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Cultivando Nacion: Alternative Agri-culture in Post María Puerto Rico

A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the

Requirements of the Renée Crown University Honors Program at

Syracuse University

Deborah Orieta

Candidate for Bachelor of Arts

and Renée Crown University Honors

Spring 2020

Honors Thesis in Geography and Food Studies

Thesis Advisor: _______________________

Dr. Thomas Perreault, Geography Department Chair

Thesis Reader: _______________________

Dr. Rick Welsh, Falk Endowed Professor

Honors Director: _______________________

Dr. Danielle Smith, Director

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© (Deborah Orieta)

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Abstract

This thesis project examines the food sovereignty movement in Puerto Rico. By employing a

lens that considers colonization, resilience and climate, it seeks to understand the specific ways

in which the food sovereignty movement on the island organizes itself to build a more

sustainable food system in response to the current food crisis. I employ a framework of

Producers and promoters, arguing that each plays an important role in the proliferation of the

movement.

Most of my research is based on field work carried out through the summer of 2019. An

IRB approved set of interview questions was designed to discern how farmers and other food

sovereignty advocated fared after hurricane María in 2017. By combining interview results with

media sources, I arrive at the conclusion that agroecological systems proposed by the food

sovereignty movement are more resilient to extreme weather events, and better able to operate

outside of neoliberal framework, thus bolstering environmental and social resilience.

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Executive Summary

In 2017, two hurricanes, Irma and María, ravaged the island of Puerto Rico. They

disrupted all essential services, destroyed roads, and wiped out 80% of the island’s agriculture.

Already, Puerto Rico was facing a food crisis: over 43% of the population was on food stamps,

and the island depended on foreign imports to meet its food needs. To say these natural disasters

were a catastrophe is an understatement. In their wake, however, a series of news articles

emerged about the agricultural renaissance on the island and spoke specifically about a group of

activists that was using “solidarity brigades” to help farmers around the island rebuild.

This thesis explores this phenomenon. Specifically, it looks at the food sovereignty

movement on the island and attempts to understand how its proponents mobilize themselves to

build a more resilient food system in Puerto Rico. With the hurricane as a departure, the thesis

also interrogates the colonial context that set the island on a course to food import dependence,

the need for alternatives in the face of climate change, and the role of resilience.

Food Sovereignty is the idea that people have a right to determine what food they

produce and how, in keeping with environmental sustainability. In the context of Puerto Rico, I

argue that food sovereignty advocates use this discourse to resist a history of colonization. They

use agroecology, which combines scientific and traditional knowledge to create agricultural

systems that emulate natural ecosystem cycles, to establish farms that are more resilient to

climate change impacts. In doing so, they also honor traditional foodways, patterns relating to

the consumption and production of food. Because agroecology tries to decrease the use of

external inputs, this form of agriculture also reduces system dependence on seeds, fertilizers and

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pesticides that must be imported. Overall, the food sovereignty movement advances a type of

agriculture that is more sustainable and socially conscious.

As part of my research, I carried out field visits over the summer of 2019. I spent a month

in Puerto Rico visiting farmers and other food sovereignty activists, and conducted structured

interviews. I asked questions about their experience with the hurricane, their recovery, their

views on decolonization and food sovereignty, and how they imagined the future of Puerto Rico.

I also helped farmers in their day labor and participated in workshops where I learned about

agroecological practices.

Overall, I found that the work that the food sovereignty movement does on the island can

be thought of through a “promoters and producers” framework. Within this framework,

promoters are educators, activists, grant writers and others who amplify the message of food

sovereignty and agroecology. Producers are farmers who engage in agroecology and subscribe to

food sovereignty ideals, including but not limited to a resistance or critique of neoliberalism as

the be all and end all of development. I found that the techniques that agroecological farmers

employ allowed them to bounce back from the hurricanes faster than their neighbors who

practice conventional agriculture. Additionally, most promoters and producers engage with other

social movements across the island and are involved in projects where they can build networks

of solidarity.

This work is important and timely because the literature on alternative food movements

in Puerto Rico is scarce. There is meager government support for alternative agriculture, which

increases the island’s dependence on outside food. In the face of climate change, this is doubly

threatening, because natural disasters will continue to disrupt the production and distribution of

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food, putting at risk the lives of countless people on the island. As such, attention should be

given to the relevance of decentralized modes of production and community led projects.

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Acknowledgements

This thesis is made possible by community. It is because of the work, love and passion of

communities that I have learned to get my hands dirty, to ask, to organize, and above all, to keep

writing. I would like to thank, first and with eternal gratitude, my thesis advisor Dr. Thomas A.

