2 Peasant agriculture: the roots of the agroecological
proposal
2.1 The extent and significance of peasant agriculture
Most developing countries have a significant peasant population
embedded in hundreds of ethnic groups with a history
that can be traced back more than 10,000 years practicing
traditional agriculture. In Latin America, peasant production
units reach no less than 16 million small farmers contribute
with approximately 41% of the agricultural output for domestic
consumption, and are responsible for producing at
the regional level 51% of the maize, 77% of the beans, and
61% of the potatoes. In Brazil alone, there are about 4.8
million family farmers (about 85% of the total number of
farmers) that occupy 30% of the total agricultural land of the
country. Such family farms control about 33% of the area
sown to maize, 61% of that under beans, and 64% of that
planted to cassava, thus producing 84% of the total cassava
and 67% of all beans (Altieri 2004). Africa has approximately
33 million small farms, representing 80% of all farms
in the region. The majority of African farmers (many of them
are women) are smallholders, with two thirds of all farms
below 2 ha and 90%of farms below 10 ha.Most small farmers
practice “low-resource” agriculture producing the majority of
grains, almost all root, tuber and plantain crops, and the
majority of legumes consumed in the region. In Asia, China
alone accounts for almost half the world’s small farms (on 193
million ha), followed by India with 23%, and Indonesia,
Bangladesh, and Vietnam. Of the majority of more than 200
million rice farmers who live in Asia, few cultivate more than
2 ha of rice. China has probably 75 million rice farmers who
still practice methods similar to those used more than
1,000 years ago. Local cultivars, grown mostly on upland
ecosystems and/or under rain-fed conditions, make up the
bulk of the rice produced by Asian small farmers.
Emerging research documents that worldwide, smallholder
agroecological production contributes substantially to food
security, rural livelihoods, and local and even national economies,
yet these contributions have not been adequately appreciated.
There are 1.5 billion rural people living on 380 million
farms; 410 million practice plant gathering in forests and
savannas; 190 million pastoralists and well over 100 million
peasant fishers. At least 370 million of these are indigenous
peoples, occupying about 92 million farms. Together, these
peasants make up almost half the world’s peoples and they
grow in plots averaging 2 ha at least 70% of the world’s food,
implying that peasants feed most of the 712 million hungry
people that live in rural and remote areas and no less than one
third of the 238 million food insecure people that live in towns
and cities (ETC Group 2009). In fact, most of the food
consumed today in the world is grown from peasant-bred
seeds without industrial agrochemicals. Indigenous farmers
and peasants have bred 5,000 domesticated crop species and
have donated more than 1.9 million plant varieties to the
world’s gene banks (ETC Group 2009).
2.2 Agroecological features of smallholder farming systems
In many areas of the developing world, traditional farmers
have developed and/or inherited complex farming systems,
adapted to the local conditions that have helped them to
sustainably manage harsh environments and to meet their
subsistence needs, without depending on mechanization,
chemical fertilizers, pesticides, or other technologies of
modern agricultural science (Toledo et al. 1985). The persistence
of more than 3 million ha under traditional agriculture
in the form of raised fields, terraces, polycultures,
agroforestry systems, etc., document a successful indigenous
agricultural strategy and comprises a tribute to the creativity of
peasants throughout the planet (Wilken 1987).
Despite the myriad of agricultural systems, most traditional
agroecosystems exhibit five similar remarkable features
(Altieri 2004; Koohafkan and Altieri 2010):
1. high levels of biodiversity that play key roles in regulating
ecosystem functioning and also in providing ecosystem
services of local and global significance;
2. ingenious systems and technologies of landscape, land,
and water resource management and conservation that
can be used to improve management of agroecosystems;
3. diversified agricultural systems that contribute to local
and national food and livelihood security;
4. agroecosystems that exhibit resiliency and robustness to
cope with disturbance and change (human and environmental)
minimizing risk in the midst of variability;
5. agroecosystems nurtured by traditional knowledge systems
and farmers innovations and technologies;
6. sociocultural regulated by strong cultural values and collective
forms of social organization including customary
institutions for agroecological management, normative
arrangements for resource access and benefit sharing,
value systems, rituals, etc.
