In Brasilia - DF, inspired by the theme: "Agroecology in the Transformation of Agro-Food Systems in Latin America: Memories, Knowledge and Pathways to Well-Being", on September 12-15, 2017, during the VI Latin American Congress of Agroecology , the X Brazilian Congress of Agroecology and the Fifth Seminar of the Federal District and surroundings, we sow the CERRADO`s AGROECOLOGICAL LETTER.
This letter summarizes our discussions and expressions of RESISTANCE and FIGHT in the agroecological field and serves as an alert to society for the serious threats that today compromise the guarantee of food sovereignty and security and the other rights of humanity, other living beings and common goods , including land, water and biodiversity, and thus compromise well-being. In this beautiful process, we were able to gather more than 5,000 people, expressing the diversity of our identities and knowledge through the active and creative participation of 25 countries and all Brazilian states, including researchers and researchers; students; educators and educators; extension technicians and technicians, peasants, family farmers and farmers, indigenous peoples; quilombolas; peoples and communities; popular artists; public managers and other civil society identities linked to the theme of agroecology and the struggle and construction of the well-being.
This congress expressed the richness of agroecology also in the methodological field. A rich menu of participatory methodologies was used. The 13 generating themes were developed in several formats that demonstrate the vitality and dynamism of the construction and dissemination of agroecological knowledge. For the first time, popular stories on talk wheels were presented by the protagonists of the experiments; Tables of dialogues were used for the reports of technical experiences; the "tapiri de saberes" was consolidated, a methodology used for the presentation of posters in a dialogical way; the "river of time", elaborated collectively, illustrated the memory of Agroecology over the decades, illustrated by the art of graphic facilitation, which contributed to honor the motto of the congress and highlighted the importance of women and men in the historical construction of agroecology; the "ways of knowing" have broadened the dialogue with society; the girls brought a debate about the importance of the collective responsibility of care with the children reaffirming that this is not an obligation only of the women and; the collaborative report allowed a process of harvesting and systematizing information in real time, integrating the diversity of perspectives and perspectives of all those involved with the congress. The plurality of agroecology was revealed in 2,227 works, presented and debated in the most diverse forms, languages and perspectives.
The beauty and diversity of the seed trade fair, the representation of biomes at the socio - biodiversity fair, the permanent presence of the artistic and pedagogical facilities, the agroecological feeding of different origins, especially the products of the Cerrado, were spaces that enriched and favored cultural and material exchanges at the event. In addition to what was foreseen, several meetings took place in this great web of conversations and interactions of construction of agroecological knowledge, recognition of the various subjects and strengthening of practices of care, respect and friendship.
This willingness to dialogue and collective construction in Congress opposes the political moment we are living in Brazil and much of Latin America with clear threats to democracies and public policies hard won by the strength of social movements and civil society organizations. We repudiate the monopoly of the media in the hands of the great corporations and the Brazilian elites and the criminalization of the alternative and popular media. We denounce the escalation of violence in the countryside, especially in the last year, where levels of violence of all natures have increased dramatically. Peasant, indigenous, quilombola leaders and the traditional peoples and communities, defenders of agroecology have been persecuted and killed. Sexist violence joins the reactionary movements, increasing the cases of murder of women leaders and trying to imprison them again in domestic spaces. Communities are being surrounded and threatened by agribusiness and agribusiness capital. We denounce the great projects of the capital and the agribusiness that has been driving the peoples of the countryside, the waters and the forests, destroying the agroecological, peasant and life preservation spaces. Among these processes we reinforce our repudiation and concern with the region of MATOPIBA and the extinction of the National Reserve of Copper and Associates (RENCA) in the Amazon, which consummate will represent a true extermination of the peasant, indigenous, quilombola and peoples and communities tradditionalWord created from an acronym of the initials of the states of Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí and Bahia. This area is of interest to Agribusiness to expand the agricultural frontier, because it is flat and abundant in water, but with a biological diversity and threatened cultures and ways of life. For more information: http://www.epsjv.fiocruz.br/noticias/reportagem/matopiba-na-fronteira-en... regions. Therefore, we reaffirm that WITHOUT DEMOCRACY IS NO AGROECOLOGY.