Perreault, for his unceasing patience, guidance and requests to “take care.” I would also like to

thank my mother, who encourages me daily to give it my best, and who reminded me that from

the disaster, “we became resilient.” Thank you for teaching me that is my legacy. Thank you to

the food studies department, who opened my eyes to the truths we engage in daily, and thank you

to Edwin Rivera, who taught me how to use a machete and feel powerful.

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Dedication

This thesis is dedicated to the memory of Evan Weissman who, through his work and guidance

as a mentor and professor, taught me to interrogate what lay beneath the surface and to follow

through with curiosity and passion. He believed in justice, and in ameliorating the impact of the

paradoxes of our food system through courageous and honest work.

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Table of Contents

Abstract…………………………………………...……………….………….. iv

Executive Summary………………………….……..…………….………….. v

Acknowledgements….……………………….…….…………….…………… viii

Dedication…………………………………………………………………..… ix

Chapter 1: Introduction …………………………………………………. 1

Developing a conceptual framework………………………………… 6

Food Sovereignty and Agroecology…………………..……… 6

Resilience and Climate Change…………………………….... 8

(De)Colonization and Food Sovereignty…………………...... 9

Methodology and Paper Structure…………………………….……. 12

Chapter 2: Histocial Overview…………………………………………..….. 15

Chapter 3: Empirical Section……………………………………..………… 27

Leveraging Old Technologies into the Future……………………… 27

The Birth of a Movement: Organizations that Preceded Boricuá.. 32

Production…………………………………………………………… 36

Water……………………………………………………….… 36

Soil………………………………………………………....…. 40

Plants and Seeds…………………………………………....... 45

Integrated Pest management……………………………...... 49

Other Attempts at sustainability………………………….... 50

Promotion……………………………………………………………. 52

Produccion y Promocion: On-site education……………… 52

Making Agroecology Viable: Material Resources………… 57

Resilience…………………………………………………………….. 64

Resilience and Decolonization……………………….……… 64

Discussion……………………………………………………………. 70

Chapter 4: Conclusion………………………………………………….….. 74

Intersections of Action and Visibility …………………………….. 75

Future Directions…………………………………………………… 81

Works Cited.……………………………………………………..…………. 84

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Chapter 1: Introduction

In September 2017, two back-to-back hurricanes bulldozed through Puerto Rico. Irma,

the first of these, was a warning sign, and when María (the second) hit, the island was thrust into

complete chaos. María resulted in massive flooding, power and water outages, an island-wide

cellular dead zone, and road collapses everywhere. In the aftermath of the hurricane, as people

tried (and often failed) to connect with their loved ones and assess the damage dealt to their

homes and communities, it became evident that basic survival would be a struggle for many.

As is their mandate when catastrophe strikes a US territory, the Federal Emergency

Management Administration (FEMA) stepped in to provide emergency relief. Distributing

resources to where they were most needed proved incredibly difficult because of infrastructural

collapse. Food quickly became scarce. In supermarkets and distribution centers, it was running

low. Food that came from the US was held up at the ports, and rarely made it to the center of the

island. Given that Puerto Rico imported over 85% of its food before the hurricane (Acevedo,

2018) the failure in distribution represented a real blow to food security, which was already

precarious. Before the hurricane, over 43% of the population was on the island’s nutritional

assistance program (NAP, for its Spanish acronym) (Stein, 2019). The farms around the island

that were closer to places in need of food were in dire condition; the hurricane wiped out over

80% of the island’s slim agricultural production (Robles & Ferre-Sadurni, 2017). Carmen Yulin,

the mayor of San Juan, said that during and after the hurricane, Puerto Rico only had enough

food stocks to last a week (Sammon, 2017).

Amid the chaos, there were some silver linings: communities came together to help clean

up and rebuild, and people got to re-meet their neighbors. Farms that did not experience

complete losses became hubs of food distribution, especially if they had crops of root vegetables

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or had the foresight to pull in the harvest before the storm (Ayala, 2017). All over the island,

people who were able to organized themselves in brigades to deliver essential supplies to the

center of the island. There was a sense of camaraderie, both within the island and among

diaspora communities (Serrano Garcia, 2020). Popular media in the US picked up on this,

especially with regards to coverage of the food situation. Suddenly, news outlets were exploding

with yin and yang stories about the loss to agriculture on the one hand and the resilience and

“food revolution” that emerged on the other.

Agroecological approaches were highlighted in these articles, as were solidarity brigades,

farm aid funds, diaspora-based groups, and food sovereignty networks. It seemed that

everywhere the government failed, community organizations were taking matters into their own

hands. Carmen Yulin, once more, comments on the situation, saying, “I hate to say anything

positive about María. But what the hurricane did was force us to look at the realities of life here

and how our dependency on the outside weakens our ability to ensure our people are taken care

of. María made it evident that we need agricultural sovereignty” (Sammon, 2017). Yulin’s

statement is a loaded one, and speaks to a history of colonization, dependency, and the ensuing

structural inequalities and failings that contextualize life in Puerto Rico. Hurricane María did

strike a blow to the island, but like many natural disasters, it also worked to exacerbate already

existing issues that were not being adequately dealt with.

