An approach to the social construction of agroecological principles in Latin America

Abstract

As an emergent glotopolitical field in Latin America, Agroecology offers a critical and sustainable guide about agrifood systems. Its conversion into a food global agenda by FAO underlined a unique, glocal and social experiment because it is trying to organize local agriculture skills towards Agroecology production. All of this implied certain confluence of social actor multiplicity (mainly small rural producers) that, from their rural communities, dialogically reproduce and apprehend a particular lifestyle. Therefore, the aforementioned suggests a deconstruction of Agroecology's epistemological foundations. The main goal was to define the dynamics of agroecological principles in Latin American research. For this purpose, it was necessary to identify a set of agroecological systemic principles, correlating them with a partial sample of Latin American agroecological thought from the second decade of the 21st century, which consisted in 3,110 documents from 23 countries. It was observed that there were no 100% agroecological experiences; to the contrary, each research study is comprised by several combinations of agroecological principles that obey the social actors' needs. In the same way, certain inter-sectional systemic behavior was evidenced, which is creating news agroecological principles. All of this means new opportunities, but also new risks to Agroecology itself.