- This week, Slow Food convenes its celebrated annual gathering, Terra Madre, in Italy, and a major focus will be the importance of expanding agroecology globally.
- There, the leading ‘good food movement’ organization officially launches its new program, Slow Food Farms, to educate its global members about the power of agroecology to feed the world sustainably and to connect farmers via a community of learning.
- “It is more important than ever to bring farmers together in a large network [where] the protagonists of the food system can come together to raise their voices, share their experiences and work more closely together towards an agroecological transition,” the president of Slow Food writes in a new op-ed.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
I have spent more than 20 years visiting communities and working with farmers around Uganda and across East and southern Africa. I have come to realize that there are many farmers who are trying their best to produce food in a way that harms neither the environment nor consumers. But many of these farmers are trapped in a corrupt system designed to benefit those who provide – and profit – from chemical inputs. How do we help them to break out of this bubble, and how do we create a network where they can share their motivations, their feelings, their practical knowledge and their experiences?
Farmers need to be brought together so that they help each other move towards good, clean and fair production of food. And they need to be brought together because farmers are also bearers of knowledge. Uniting them in a network is the best way to free themselves from the trap of growing input-heavy, export-focused monocultures.
My name is Edward Mukiibi. Since 2022 I have served as the president of the world’s largest food movement, Slow Food. In 2007 I was just an agriculture student at Makerere University in Kampala, but I was already working closely with farmers. I volunteered for a project to promote a new hybrid maize variety, supposedly drought-resistant, in western Uganda. I was convinced that this was the right way to produce more food: more high-yielding varieties grown with more external inputs like fertilizers.
I gave this project my all, and many farmers I talked to agreed to try the new maize variety, which needed to be grown in a monoculture and came with a long list of recommended fertilizers and other inputs. Many farmers had to take out small loans to pay for the inputs. Then, towards the end of 2007, the rains came very late and drought hit most of the fields. The farmers lost a lot of their crops, and the maize in which we had all trusted never delivered on its promise.
I felt so bad when I went again to meet the farmers and saw their fields. I could clearly see the disappointment in their eyes and it struck me really hard, making me realize that this is not the system we need. I started to think that we need to get back to traditional, nourishing agriculture, for people, as my family had always practiced.
Many farmers want to get out of this input-based and import-oriented agricultural model, but they can’t do it without support. I have spent many years now working to help them and to restore to their farms the biodiversity that had been destroyed by the industrial system.
In 2015, I was in Malawi, and I often traveled the long distance from the capital Lilongwe to Mzuzu in the north by bus, a very slow way of traveling. However, it does give you the chance to observe and understand the landscape. For a long stretch there is nothing but fields and fields of maize, with many shops selling hybrid seeds and chemical inputs along the road, alternating with housing for the farmers and workers. You can see how poor the workers are, their children malnourished. The input shops, however, are all well-stocked and clearly making money. Many of the farmers own their land, but this does not ensure a fair income. The system tells them that growing maize ‘season in, season out’ is the way to escape impoverishment, but instead it is only dragging them further down towards destitution and malnourishment.
But then, after this monotonous maize landscape, I arrived at Never Ending Food, an agroecology and permaculture-based farm run by Stacia Nordin, a Slow Food-Malawi ally, and her family. Lush and green, with trees and bushes, shrubs and vines, this diverse farm produces over 200 different types of food and offers a clear example of what food production should look like. The environment is completely different and productivity is high, while the people living here are thriving.
My personal experiences have shown me that even if challenges exist, the solution is there. Farmers, especially in the tropics, especially with our current changing climate, need to diversify their production. They need to intercrop and carry out companion planting, but also they need to cut their dependency on external, corporate-controlled inputs, which is draining their money, energy and hopes.
See a related series about agroecology training programs based in England, India and Brazil here.
As the climate crisis really starts to hit hard, it is more important than ever to bring farmers together in a large network. To do this, we have created Slow Food Farms. Within this network, the protagonists of the food system can come together to raise their voices, share their experiences and work more closely together towards an agroecological transition.
We must get back to supporting farmers in their communities, not just on the African continent but globally, to make sure that they can break free from this pernicious dependency. Agroecological farmers provide invaluable services to local communities and to society at large. They are the frontline fighters against the climate crisis, delivering diverse and nutritious diets, supporting local economies and creating resilient ecosystems.
Edward Mukiibi is the President of Slow Food and a food and agriculture educator and tropical agronomist with academic distinctions from Makerere University, Uganda, and the University of Gastronomic Sciences, Italy.
Banner image: A vegetable grower using agroecological methods in Boung Phao Village, Lao PDR. Photo courtesy of Asian Development Bank, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
Related audio from Mongabay’s podcast: Vandana Shiva discusses food sovereignty, saving seeds, and the agroecology answer to climate change and biodiversity loss, listen here:
See related coverage from Mongabay’s ongoing agroecology series here and below:
Food for all: Q&A with Michel Pimbert of the Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience
Indigenous Gurung farmers revive climate-resilient millet in Nepal
Women weave a culture of resistance and agroecology in Ecuador’s Intag Valley
How the Zai farming technique is transforming soil fertility in North Cameroon
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