The extent of these issues is beyond the scope of this thesis, but some that have a direct

bearing on the trajectory of agriculture are relevant and inform how responses have been

leveraged on the island. Though historically, agriculture was the primary industry in Puerto Rico

due to an export-based market of sugar, coffee and tobacco, agriculture in Puerto Rico has

experienced a steady decline since the 1940’s. At this point, the government turned to an

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industrialization-based development model and foreign capital to stimulate the economy. Land

dedicated to staple crops went from approximately 340 thousand acres in the 1940’s to just under

40 thousand at its lowest point in the 1970’s (Fig. 1). In terms of GDP, agriculture constituted

around 46% in 1940 (Rivera, 2020), a number which declined sharply thereafter. In 1960,

agriculture represented just under 10% of GDP, and in 2018 agriculture in Puerto Rico accounted

for less than 1% of the island’s GDP (World Bank, 2019). I will explore the circumstances

surrounding the loss of agriculture later in this thesis, but these statistics work to illustrate the

state of agriculture at the time of the hurricanes in 2017. However, says Carlos Flores Ortega,

Puerto Rico’s secretary to the Department of Agriculture, the island had been experiencing 3-5

percent increases in the agricultural sector over the years leading up to the hurricanes (Robles &

Sadurni, 2017). This increase was due to a “renaissance” led by young farmers as a response to

the island’s recession, among other things. Farm incomes had grown by 25 percent, and the

amount of land in cultivation by 50% (Acevedo, 2018).

This “renaissance” (Coto, 2016) had garnered media attention before the hurricane, to

the extent that it was referred to as a “food revolution” (Bayne, 2018). Actors responded to a lack

of local food, and the government’s insufficient attention to parts of the agriculture sector that

were not invested in big money (such as seed companies). They tried to garner visibility for local

food on the island through community supported agriculture, or farm shares, farmers markets,

fairs, and workshops (Ayala, 2017; Bayne, 2018). Their actions were increasingly scrutinized in

articles that spoke about food sovereignty, resilience, agroecology, and solidarity networks.

These terms, and the actors with them, became amplified after the storm, as a means to highlight

hope amidst disaster stories. What the media captured was not all rhetoric, though: the hurricane

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put the networks of solidarity and the agricultural practices in which farmers engaged to the test,

and demonstrated the resilience intrinsic in them.

Throughout this thesis, I will attempt to build a deeper understanding of these processes

as they unfold in the context of Puerto Rico. To do so, however, demands a recognition of the

very contexts they respond to: colonization, dependency, and climate change. As such, I depart

from the premise that Puerto Rico has a “food crisis” characterized by deep food insecurity, and

that addressing the crisis demands a change in paradigm with regards to how food is

conceptualized and dealt with on the island. Ultimately, for food systems to be sustainable in

Puerto Rico, they must be self-sufficient and more resilient to extreme climate events. The food

sovereignty movement provides an alternative to conventional food production and distribution

systems currently in place. It advocates for self-determination of foodways and environmental

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wellbeing. The hurricanes of 2017 provide an interesting context in which to study the strategies,

practices and successes of the food sovereignty movement in Puerto Rico. They test the

resilience of agricultural techniques employed by agroecological farmers who are part of the

movement and provide an indicator of how these might fare in the face of other extreme climatic

events. I argue that the food sovereignty movement in Puerto Rico is capable of establishing a

model of diversified agriculture that is more resilient to climate change, and that it is organized

in a way that actively challenges policies and structures of power that have a foundation in

colonialism.

There is ample literature on the history of food in Puerto Rico, especially as agriculture

once represented the bulk of economic activity on the Island. I will review relevant aspects of

that history more in-depth as context to the current situation. There is pre-hurricane literature on

agriculture in Puerto Rico that does acknowledge the colonial context and attempts to frame and

analyze the food sovereignty movement with regards to it (Guptil, 2008). After the hurricane, a

few articles emerged that surveyed the resilience of agroecological systems to climate change

(McCune, et al. 2019; Holladay, 2019). McCune et al. (2019) provide a comparison between

alternative agricultural practices (like agroecology) and conventional or industrial agriculture,

which can aid in building a case on which to legitimize the food revolution that is taking place.

Throughout this thesis, I build on this existing literature, and attempt to think explicitly about

how food sovereignty, resilience, climate change and (de)colonization can be used as

frameworks to both understand the direction of agriculture in Puerto Rico and bolster it.

