In Latin America, numerous farmers' movements, civil society organizations, and scientists involved with the public sector have formed the agroecological movement as a response to the agricultural and food crisis that has been fundamentally shifting from the implementation and expansion of intensive agriculture. Through this movement, they aim to redefine the link between food and the soil and the territories in which it is grown, including the social relations in which food is acquired and consumed. Agroecology proposes a systemic vision of food, considering not only the regeneration of the soil and the ecological relations of the agroecosystems but also the enhancement of the farmers' labor and identity.

The 10 elements of agroecology represent a change in the paradigms that govern the cultivation, production, and distribution of food, as well as the impacts on agroecosystems. In this paper, the authors argue that agroecology has the potential to restore the importance and recognition of agricultural practices that have been present in the territories for several generations and that are kept vital through biocultural memory.

The alliance between farmers, scientists, and civil society organizations is being reproduced and must continue to be strengthened to ensure that agroecology is mainstreamed and recognizes biocultural memory at its core. While biocultural knowledge gives consistency and coherence to efforts to mainstream agroecology, the most tangible binding agent of all these elements is socio-environmental justice. Without socio-environmental justice that guarantees access to free seeds, healthy land, and water in order to continue nourishing the biocultural memory around food, all these foundations will lack the basis on which to build the society and life that the territories deserve.