In the same way, it is impossible to advance in the construction of agroecology, without reflecting on the agrarian question in Brazil, where land and territory are fundamental for the materialization of the agroecological transition process. Therefore, we defend the struggle for a popular Agrarian Reform and the defense of the territories of the rural, water and forest peoples. We reject the definitive titling policy proposed by the current government, which has subordinated rural settlements to the dictates of the national and international market of land purchases. We reject any attempt to reduce the areas of sustainable use of natural goods, which are largely under the protection of traditional peoples and communities. We demand the immediate demarcation of all areas of these peoples and we are vehemently opposed to the Temporary Framework. Without agrarian reform and respect for the territories of indigenous peoples, quilombolas and traditional communities there is no agroecology.
The struggle in defense of urban agriculture provokes us to new debates and the widening of the gaze on the role of cities in the reproduction of life and agroecological practices. Urban agriculture is understood as a strategy to guarantee food and nutritional security, the right to the city, the promotion of sustainability in cities and the resilience of territories to climate change. Urban agriculture is recognized as an important tool to break with the rural-urban dichotomy, finding in the flows, processes and dynamics between rural and urban a space of struggle and resistance. Urban agriculture is the struggle and resistance of Agroecology in cities.
In relation to socio-biodiversity, we realize that the biological, social and cultural diversity of agroecosystems is a fundamental component for the promotion of agroecology and the guarantee of food and nutritional sovereignty and security. We reaffirm the centrality of peasants, family farmers, indigenous peoples, quilombolas and traditional rural, forest and water communities and communities in the generation, conservation and management of socio-biodiversity. We also identified a series of pressures and constraints on the right to free use of socio-biodiversity involving mechanisms for the protection of intellectual property, financialization of nature, promotion of large monocultures, private appropriation of biological diversity and a series of actions that compromise the integrity of territories and the vitality of food crops. We highlight here the threats related to attempts to make Brazil a signatory of the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants Convention (UPOV), signed in 1991, and to include creole seeds in the National Seed and Seed Registry. We reject the emptying of public purchases of creole seeds and non-hybrid varieties promoted through the Food Acquisition Program (PAA). We affirm the need to ensure the shared management and social control of public germplasm banks, with the participation of representative organizations of peasants and peasants, family farmers, indigenous peoples, quilombolas and traditional peoples and communities. Likewise, we require a reassessment of decisions of CTNBio by a group of independent scientists, as well as periodic reassessments by ANVISA of all agrochemicals in use in the country. We also demand analysis of the damage that transgenics and agrochemicals are causing, as well as the accountability of those who have contributed to it. We want to introduce labeling and regulations that guide the consumer, the presence of GMOs in food, and the end of the use of public resources to stimulate forms of production and technologies that threaten human and environmental health. We demand that the aerial spraying of pesticides be banned in Brazil, and that no form of use of agrochemicals banned in other countries is allowed. We want our water without poisons. We demand that all pesticides whose presence in human drinking water are not being monitored be removed from the market. In view of the threats of flexibilization of the Agrochemicals Law, we call for the archiving of the PL of the Poison (6299/2002) and for the approval of the National Policy for the Reduction of Agrochemicals (PNARA). STOP the ARRANGEMENTS OF AGROCHEMICALS, BASED ON TECHNOLOGIES AND MECHANISMS THAT COMMIT THE NETWORK OF LIFE AND THE SOCIABILITY OF THE PEOPLE WHO HOST US SO TERRITORY.
We reaffirm our willingness to fight agrifood empires, which seek to control the production, distribution and commercialization of food for the purpose of profit. We acknowledge and reaffirm the centrality of family and peasant agriculture to the conquest of food sovereignty, which, while controlling only one quarter of the world's land, produce more than 50 percent of the food consumed in the countryside and in the cities. In Brazil, official data indicate that more than 70% of the food produced in the field originates in the family units that are, therefore, 4 as the main subjects of the country's food security and sovereignty. We denounce the neoliberal government policy that is destroying public policies, such as the PAA and the National School Feeding Program (PNAE), which are fundamental for the strengthening of ecologically based agri-food systems based on the production, distribution and fair trade of food for the rural and urban populations, especially children, young people and women who live to a large extent in situations of hunger and food insecurity. We recognize, therefore, the protagonism of the peasantry and its social movements as a constituent political subject of agroecology and processes of food sovereignty that contribute significantly to a national project of sustainable production of healthy foods.