Ultimately, I want to know how the Food Sovereignty movement is addressing the threat

of climate change and tackling the food crisis on the island in a post-María context. I hypothesize

that agroecology, as a tool, and Food Sovereignty, as a discourse, can be effective instruments in

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building more resilient food systems in Puerto Rico. In doing this, I hope to go beyond just the

material agroecological practices and consider the actors of the movement and the specific

strategies they use to build effective networks that look at food as a system. I propose that the

specific projects, led by different stakeholders, can be thought of through a “promoters and

producers” framework. In it, the producers are engaging in agricultural practices and the

promoters do work meant to educate people outside the movement, generate resources for

farmers, provide training, and lead policy and advocacy campaigns.

Developing a conceptual framework:

To really understand the significance of the food sovereignty movement in Puerto Rico, it

is necessary to quickly examine some key terms. Food Sovereignty, (de)colonization, resilience,

and climate change form the impetus for this project, and are the different elements at play

throughout this thesis. This section defines these terms and their significance in the context of

Puerto Rico.

Food Sovereignty and Agroecology

Food sovereignty, as both a discourse and a movement, emerged in 1996 through La Via

Campesina, a non-profit, international organization advocating for the rights of peasants, landless

workers, women and indigenous nations (Wittman, et al., 2010). At its most basic, food

sovereignty advocates for “the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food

produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own

food and agriculture systems” (Nyelani, 2007; Desmarais, 2008 ). Though the term was coined in

1996, it was articulated formally through the Nyéléni Declaration in 2007, where over 500

proponents gathered to articulate its practical implications, and to strategize on how to give food

sovereignty purchase in the international policy arena. From the start, food sovereignty was

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conceived of as a movement that had a political agenda, one based on “consensus building and

democratic choice” (Agarwal, 2014, p. 1). As such, its proponents are not just concerned with

the work that happens on the farm but with the policies and structures through which local

agriculture is protected or challenged.

Food sovereignty proposes an alternative that goes beyond the rhetoric of “food

security,” articulated in the 1996 World Food Forum, which postulates that food security will be

achieved “when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient,

safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and

healthy life” (Disabled World, 2015; FAO, 2001, Glossary). For food sovereignty advocates,

food security rhetoric is “proto-hegemonic” (that is, it works within hegemonic institutions;

Hopma & Woods, 2014) and often fails to address the structural inequalities that cause food

insecurity in the first place (Wittman, et al., 2010). It also fails to address the economic,

environmental and social failings of the conventional food system, which is currently predicated

on a neo-liberal, for-profit model that disregards the livelihoods and knowledge of agricultural

workers and the consequences of resource-intensive farming.

In rejecting food security rhetoric, food sovereignty advocates for modes of feeding the

world that do not depend on the commoditization of food through conventional markets. They

seek the inclusion of women in decision making, the re-valuing of traditional, local knowledge,

and environmental conservation and rehabilitation. Advocates advance the cause of food

sovereignty on different fronts, including policy, education, community empowerment, and

directly tackling some of the problems that food security tries and fails to address. Among some

of the specific material practices that exist under the food sovereignty umbrella, agroecology is

very prominent.

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Agroecology is an agricultural approach that marries traditional, local knowledge with

agricultural science (Gliessman, 2007). However, as opposed to other approaches that have been

used to address food production and climate change (like climate smart agriculture), agroecology

places great emphasis on the ties between production, environmental sustainability, and social

welfare. Agroecology fits well within the framework of food sovereignty because, at its most

authentic, it works to build knowledge and resource networks between farmers and communities.

In doing so, agroecology tries to safeguard the livelihood of rural people and decrease

dependency on external inputs.

Agroecology is preferred by food sovereignty activists because it provides an alternative

to the privatization of genetic and productive resources by big corporations, such as the case of

hybrid seeds and chemical fertilizers (Altieri, 2017; Altieri & Toledo, 2011). It has been heavily

tied to the resilience of small-scale, peasant farming systems through increasing biodiversity and

managing soil health and water (Altieri, 2017).

Resilience and Climate change

Resilience is defined as the ability of a community or individual to bounce back after a

disaster, or for ecosystems to maintain their balance during and after an external shock (Adger,

2000). Talk of resilience is increasingly relevant in discussions about agricultural systems,

especially as the effects of climate change become more significant. Climate change is tied to

more extreme and frequent weather events, shifting climates, water crises, loss of biodiversity,

among others (IPCC, 2019). A changing climate will also shift pest patterns, introducing pests to

areas and crops that have little experience in dealing with them (Altieri, et al., 2015). Current

agricultural systems, especially big monocrops that depend on fertilizer and other inputs for good

yields, will face trouble adapting to these changing conditions. The effects of climate change are

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already being felt by farmers all over the world, and though hurricane María cannot be

individually attributed to climate change, other hurricanes like it will become more frequent in

the future.

