Agroecological transition or agroecological repossession? Resurgence of traditional food culture in the Tremembé da Barra do Mundaú

Abstract

Industrial food systems, as extensions of colonial dispossession, are destroying the planet. Agroecology is increasingly promoted as a response, framed as an ecological farming practice, a grassroots movement, and an academic field. Yet, much agroecological knowledge remains embedded in the same Western institutions and epistemologies that underpin industrial agriculture. As such, agroecological science can reproduce patterns of knowledge extraction and exploitation. Drawing on environmental repossession, which describes how Indigenous communities restore relationships with land, and a framework for ethical engagement between Indigenous and Western sciences, we reframe agroecological transitions as agroecological repossessions. This reframing centers the resurgence of traditional foodways and resituates innovations in ecological agriculture within the continuity of ancestral land relations. Through an example from the Tremembé da Barra do Mundaú (an Indigenous community in Ceará, Brazil), we show how reframing agroecological transitions this way opens the possibility of reclaiming agroecological science itself.