We reaffirm that "WITHOUT FEMINISM THERE IS NO AGROECOLOGY", because we understand feminism as a theoretical reference and the basis for a transformative political action based on the experiences of women. We understand that the fight against all forms of oppression and violence against women and the questioning of the sexual division of labor must be structuring elements of the systemic approach of agroecology as science, movement and practice. Scientific and academic institutions, civil society organizations, social movements and the State need to recognize and make visible the practices of women in the countryside, water, forests and cities and youth, traditional peoples and communities as the subjects that they construct agroecology daily from their territories. We fight for a critical science, decolonized, despatriarcal, anticapitalist, antiracracista, antilesbofóbica, antihomofóbica committed to the transformation of the society and the construction of new paradigms. It is essential to recognize the transformative potential and the engagement of youth in agroecology in different rural and urban contexts, both formal and non-formal, and to favor the process of youth autonomy in different dimensions, in addition to technical production. We reaffirm the multidimensionality of agroecological knowledge that emerge from an ecology of knowledge and that seeks to break with the artificial divisions established between scientific disciplines and between scientific knowledge and popular knowledge. Agroecology is built in different places by a wide diversity of actors, inserting itself in an emancipatory project that seeks to transform the relations of human beings between themselves and with nature. Public funding to the Agroecology Studies Centers (NEAs), the institutionalization of Embrapa's Agroecology Reference Framework, support for farmer-to-farmer exchange programs and the development of social technologies represent important achievements in this movement to construct new forms production and socialization of knowledge. At the same time, we reject the current threat, scrapping and dismantling of public research and teaching institutions, such as EMBRAPA, State Research Organizations, Universities and Federal Institutes. We denounce and repudiate the attack on the autonomy of public educational institutions. We reaffirm the importance of these institutions as public instruments for the promotion of a science and technology engaged, critical and guided by principles of sustainability and social justice. We also reject the cuts in resources and the dismantling of the Brazilian system of technical assistance and rural extension. At the same time we affirm the inextricable linkage between teaching, research and the extension and protagonism of the social actors of the field and social movements in the construction of knowledge. WITHOUT CONSTRUCTION KNOWLEDGE POLICIES THERE IS NO AGROECOLOGY.
We are convinced that education in agroecology has its centrality in the horizontal and permanent dialogue between the educational institutions and the real subjects, already nominated in this letter, but historically silenced. We strongly emphasize the essential role of our rural and city youth. Our walks, caravans and various spaces of struggle, resistance and learning have been built and consolidated through Public Policies, of character (PRONERA), the NEAs, the NEA Networks, the Technological Vocational Centers (CVTs) and several formal courses in agroecology and other fields of knowledge. Such policies connect teaching and research institutions and innumerable autonomous initiatives of the social movements of the countryside in their territories. Even with very low financial contributions, the ability of NEAs to promote effective linkage between extension, teaching and research is one of the success marks of this Policy, expressed in rich experiences, whether in numbers or in the sense of building a truly citizen education. In this sense, we repudiate the disregard for Public calls aimed at supporting the hundreds of NEAs, RNEAs and CVTs, culminating in the non-payment of the scholarship holders of some calls. We urgently require the permanent funding of these spaces for the promotion of agroecology, as well as the immediate opening of a Call for the maintenance of RNEAs and for the support to the NEAs of research institutions. Finally, we understand that education in agroecology and rural education share agroecological principles and therefore we do not accept the criminal process of closing the countryside schools and cutting PRONERA's resources, since EDUCATION IS RIGHT OUR DUTY OF OUR STATE! WITHOUT EDUCATION THERE IS NO AGROECOLOGY!
Solidarity and cooperation are fundamental characteristics for human development and should, in the understanding of agroecology, be extended to all living beings in a respectful and multi-generational way. Ethical and moral values require broad visions, taking into account the networks that sustain life and the forms of diversity that offer resilience to these networks. In defense of life, we demand the immediate interruption of paths that threaten solidarity and cooperation. We do not accept the disfigurements that are being imposed on the Citizen Constitution. The products of science dominated by selfish interests must lose the stimulus offered by credit and public policy. The monitoring of its use should be expanded. The damages caused must be reimbursed and their authors must be punished. We demand that public resources be directed to the National Policy on Agroecology and Organic Production (PNAPO) in all its dimensions. We reaffirm the idea that Agroecology is science, practice and movement and that the alliance between academic scientific field and social movements is necessary, the rural communities and the diversity of the identities of the subjects of the countryside, water and forests: this is the essence of the political construction of agroecology. We are all and all "lint that are embedded in a line, that is in a cord, that is in a network, that is strong and is in movement" as the Statement of Raimundo Rego, an agroecological peasant, member of the Agroecology Study Center - Cajuí, State University of Piauí. Brasília, September 15 of 2017.2
Maria de Fatima Fajardo Archanjo Sampaio