Special Issue "Sustainability and Political Agroecology"

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Agriculture".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 May 2022.

Special Issue Editors

Prof. David Gallar Hernández
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Social Sciences and Humanities,University of Cordoba;14071 Cordoba, Spain
Interests: political agroecology, food sovereignty, rural development, traditional knowledge, rural and agrarian heritage, urban agriculture, social movements, participatory methodologies, food.
Prof. Dr. Manuel González de Molina
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
President of the SEHA, Sociedad de Estudios de Historia Agraria / University Pablo de Olavide, Seville, Spain
Interests: agrarian history; environmental history and agroecology
Special Issues and Collections in MDPI journals
Prof. Dr. Emma Siliprandi
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, FAO. Rome, Italy
Interests: agroecology, food soveraignity, gender, feminism, social movements

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Any vision of political agroecology must necessarily include the analysis of grassroots processes that are being generated by different social organizations to strengthen agroecological transitions in any of the areas of agri-food systems. Understanding agroecology as a movement, it is essential to understand and analyze how the different actors in the agri-food field are organized to promote changes in agricultural management practices, innovations from food processing, changes in food supplies reaching the concept of “agroecological distribution”, changes in consumption habits, the role of the restaurants and chefs, and their relationship with agroecology.

Through this vision, we are oriented to analyze the collective processes that, from different spheres and in an articulated manner between each other, are committed to contesting the hegemony of the dominant agrifood system, consolidating new practices, and new stories around food, agriculture, “eating well ”, rural territories, or how urban spaces are built, among other issues.

Thus, we are interested in the collective political subjects that are in the framework of agroecology and food sovereignty, their internal strengthening processes, their articulation strategies, their stories about the common good and how agendas are generated, and the repertoires of action and protest that are put into play.

Of course, it is necessary to highlight the impact of feminism within agroecology movements: "Without feminism, there is no agroecology", which emerged from Brazilian feminist organizations and movements and that resonate in all agroecological networks and that agitate experiences, groups, and organizations from all areas.

On the other hand, political agroecology must include the analysis of agroecological policies, that is, the implementation of institutional public policies (municipal, regional, state, international) that promote change towards sustainability with agroecological tools. For this, it is important to collect the experiences of different agroecological policies that have been implemented and consider their impacts. 

Prof. David Gallar Hernández
Prof. Dr. Manuel González de Molina
Prof. Dr. Emma Siliprandi
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1900 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Published Papers (2 papers)

Order results
Result details
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

Jump to: Review

Article
Forging Political Cadres for Re-Peasantization: Escuela de Acción Campesina (Spain)
Sustainability 2021, 13(7), 4061; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13074061 - 06 Apr 2021
Viewed by 494
Abstract
Bolstering the political formation of agrarian organizations has become a priority for La Vía Campesina and the Food Sovereignty Movement. This paper addresses the Spanish case study of the Escuela de Acción Campesina (EAC)—(Peasant Action School), which is a tool for political formation [...] Read more.
Bolstering the political formation of agrarian organizations has become a priority for La Vía Campesina and the Food Sovereignty Movement. This paper addresses the Spanish case study of the Escuela de Acción Campesina (EAC)—(Peasant Action School), which is a tool for political formation in the Global North in which the philosophical and pedagogical principles of the “peasant pedagogies” of the Training Schools proposed by La Vía Campesina are put into practice within an agrarian organization in Spain and in alliance with the rest of the Spanish Food Sovereignty Movement. The study was carried out over the course of the 10 years of activist research, spanning the entire process for the construction and development of the EAC. Employing an ethnographic methodology, information was collected through participant observation, ethnographic interviews, a participatory workshop, and reviews of internal documents. The paper presents the context in which the EAC arose, its pedagogical dynamics, the structure and the ideological contents implemented for the training of new cadres, and how there are three key areas in the training process: (1) the strengthening of collective union and peasant identity, (2) training in the “peasant” ideological proposal, and (3) the integration of students as new cadres into the organizations’ structures. It is concluded that the EAC is a useful tool in the ideological re-peasantization process of these organizations. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability and Political Agroecology)

Review

Jump to: Research

Review
An Operational Approach to Agroecology-Based Local Agri-Food Systems
Sustainability 2021, 13(15), 8443; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13158443 - 28 Jul 2021
Viewed by 424
Abstract
In recent years, the transition to sustainability at a food systems’ scale has drawn major attention both from the scientific and political arenas. Agroecology has become central to such discussions, while impressive efforts have been made to conceptualize the agroecology scaling process. It [...] Read more.
In recent years, the transition to sustainability at a food systems’ scale has drawn major attention both from the scientific and political arenas. Agroecology has become central to such discussions, while impressive efforts have been made to conceptualize the agroecology scaling process. It has thus become necessary to apply the concept of agroecology transitions to the scale of food systems and in different “real-world” contexts. Scaling local agroecology experiences of production, distribution, and consumption, which are often disconnected and/or disorganized, also reveals emergent research gaps. A critical review was performed in order to establish a transdisciplinary dialogue between both political agroecology and the literature on sustainable food systems. The objective was to build insights into how to advance towards Agroecology-based Local Agri-food Systems (ALAS). Our review unveils emergent questions such as: how to overcome the metabolic rift related to segregated activities along the food chain, how to feed cities sustainably, and how they should relate to the surrounding territories, which social subjects should drive such transitions, and which governance arrangements would be needed. The paper argues in favor of the re-construction of food metabolisms, territorial flows, plural subjects and (bottom-up) governance assemblages, placing life at the center of the food system and going beyond the rural–urban divide. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability and Political Agroecology)
Show Figures

Figure 1

Back to TopTop