At the field level, one of the salient features of peasant
farming systems is their high degree of plant diversity in the form of polycultures and/or agroforestry patterns (Chang
1977). This strategy of minimizing risk by planting several
species and varieties of crops stabilizes yields over the long
term, promotes diet diversity, and maximizes returns even
with low levels of technology and limited resources. Such
biodiverse farms are endowed with nutrient-enriching
plants, insect predators, pollinators, nitrogen-fixing and
nitrogen-decomposing bacteria, and a variety of other
organisms that perform various beneficial ecological functions.
Traditional agroecosystems also contain populations
of variable and adapted landraces as well as wild and weedy
relatives of crops. Such genetic diversity provides security
to farmers against diseases, pests, droughts, and other
stresses and also allows farmers to exploit the full range of
agroecosystems existing in each region that display differences
in soil quality, altitude, slope, water availability, etc.
Genetic diversity heightens stability of the cropping systems
and enables farmers to exploit different microclimates and to
derive multiple nutritional and other uses from the genetic
variation among the species (Clawson 1985; Perfecto et al.
2009). Rural women have traditionally carried out much of
the biodiversity field conservation activities. Women are thus
a key source of knowledge about on-farm seed conservation,
cultivation, and local crop-based gastronomy in their
respective communities.
Despite the fact that market penetration, migration, population
growth, political reform, introduction of new technology,
and other factors have accelerated the pace of
change in rural areas, many of these traditional systems have
stood the test of time documenting a successful and resilient
indigenous agricultural strategy, representing models of sustainability
as they promote biodiversity, thrive without agrochemicals,
and sustain year-round yields in the midst of
socioeconomic upheavals and environmental variability.
Well into the first decade of the twenty-first century, there
are in the world millions of smallholders, family farmers,
and indigenous people practicing resource-conserving farming
which is a testament to the remarkable resiliency of
agroecosystems in the face of continuous environmental
and economic change, while contributing substantially to
food security at local, regional, and national levels (Toledo
and Barrera-Bassols 2009). For these reasons, most agroecologists
acknowledge that traditional agroecosytems have the
potential to bring solutions to many uncertainties facing humanity
in an era of climate change, energy and financial crisis.
The assemblage of traditional systems still existing in
many countries of Latin America, Asia, and Africa comprise
a globally important ingenious agricultural heritage that
reflects the value of the diversity of agricultural systems
adapted to different environments and tell a fascinating story
of the ability and ingenuity of humans to adjust and adapt to
the vagaries of a changing physical and material environment
from generation to generation and leave indelible
imprints of an abiding commitment to conservation and
respect for their natural patrimony. These systems comprise
a Neolithic legacy of considerable importance, yet modern
agriculture constantly threatens the sustainability of this
inheritance (Altieri and Koohafkan 2008).
2.3 The productivity, efficiency, and resiliency of peasant
agriculture
Proponents of the Green Revolution and other modernization
schemes assume progress and achieving development
in traditional agroecosystems as inevitably requiring the
replacement of local crop varieties for improved ones, and
that the economic and technological integration of traditional
farming systems into the global system is a positive step
that enables increased production, income, and commonly
well-being. Although the conventional wisdom is that small
family farms are backward and unproductive and that peasant
agriculture generally lacks the potential of producing
meaningful marketable surplus, it does ensure food security.
Many scientists wrongly believe that traditional systems do
not produce more because hand tools and draft animals put a
ceiling on productivity. Productivity may be low but the
causes appear to be more social, not technical. When the
subsistence farmer succeeds in providing food, there is no
pressure to innovate or to enhance yields (Rosset 1999;
Altieri 2002).