08/08/2022
Each One, Teach One! Agroecological and political formation in peasant and farm worker organizations of North America
The forested hills and rolling pastureland of Vermont, in the Northeast United States, were the setting for La Vía Campesina North America’s most significant agroecological encounter of the year, as approximately 140 people participated in the Each One, Teach One! Gathering and Celebration of 30 Years of La Via Campesina.
The encounter, held from July 22 to 25, was hosted by Rural Vermont, a member organization of the National Family Farm Coalition, and the Center for Grassroots Organizing, a hub of collective, cooperative and solidarity farming economies and youth-centered movement building.
This event used popular education concepts and methods to explore, with the community, the possibility of new agroecology and movement building school in Vermont, as a part of the North American Schools of Agroecology (NASA), a system of agroecological schools in the North American region of La Vía Campesina. The event builds from the process that began with a Campesinx-a-Campesinx gathering in 2014 in Florida, that gave rise to around a dozen encounters of the People’s Agroecology Process in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico over the next six years, as well as the June 2022 meeting of agroecological educators in Oaxaca, Mexico.
Delegates from member organizations in Nicaragua, Ecuador, Chile, Puerto Rico, Mexico, and Canada led sessions that debated the internationalist character of agroecology and food sovereignty, as well as practical workshops on seed saving, medicinal plants and community-based food distribution models. Participants at the event were able to listen to first-hand accounts of the experiences of agroecological and political education at IALA Paulo Freire (Venezuela), IALA Ixim Ulew (Nicaragua), the Andean School of Formation (Ecuador) and IALA Sembradoras de Esperanzas (Chile), as well as the participation of LVC member organization ANAMURI in the construction of a new National Constitution in Chile. Organizers and leaders from the Farmworkers Association of Florida (FWAF-USA), the National Family Farm Coalition (NFFC-USA), Family Farm Defenders (FFD-USA), Rural Vermont, the National Union of Regional Autonomous Peasant Organizations (UNORCA-Mexico), National Farmers Union (NFU-Canada), and Union Paysanne (UP-Canada) rounded out the large LVC delegation to the encounter. Canadian vegetable farmer and LVC-NA Regional Co-Coordinator Joan Brady supported the delegation and provided a workshop on community-based farmer market models.
Local farmers and community leaders shared workshops on draft animals, the solidarity economy, herbalism, work brigades, printing, and participatory pizza-making.
Vermont is a small state in a traditionally agrarian region of the United States, with no major cities and a strong tradition of cooperatives in the dairy and maple sectors. Over the last 50 years, food cooperatives have become one of the main ways that people access food. There is also an emerging Black agrarian movement in Vermont, as organizers from other regions of the country have identified opportunities for long-term stability of a cooperative economy in the context of climate crisis. The Southeast African American Farmers Organic Network (SAAFON-USA) and Cooperation Jackson, based in Mississippi, comprehensively participated with LVC member organizations in planning and carrying out the encounter. Additional delegates traveled from the states of California, Texas, Florida, Georgia, Virginia, Washington DC, New York, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire to participate in the encounter.
The Vermont school, and the NASA system of agroecological schools in North America, join
a growing network of Via Campesina schools across the Americas. This work builds off of existing and successful models of agroecology and movement building schools in other regions of La Via Campesina, based on providing technical agroecological education, popular political education, and traditional ecological knowledge, while being rooted in the specific and unique needs of local communities.