Conventional agricultural systems are increasingly regarded as vulnerable (Altieri, et al.,

2015). Because these depend on large monocrops and fertilizer use, they both decrease genetic

diversity and directly contribute to the emission of green-house gases. Genetic diversity is

important both locally and worldwide, because it provides a pool of genetic material that can be

used to breed plants that are better adapted to changing conditions, and thus more resilient to

stress. Conventional agricultural systems are also tied to higher rates of soil erosion and water,

leading to land degradation (Tilman, et al., 2002).

Though different approaches to reduce vulnerability to climate change and increase

resilience exist, agroecology is one with a very long history. It is based on traditional agricultural

practices, which have been fine tuned for centuries to deal with extreme conditions in local

contexts (Altieri, et al, 2015). According to scholars like Miguel Altieri, agroecology is forming

the basis for an ‘agrarian revolution’ and, as a practice, it directly tackles many of the

consequences of climate change. The use of agroecology, however, also increases resilience by

addressing the social dimensions of vulnerability: farmer dependence on external inputs and

volatile markets. From Altieri and Toledo (2011):

“Technological approaches emphasizing diversity, synergy, recycling and integration,

and social processes that value community involvement, point to the fact that human

resource development is the cornerstone of any strategy aimed at increasing options for

rural people and especially resource-poor farmers” (p. 588)

This latter part is essential for the context of Puerto Rico, where a history of colonization

has created conditions that favor the development of these resource intensive crops with low

genetic diversity. To increase resilience in the face of climate change and ensure the survival of

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peasant farmers across the island, the food sovereignty movement must also tackle the island’s

colonial history and ensuing foreign dependency.

(De)Colonization and Food Sovereignty

Puerto Rico’s history has made it a playground for rich investors and corporate interests

(Klein, 2018). Many of the problems that plague the island are born from a history of external

control over the island. There is a vast and rich literature on dependency theory and the effects of

imposed development in Latin America, from which Puerto Rico is not exempt. This history has

defined the course of agricultural development on the island, which will be reviewed later in this

thesis. Although technically Puerto Rico is no longer a colony, the legacy of colonialism is still

felt. The island was granted Commonwealth status in 1953, when it was declared a Freely

Associated Territory (or Estado Libre Asociado, ELA, in Spanish) through Law 600 and allowed

to create its own constitution. However, unlike the title of commonwealth adopted by other US

states like Massachusetts, for Puerto Rico this status means that though they are free to govern

themselves, they are not allowed to vote in US presidential elections or have voting

representatives in either Senate or Congress. Federal policies still affect how Puerto Rico is

managed, how funds are allocated, and the isldand’s capacity to trade with other countries on its

own terms. Social movements, currently, must respond to these social structures if they wish to

build a culture, community, and economy that operates according to their own sovereignty

(Serrano-Garcia, 2020).

Food Sovereignty, as a movement, does precisely this. It responds to diverse forms of

domination and has been explicitly used by different communities as a tool for decolonization.

Sam Grey and Raj Patel, for example, have used food sovereignty as a tool to analyze Indigenous

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resistance in Latin America, and claim that “food sovereignty is the continuation of anti-colonial

struggles in ostensibly post-colonial contexts.” (2014, p.433). Though formal decolonization

projects were pushed by the United Nations after World War II, and many countries and

territories that were formally colonized were granted independence or assimilated by their

colonial powers, the legacy of colonialism remains in the ways in which dominant institutions

and hegemonic governments exert their power over communities all over the world. This is

sometimes reffered to as coloniality (Serrano-Garcia, 2020), the “long standing patterns of power

that result from colonialism” (Maldonado‐Torres, 2007, p.243). Indigenous communities who

have historically resisted colonization continue to articulate their struggle through the discourse

of decolonization as a nod to this history of oppression (Grey & Patel, 2014). Such a discourse is

fitting, too, given how their communities have been disrupted and robbed of their lands.

Often, advocates of food sovereignty articulate their projects in ways that are

oppositional to the values of neoliberalism, wherein profit, yield, and exploitation are the norm

(Wittman, et al., 2010). Istead, proponents demand a rights-based approach that substitutes

exploitation with sustainability and environmental stewardship. In articulating a right to food,

advocates call on the need to extend land tenure to small-scale and peasant farmers, regulations

to big corporations that devalue local food production, and food systems that are geared towards

local production to meet the food needs of he most vulnerable (Wittman, et al., 2010). Again,

decolonization comes into play through the ways in which these claims resist both material and

ideological domination. As Hoover (2017) notes in “You can’t say you’re sovereign if you can’t

feed yourself,” food is and has always been an important part of cultural heritage. As such, when

traditional foodways are usurped either through agricultural domination, or through import

substitution and food aid regimes, these impositions represent a distinct form of domination.

