Across Latin America, there are eight agroecology schools established by La Via Campesina, the world’s largest peasant movement, and the Latin American Coordination of Rural Organizations (CLOC). Better known as the Latin American Agroecological Institutes (IALAs), these educational institutes are situated in Venezuela, Brazil, Nicaragua, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Colombia. (The IALA María Cano in Colombia was founded in 2017, with support from the Agroecology Fund.)

Each of these IALAs are an important space for youth, women, and Indigenous communities to receive practical training in agroecology, but also to strengthen ideological values.

“In Latin America, universities are part of how capitalism educates people to serve the dominant model [of extractive, industrial agriculture]. No opportunities were available for the peasants in these educational spaces; so there was a need to build our own schools,” said Marlen Sanchez, the Academic Director of the IALA Ixim Ulew in Nicaragua.

As Sanchez points out, in most parts of Latin America, the formal education system prepares agriculture students for opportunities oriented towards industrial agriculture rather than agroecology. Unfortunately, state-supported agronomists continue to promote industrial agriculture practices that, for decades, have degraded lands, decimated livelihoods, and increased the incidence of poverty and hunger among rural communities. This contributes to the erosion of traditional knowledge and practices in the countryside. It does not align with the needs of small agroecological farmers and grassroots advocates of food sovereignty and agroecology, who are seeking to defend their rights and transform the global food system from the ground up.

For students of the IALAs’, agroecology is not an option; it’s a necessity to build a just food system.

The IALAs offer high school graduates from peasant or Indigenous backgrounds tools to resist the dominant model through educational and professional opportunities to support their local farming communities. They know the crises in the countryside cannot be solved with techno-fixes, whether GMOs or chemical inputs. The IALAs are central in scaling up agroecology at the regional level and strengthening the grassroots food movement in Latin America. For the past 12 years, they have functioned to strengthen the capacities of young activists and to forge a peer-to-peer extension system that recognizes the role of peasant and Indigenous agriculture—from cosmovisions to the milpa production model—in achieving food sovereignty.

So, what does the academic curriculum in the IALA look like? Usually, it begins with a “mística”, a practice that seeks to connect the students with nature and with each other. Theory classes are an open space to create shared knowledge between the teacher and the students; everyone is invited to contribute to discussions and bring their diverse perspectives into the classroom. Afternoons are dedicated to putting knowledge into practice on the IALAs’ farm plots. IALAs produce the majority of their own food in addition to surplus agricultural products for income-generation. The students apply what they have learned, experiment, and eventually take this know-how to their own plots and share it with their communities.

“Our agroecology is highly political. It challenges existing power dynamics and places the peasant community at the center of agricultural production. Agroecology is a tool for collective transformation, where there is room for both traditional knowledge and innovation,” said Blanca Ruiz, a member of the CLOC-Via Campesina secretariat team in Nicaragua.

There is also time within the program for students to reflect with their peers on social dynamics, discuss the impacts of development policies, and the struggles of their respective organizations.

Ramona Acuña, a former student at the IALA in Paraguay, explained how the training helps move gender equity forward: “[For years] the contribution of women to agriculture has been made invisible. Agroecology is a radical political proposal: it aims to liberate those who have been oppressed, and for this reason, agroecology is also feminist.”

By educating students in this holistic way, which encompasses philosophical and political dimensions as well as the practical, the IALAs are accelerating social transformation, encouraging the new generation of agroecological food producers to become progressive agents of change, with able hands to steward the land and mindsets that are anti-colonial, anti-patriarchal and anti-racist.

Photographs courtesy IALA Ixim Ulew, Nicaragua.

Sources: 

• The IALAs of Latin America and Agroecological Formation for Youth (Oxford Real Farming Conference, January 10, 2021). 
• Land, Agroecology & Peasant Identity: The experience of young people in Nicaragua (Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign, September 23, 2020).
• Il Seminario Internacional Agroecología y Educación Rural (ANAMURI, October 8, 2020).