international institutions like the UN’s FAO, agroecology is appearing more and more frequently in U.S. university programs, research programs, and the rhetoric of U.S. social movements.
In May of 2023, 100 scientists, social movement leaders, Indigenous organizers, and food producers gathered in Missouri to discuss agroecology and the prospects for scaling it out in the U.S. In particular, organizers of this first-ever U.S. Agroecology Summit 2023 sought to define a research agenda that could support such a scaling out. But a clear research agenda did not result from the summit’s 3-day participatory dialogues. Rather, tensions emerged between academia and social movements, building from the histories of negative experiences of academia and the standard practices of conventional research processes (especially among Indigenous participants and more broadly among communities of color). The summit made it apparent: to advance agroecological research that truly speaks to the term’s vaunted commitment to social transformation, trust first needs to be built between those doing agroecology-related research (in academia) and those living agroecology day to day.
In this collection of commentaries, sourced from participants in the summit but also its outside critics, readers will find various perspectives on this important question of trust-building among researchers and practitioners. Commentaries also address questions of agroecological research (in terms of its content, process, and future). Many also engage debates about the roles of the USDA, academics, social movements, farmers, and food purveyors in bringing about a more agroecological world—and the roles of capitalism, colonialism, and white supremacism in preventing such a world from emerging.
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