El Colegio de la Frontera Sur (ECOSUR) will host this Congress to discuss Mexican Agroecology, food sovereignty, knowledge, ‘’cosmovision’’ and biocultural heritage.

Marginalization, food dependence and the effects of climate change make Mexico vulnerable as a country, especially within the social strata that have fewer economic resources. One way to reverse this problem is to strengthen and revalue traditional production systems, which have proven their potential to sustain the lives of millions of Mexicans throughout the centuries. Especially in the states of central and southern Mexico there are countless examples of this.

In recent years the agricultural policies implemented in the country have favored a process of polarization of producers and abandonment of the field. This has resulted in peasant producers becoming impoverished and a significant part forced to migrate. In addition, there is an intergenerational crisis where rural youth have no cultural or labor options and there is a clear erosion of peasant knowledge among them. Another indirect result of these development policies is the loss of agrobiodiversity. If this trend continues, the possibilities for the entire population (producers and consumers) are reduced, and productive diversification is put at risk.

Recovering the traditional productive systems would guarantee a local supply of healthy food, generate the necessary environmental services for the reproduction of life and contribute to lessen the effects of global climate change. In this complex panorama, it is necessary to strengthen social participation, local and territorial markets and active intervention of society in the construction of value chains and alternative marketing, benefiting and also involving consumers in the production of food.

The objective of this Congress is to understand the potential that Mexico has from looking at its agroecological experiences, both from the academic sector, civil society actors, peasants and the private sector. The experiences that link all these sectors are of special interest because it is a space of coexistence, learning and exchange of horizontal knowledge.