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Reclaiming access to healthy but also culturally appropriate food is key for food sovereignty

advocates (Hoover, 2017).

In Puerto Rico, this context is incredibly relevant. Colonial domination throughout the

Spanish Colonial period completely transformed the indigenous foodways present on the island,

replacing them with export-oriented agriculture that put people’s sustenance at risk. US control

maintained this export-oriented economic model for its early years of domination, and as Puerto

Rico lost its strategic agricultural position on the world stage, agricultural development still

failed to truly account for the preservation of traditional, indigenous foodways. Instead, the

island became a captive market for US food commodities rhetorically spearheaded by the need to

improve the island’s diet (Gonzalez, 2016). As such, the food movements on the island, food

sovereignty in particular, are mindful of trying to re-establish a Puerto Rican agriculture that tries

to reclaim traditional foods like viandas, legumes, starches and tropical fruits and vegetables.

Methodology and thesis structure:

In order to develop my argument, I use a mix of existing literature, publicly available

data, personal interviews, and surveys. The literature provides a basis to understand the history

of agricultural development in Puerto Rico, as well as the scholarly perspectives on the impact

history has had on social processes. Personal interviews and surveys make up the bulk of the

empirical section and allow me to see why and how different actors are currently engaging in this

“food revolution.” Through the interviews, I am able to glean exactly what kind of processes

farmers and educators respond to, and what their motivations and visions are going forward. That

is, the interviews and surveys give me insight into how actors are currently “building nation” on

the island through the food movement.

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I conducted in-person interviews throughout the summer of 2019. To the extent possible,

I tried to coordinate these so I would be able to both visit and help out on the farms or projects.

However, protests against the government broke out in the middle of the interview timeframe, so

I was unable to connect with many of the farmers I wanted to.

In addition to the interviews, observational data also plays a big role in my understanding

of the situation in Puerto Rico. Because I was raised on the island and my family still lives there,

I have a particular perspective and personal stake in how the post-hurricane recovery unfolded.

Over the summer fieldwork, the farm visits themselves also informed a lot of this project: I got to

observe agroecological practices in action, and visit other, non-agroecological projects. To

supplement my understanding of agroecological practices and how farmers understand them on

the island, I also took an agroecology and permaculture workshop at Plenitud, a farm in the town

of Las Marías. The workshop gave me unique insight into how agroecological techniques are

implemented in the context of Puerto Rico, and also allowed me to connect with a lot of other

prospective farmers who shared their motivations and dreams for the future of agriculture on the

island. All of these data points contribute to the development of my empirical argument in the

sections that follow.

That said, the thesis will try to follow a linear timeline. The following chapter will

provide an overview of the agricultural and development history of Puerto Rico. It will touch on

major historical processes and pieces of legislation that still affect trade on the island to this day.

Among these, the Jones Law and “Operation Bootstrap” in the 1950’s are of particular

importance. The chapter leads into the emergence of the food sovereignty movement and the

ways it was adopted in Puerto Rico by Organización Boricuá de Agricultura Agro-ecológica, the

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longest standing “food sovereignty” organization in Puerto Rico, which is also directly affiliated

with La Vía Campesina.

After the historical contextualization, Chapter 3 reviews current aspects of the food

sovereignty movement on the island. This chapter is based on field work carried out in the

summer of 2019. It is divided into three major topics. Production and promotion, the first two,

make up the bulk of this chapter. I argue that this is the framework through which activists

organize and spread awareness of agroecology in Puerto Rico. Production and promotion,

however, feed directly into the third topic, which focuses on resilience. Here I will argue that, not

only does “production and promotion” serve as a framework to organize agroecology and food

sovereignty, but that these go hand in hand in building a local food system that is resilient at its

core.

Finally, the thesis will end with a brief discussion, conclusion, and future directions.

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Chapter II

Providing a context for the present, a historical retelling of food system changes in Puerto

Rico

This chapter engages with the historical shifts in agricultural development in the island of

Puerto Rico. The theoretical framework that underscores this work seeks to understand the

current problems the island is facing in order to really grasp the importance of the solutions

posited by the food sovereignty movement. Understanding the food crisis, however, requires a

general understanding of the history of Puerto Rico, especially with regards to certain policies

and economic projects, and the ways these affected agriculture. The food sovereignty movement,

beyond reclaiming local food landscapes, critically engages the legacy of colonialism that so

many third world countries must contend with. Throughout this chapter, which summarizes key

points from the end of the Spanish colonial period through the late 1900’s, some of these

colonial legacies are made clear. First, I give a broad-stroked review of the food crisis on the

island. Then I explore the ways in which colonial, export-oriented agriculture undermined

subsistence agriculture and local production. I explore specific policies in the US colonial period

that cemented the island’s import dependency and which, ultimately, culminated in the almost-

complete abandonment of agriculture as a productive economic sector.

