Exploring Agroecology

Teaching and working in Agroecology is as challenging and complex as the term itself

"We see Agroecology as a key form of resistance to an economic system that puts profit before life. […] Our diverse forms of smallholder food production based on Agroecology generate local knowledge, promote social justice, nurture identity and culture, and strengthen the economic viability of rural areas. As smallholders, we defend our dignity when we choose to produce in an agroecological way."  

– Declaration of the International Forum for Agroecology, 2015

A movement is growing. While agroecology has been practiced for millennia in diverse places around the world, today we are witnessing the mobilisation of transnational social movements to build, defend and strengthen agroecology as the pathway towards a more just, sustainable and viable food and agriculture system.

These social movements claim agroecology as a bottom up movement and practice that needs to be supported, rather than led, by science and policy. From this perspective, agroecology is inseparable from food sovereignty: the right of citizens to control food policy and practice.

"There is no food sovereignty without agroecology. And certainly, agroecology will not last without a food sovereignty policy that backs it up."  

– Ibrahima Coulibaly, CNOP (Coordination Nationale des Organisations Paysannes du Mali), from Mali

The Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience of Coventry University and ILEIA, the Centre for Learning on Sustainable Agriculture have produced a new publication and video explore the meaning and politics of agroecology from social movement perspectives. It explores agroecology through the perspectives of food producers involved in the food sovereignty movement. Food producers say in their own words why agroecology is a key pathway towards better food systems and food sovereignty.

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Here is a regularly updated list of other things Cory writes

Vietnamese song about herbalism

From a manuscript I am working on with traditional healers of North Vietnam:

Bài hát của các Già làng về n ghề t​huốc nam

Nếu bạn là ​bạn của ​cây thuốc
Hãy ​truyền lại từ thế hệ này sang thế hệ sau
Những ​con ​người có trái tim nhân hậu
Họ sẽ trở thành những ​người ​th​ầy thuốc nam

Mọi người đang mong chờ được chữa lành mọi vết thương

Elders song about herbalism 

If you are herbal friends 

Passed down from generation to generation 

Kind hearted 

Kind person to become a herbalist 

People are waiting to be healed 

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Here is a regularly updated list of other things Cory writes

A taste of mountains

Cleome viscosa

The wild edible plant of Indian Himlayan Region –Jakhiya or Cleome viscosa is found in tropics throughout the world and is used in traditional medicine in many parts of India and outside. Almost all the parts of the plant are used for treating diseases. The spices grow in the wild or in fallow land of the region. The Indo-Mongoloid Bhotia tribe of Garhwal has traditionally collected it from Alpine and dry temperate forests but also cultivate it in low altitudes.


As Shalini Dhyani writes in a recent article on the plant, "After having satisfied my taste buds with a variety of spicy and not-so-spicy foods, I can say that Garhwali food is undeniably tasty." But it is not easy to get, to taste has to plan a trip to Uttarakhand and look for home-stay options rather than commercial establishments.

A 1999 study by R K Maikhuri of Almora-based G B Pant Institute of Himalayan Environment and Development, published in the journal of Economic Botany on the agro-ecological significance of jakhiya says it is not a commercial crop because most of it is consumed locally. People collect the seeds and gift them to their kin living in areas where jakhiya does not grow. As the unique tang and essence of jakhiya has gained popularity, the demand for its seeds has increased in the region.

According to an article published in the International Journal of Research in Pharmacy and Chemistry, the high protein, amino acid, and mineral content of this plant can make it a crop of high economic importance. Another recent publication in the Indian Journal of Experimental Biology says Cleome viscos can be considered an efficient source of biodiesel. Oil of the plant has all the properties which jatropha and pongamia have. A plant to watch out for both in terms of potential for sustainable economic development and in the struggle for indigenous peoples rights and food sovereignty.

