Across the Americas, small farmers are continuing a long tradition of sustainable agricultural practices with support from international organizations and university researchers. But these farmers face tremendous economic pressures from abroad. With cheaper food imports underselling locally produced goods and national economies stumbling under crushing foreign debt, markets for local crops are shrinking. There are fears that proposed free trade agreements in Central America, the Andes, and across all of Latin America (the Free Trade Area of the Americas) could fill national markets with more subsidized crops from the United States and other agricultural heavyweights in the region. In cities and the countryside, in governments and grassroots movements, people see many dimensions to issues that powerful decision-makers often reduce to the dry, abstract language of quotas and tariffs. They are underlining the importance of an agricultural model that protects environmental services, local economic opportunities, and cultural diversity in addition to profits for agribusiness and increased trade. Many organizations are calling for a new focus on “food sovereignty” as a universal goal. They begin by declaring that food security – the ability of people to access “enough food for an active and healthy life,” as the World Bank puts it – is an essential human right. Even more strongly, however, they emphasize the importance of nations and the communities within them retaining a certain degree of control over their food supply. The regional food sovereignty movement has increasingly made its presence felt in international political debates and trade negotiations, as was seen at the 2003 World Trade Organization meetings in Cancun. It comprises rural organizations of peasants and farm laborers, herders and fishers, and the international NGOs that coordinate exchanges among them. Many of these actors are also working for alternative approaches to rural development and ecosystem conservation. Across the Americas, farmers are developing and applying principles of agroecology, using both traditional and new methods of polyculture, biomass recycling, and biological pest control; preserving crop genetic diversity; and reducing inputs of external energy and chemicals.