Of particular note are the ways in which status and power are leveraged by political elites

to the detriment of rural farmers, farmworkers, and communities in general. To this day, the US

government keeps Puerto Rico subordinate, claiming the island as a territory but denying its

residents, who hold US citizenship, the right to vote in presidential elections or a voting

representative in either Congress or the Senate. Currently, the island is over $72 billion in debt,

16

and a Financial Management and Oversight Board, assigned by the Federal government to

oversee the management of the financial crisis, aims to pay back the debts instead of prioritizing

critical infrastructure and deteriorating social services (Klein, 2018). This move, like many

others, is exemplary of the ways in which policy decisions are taken to prioritize the interests of

the US without truly taking into account the needs of Puerto Rico’s population. It is part, but not

the whole explanation, for why hurricanes Irma and María dealt the island such a blow, and why

the “recovery” was so slow and inadequate.

Map of Puerto Rico, for reference.

When I think about Puerto Rico having a “broken food system,” the first thing that comes

to mind is a series of statistics. About 85% of the food consumed in Puerto Rico is imported, per

pre-hurricane numbers. The cost of food on the island is 12% more than on the mainland US due

to shipping costs (Serrano-Ocasio, 2018). More than 43% of the island’s population was on food

stamps before the hurricane (Stein, 2019). Statistics presented in isolation, however, only tell us

so much about a situation. They’re biased according to who is measuring and how, and always,

17

there is information that is left out or unaccounted. Numbers alone do not reflect the lived

experience of people in the island.

The primary nexus for consumption is in supermarkets, which are supplied through

direct imports from the United States at reduced cost to the companies. Most of the food is

processed, because it is easier to ship. Of the fresh food on the island, and especially with regards

to “traditional” food groups like root vegetables or viandas, most comes from neighboring

Caribbean islands, because it is cheaper to produce food offshore than to buy from local

suppliers who do not possess the same economies of scale (Carro-Figueroa, 2002). This list is

just a snippet of the problem, and greatly ignores the environmental consequences of the food

production that happens on the island, but it serves as a starting point from which to deconstruct

the various forces that have shaped the island’s food landscape.

The import dependence, lack of food access (due to distance or home economics), and the

loss of traditional crops, among other problems with the Puerto Rican food system, are a direct

consequence of years of mismanagement, policy decisions, public health interventions and failed

development projects (Gonzalez, 2016). All of these develop in the shadow of a colonial regime

that was based on the exploitation of native peoples and the rupture with traditional means of

subsistence. Like in most of the third world, Puerto Rico’s development has largely been

determined by external forces, in part through the development projects imposed by the Global

North onto the Global South. Forced industrialization and neoliberalization of the island’s

economy had hugely detrimental effects for the majority of the population, but especially rural

families who were forced to emigrate into cities to seek alternative work (Carro-Figueroa, 2002;

Dietz, 1986). Many of these families ended up at the mercy of the state, being supported through

food and housing assistance programs, and/or in coastal slums— the ills of which are well-

18

documented in Puerto Rican literature. Such processes undermine community resilience and

networks of solidarity and sharing, and move everyone towards dependency. In this chapter I

will provide a brief overview of the different processes and major policies that have shaped the

Puerto Rican food landscape, mindful always of the fact that both numbers and narratives are

deliberately chosen to highlight the “achievements” of some to the detriment of others.

When thinking about policy in Puerto Rico, especially from within the government, it is

easy to point fingers first at the colonial forces (i.e. Spain and the United States, but also the

Global-North-led globalization project) that have robbed the citizenry of its agency, and second

at the local government, which has consistently acted in favor of US interests. Laws such as the

Foraker Act (1900), the Jones-Shaforth Act (1917), the Merchant Marine Act (1920), Law 600

(or PL 81-600) and others have greatly limited the island’s autonomy, but neither they nor their

consequences emerged in a vacuum. Puerto Rico’s colonial history set the course for its

agricultural development, which was then influenced by public health practitioners, foreign

policy, development projects and various attempts at remedying the social ills of the population

without addressing the core problems surrounding food acquisition and production.

19

Map showing the primary agricultural production zones in Puerto Rico. Brown represents Coffee, green is sugar,

yellow is tobacco. (Wilson & Geological Survey, 1899)

Puerto Rico’s export-led agricultural model started as soon as it became a colony. The

island was first colonized by the Spanish in the late 1400’s. During the Spanish regime, from the

1500's through the 1800’s, colonizers reorganized agriculture on the island from native or

indigenous subsistence agriculture to exploitative, export-oriented monocultures (Dietz, 1986).