Shalini Dhyani's full article at http://www.downtoearth.org.in/content/taste-mountains

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Here is a regularly updated list of other things Cory writes

When Death Comes – A Poem by Mary Oliver

On my way back from Uganda now after a fantastic and very hot time. It was also a serious struggle with tropical intestinal parasites and a boda-boda (motorcycle) accident - wherein I somehow forgot my Aikido roll, which had saved me in past accidents, and landed poorly on my elbow. - The german doctors have me patched up now but all of this leads me to the clear realization that this body is impermanent. 

I am therefore revisiting one of Mary Oliver's poems that used to be pinned to my dorm room door at Sterling College in Vermont.  

When death comes

like the hungry bear in autumn

when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;

when death comes

like the measle-pox;

when death comes

like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;

what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything

as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,

and I look upon time as no more than an idea,

and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common

as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth

tending as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something

precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder

if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened

or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

~ Mary Oliver ~

Stories

I rarely go back to the US but when I do it's often the case that I can't follow the conversations people are having around me because they are about television. Reading Wendell Berry's latest work for The Atlantic I found an eloquent description of my unprocessed response to that awkward social situation.

Reading his work I realize that the disinterest I have for TV and pop culture stems from a deep rooted existential lack that I feel for the modern developed world. As he says in his article "When people begin to replace stories from local memory with stories from television screens, another vital part of life is lost."

Being lucky enough to live in a relatively in-tact rural community while growing up Wendell Berry still got to know the importance of story, which has shaped how he sees the world. "I have my own memories of the survival in a small rural community of its own stories. By telling and retelling those stories, people told themselves who they were, where they were, and what they had done. They thus maintained in ordinary conversation their own living history."

Have we sold our meaning as people and communities? Now we welcome our collective meaning to be designed by TV producers and advertising agencies.

Perhaps it is time to welcome local story back into our lives.

Read Wendell Berry's latest work for The Atlantic:

http://m.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2015/03/farmland-without-farmers/388282/

How to facilitate a vision workshop

Cory Whitney

I found this in a document about food sovereignty called 'How to facilitate a vision workshop'. It is from a piece by Trevor Hancock in the Healthcare Forum Journal, 1993.

We tried it in two villages during our work in Uganda 1-14 and found it very helpful and moving. Take seven people from the large group and bring them to the center and give them all paper and markers and ask them to take the journey described below and then draw (don't write words but draw) their vision.

Next time you have a 15-minute break, try this exercise:

Find a quiet place, take a moment to relax, close your eyes, and take a journey into the future:
It is the year 2024 and you are hovering in a balloon above your own community. During the past 20 years, it has transformed itself into an ideally healthy community. Imagine yourself floating down to the center of this place, where you climb out of the balloon and move around the community.

Take your time as you go into and out of stores ... workplaces ... streets ... parks … .neighborhoods ... houses ... healthcare and educational settings. In what way are the places you visit and the people you see healthy? What makes them healthy? Notice the colors and shapes and textures around you.

What sounds do you hear? What smells do you notice? Pay attention to how people move from place to place. Observe the settings where ill people receive care and the places where people learn. Take the time to experience this community at different times of day and night. At different seasons.

Try to imagine yourself as an elderly person living in this environment ... as a child ... as a woman ... as a man ... as a disabled person. Now spend a few minutes revisiting places you have seen that struck you most forcibly or that you liked the best, then re-enter the balloon, ascend back into the sky, and return to the present.

