Meeting peasants where they are: cultivating agroecological alternatives in neoliberal Guatemala

Abstract

Social movements increasingly embrace agroecology as an integral part of food sovereignty. This essay has two related aims: first, to highlight the barriers to agroecology and explore how these can be overcome; second, to deepen understandings of how agroecology can strengthen movements for food sovereignty or extend neoliberal governance. I ground these questions by examining state and social movement agroecological programs in Guatemala. I argue that strict rejection of conventional inputs and market production, in addition to insufficient state investment and redistribution, creates barriers to participation among a rural peasantry whose livelihoods have been transformed by decades of scientific, market-led development. Facing these limits, agroecology can work to strengthen food sovereignty movements, but can also reinforce the neoliberal food regime by promoting resilience and indigenous agriculture as sufficient to resolve the food crisis.