Abstract: The COVID-19 crisis has created a moment where existing calls for agroecology acquire new relevance. Agroecology provides a path to reconstruct a post-COVID-19 agriculture, one that is able to avoid widespread disruptions of food supplies in the future by territorializing food production and consumption. There are five main areas in which agroecology can point the way to a new post-COVID-19 agriculture: overcoming the pesticide treadmill, enriching nature’s matrix, revitalizing small farms, creating alternative animal production systems and enhancing urban agriculture.
To cite this article: Miguel A. Altieri & Clara I. Nicholls (2020): Agroecology and the reconstruction of a post-COVID-19 agriculture, The Journal of Peasant Studies, DOI: 10.1080/03066150.2020.1782891
Grassroots Voices Forum: “Pandemic and Critical Agrarian Studies”
The Journal of Peasant Studies is launching a rolling forum with experiences from the frontlines of the current crisis: ‘Grassroots Voices: pandemics and critical agrarian studies’ – in collaboration with the Transnational Institute (TNI – www.tni.org). As the pandemic unfolds, many of the fatal flaws of capitalism are being laid bare. It is a moment when new alliances are being formed and new militant organizing is springing up, as are new forms of authoritarianism and repression. This is a moment of potentially great rupture – but in what direction and for who is up for grabs. The Grassroots Voices section seeks to document what is happening from the grassroots perspective. Migrant workers, domestic laborers, peasant farmers, small-scale fishers, informal food vendors, and rural-urban migrants all have had their lives upended. We expect this conjuncture to affect potentially radical changes in long-term trends towards authoritarian governance, industry consolidation, marginalization of migrant workers, land grabs and financialization, as well as creating a surge of left organizing, food worker strikes, mutual aid networks, and new grassroots alliances. What is the experience on the ground? These experiences, of course, are conditioned by the historical changes that came before, by rising populism, and the history of movement organizing. We hope to put these new experiences in historical context, track them longitudinally, and highlight emerging strategies.
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Juan Liu
Dr Juan Liu is an associate professor of political ecology and agrarian studies at the College of Humanities and Development Studies, China Agricultural University (COHD-CAU) and a researcher at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB). Her research interests include energy transitions, migration and the left-behind population, land politics, and political economy/ecology of agriculture, food and environment, etc.