References

1. Marocco, Irene, Edward Mukiibi, Richard Nsenga, Piero Sardo, John Wanyu, Irene Marocco, Edward Mukiibi, John Wanyu, and Cory W. Whitney. Uganda from Earth to Table; Traditional Products and Dishes (Second Edition). Bra, Italy: Slow Food International, 2018.
2. Whitney, C., and E. Luedeling. “How Governments Can Monitor Progress towards Better Nutrition.” Agroforestry World, 2018.
3. Whitney, C. W., D. Lanzanova, C. Muchiri, K. Shepherd, T. Rosenstock, M. Krawinkel, J. R. S. Tabuti, and E. Luedeling. “Probabilistic Decision Tools for Determining Impacts of Agricultural Development Policy on Household Nutrition.” Earth’s Future 6, no. 3 (2018): 359–72. https://doi.org/10.1002/2017EF000765/full.
4. Whitney, C. W., K. D. Shepherd, T. S. Rosenstock, M. Krawinkel, and E. Luedeling. “Modelling the Impacts of Uganda’s Vision 2040 Policy on Household Nutrition.” ICRAF Policy Brief 39 (2018): 4.
5. Whitney, Cory. “Agrobiodiversity and Nutrition in Traditional Cropping Systems - Homegardens of the Indigenous Bakiga and Banyakole in Southwestern Uganda.” University of Kassel, 2018. https://kobra.uni-kassel.de/handle/123456789/2018090356388.
6. Whitney, Cory W., Joseph Bahati, and J. Gebauer. “Ethnobotany and Agrobiodiversity; Valuation of Plants in the Homegardens of Southwestern Uganda.” Ethnobiology Letters 9, no. 2 (2018): 90–100. https://doi.org/10.14237/ebl.9.2.2018.503.
7. Whitney, Cory W., D. Lanzanova, and Eike Luedeling. “Bayesian Networks for Impact Modeling of Development Interventions.” edited by Ana Maria Carvalho, Manuel Pardo de Santayana, and Rainer Bussmann, 131. June 2: Instituto Politécnico de Bragança, Centro de Investigação de Montanha & Society for Economic Botany, 2017.
8. Whitney, Cory W., D. Lanzanova, Keith Shepherd, and Eike Luedeling. “Nutritional Impacts of Transitioning from Homegardens to Industrial Farms in Uganda.” edited by E. Tielkes, 275. Cuvillier Verlag, 2017.
9. Whitney, Cory W., Denis Lanzanova, Caroline Muchiri, Keith D. Shepherd, Todd S. Rosenstock, Michael Krawinkel, John R. S. Tabuti, and Eike Luedeling. “Probabilistic Decision Tools for Determining Impacts of Agricultural Development Policy on Household Nutrition.” Earth’s Future 6, no. 3 (March 1, 2018): 359–72. https://doi.org/10.1002/2017EF000765.
10. Whitney, Cory W., and Eike Luedeling. “Agricultural Development Interventions on Household Nutrition in Kenya and Uganda,” 55. July 9-13: Agriculture, Nutrition, Health Academy (ANH), 2017.
11. Whitney, Cory W., Eike Luedeling, Oilver Hensel, John R. S. Tabuti, Michael Krawinkel, Jens Gebauer, and Katja Kehlenbeck. “The Role of Homegardens for Food and Nutrition Security in Uganda.” Human Ecology 46, no. 4 (2018): 497–514. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-018-0008-9.
12. Whitney, Cory W., Eike Luedeling, John R. S. Tabuti, Antonia Nyamukuru, Oliver Hensel, Jens Gebauer, and Katja Kehlenbeck. “Crop Diversity in Homegardens of Southwest Uganda and Its Importance for Rural Livelihoods.” Agriculture and Human Values 35, no. 2 (2018): 399–424. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-017-9835-3.
13. Whitney, Cory W., L. Mâis-Tomé, S. Nshutiyayesu, C. Kabuye, and R. Omondi. “Conservation Planning and Livelihoods Derived from Lake Victoria’s Native Floristic Diversity,” 1. May, 2-5, 2017.
14. Whitney, Cory W., John R. S. Tabuti, Oliver Hensel, Ching-Hua Yeh, Jens Gebauer, and Eike Luedeling. “Homegardens and the Future of Food and Nutrition Security in Southwest Uganda.” Agricultural Systems 154 (2017): 133–44. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2017.03.009.