Puerto Rico’s agricultural landscape was organized into sugar, tobacco and coffee. Sugar

dominated the southern coasts, while coffee and tobacco thrived in the central highlands. For the

most part, sugar was produced in haciendas and managed by colonos, landowners who would

rent out parcels to rural families in exchange for labor and stipend, or who would employ

agregados, landless workers who depended on subsistence agriculture (Serrano-Ocasio, 2018).

In the early 1800’s, due to the collapse of the neighboring sugar market in Sant-Domingue, sugar

production in Puerto Rico tripled. A lot of the extra labor was taken up by African slaves, who

mostly produced cane for markets in the US (Torres, 2016). Peak cane production during this

period happened in 1840, with a total of 10,000 tons of processed sugar destined for export

(Aguilu, 2014)

20

Despite massive production, in 1849, the Spanish colonial government adopted a new

labor system to deal with widespread unemployment from a crash in the sugar market (Pico,

2008). Everyone who was of age (between 16 and 60) and able bodied was to work in the sugar

plantations and carry a libreta, a notebook that recorded their work hours (Aguilu, 2014; Pico,

2008). If caught without a libreta or violating the rules of employment, workers could be jailed.

In this context, workers were increasingly separated from their access to land for subsistence

farming, and were forced to satisfy their food needs at their plantation or hacienda’s tienda de

raya (company store), where they would trade vouchers in exchange for mostly imported goods.

In this matter, they engaged in a circular economy wherein their wages were returned to their

employers (Aguilu, 2014).

By the end of the 1870’s, demand for coffee increased internationally, and so there was a

shift in the agricultural industry, with coffee production surpassing sugar. The change resulted in

shifts in the geographic movement of people. Instead of remaining on the coast, many workers

moved or migrated seasonally to the mountainous regions of Adjuntas, Las Marías, Maricao,

Utuado, Lares, and Yauco, where coffee estates were concentrated (Grupo Editorial EPRL,

2014).

Throughout these shifts in economic activity, the island experienced different waves of

civil unrest. Direct Spanish domination decreased, but the exploitation of workers by local

Spanish elites was unfavorable for the bulk of the population. In 1868, fed up with the colonial

condition, independentistas orchestrated an uprising in Lares and tried to demand independence

for the island in what came to be called El Grito de Lares (The Lares Uprising) (Pico, 2008).

This was the first and only significant attempt at decolonization on the island and, though

21

unsuccessful, the desire for autonomy that engendered it continued to make itself felt in

segments of the population into the present.

In 1898, the Spanish-American war resulted in a change of colonial status for the island

(Serrano Ocasio, 2018). Spain lost its control over its Carribean colonies, and Puerto Rico was

invaded by the US. The US presence on the island was not new, however. By 1898, the island

already had a close economic relationship with the new mainland. Most of the sugar exports

from the island were absorbed by the US, as was coffee. Puerto Rico’s economy under Spain was

greatly affected by US tariffs on Puerto Rican imports over the years, and so in a way the local

agriculture was subject to the ebbs and flows of US economic policy and demand for cash crops.

Throughout the initial years of US rule much of the insular economy was shifted back to

sugar, though coffee and tobacco maintained their fair share of cropland. Most of the land was

concentrated back into the hands of hacendados (hacienda owners) who owned both the land and

the means of processing the raw material into market-ready commodities. Most of the workers in

the haciendas were landless laborers, much like the agregados but without the legal requirements

of the libreta system seen under spanish colonial rule. However, because sugarcane is very

seasonal in nature, poverty in the countryside continued to rise. Slowly, the agricultural economy

of the Island would shift, but not before rural farmers became almost destitute and wholly

dependent on the government for their means of survival.

In 1917, the US government passed the Jones-Shafroth Act, formalizing Puerto Rico’s

relationship to the United States. The Jones-Shafroth Act spelled out the terms of US citizenship

for people in Puerto Rico, which effectively allowed young, able bodied men to be drafted into

the First World War as part of US Troops. Importantly for this narrative, however, the Jones Law

22

determined that Puerto Rican bonds would be triple tax exempt, that is, from federal, state and

local taxes, even if the bond holder was not local. The idea behind the exemption was that

foreign capital would more freely flow between municipalities in Puerto Rico and between the

US mainland and the Island, effectively stimulating the economy and allowing for the

establishment of foreign companies in the years to come (Yglesias, 2017).

In the 1920’s, a second Jones Law, this time the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, was

enacted. The Merchant Marine Act determined that all goods carried between US ports had to be

shipped in US-Made vessels (History.com Editors, 2017). The idea behind it was to safeguard

trade from external tampering, as well as to ensure the existence of a US shipbuilding industry.

In practice, however, the Jones law raised the cost of food in Puerto Rico, because Jones-law

compliant ships are more expensive to operate, and because the law, which also sets restrictions

on which ships may traverse coastal waters (Frittelli, 2019), also restricts the flow of foreign

ships into Puerto Rican harbors.

Together, the two Jones-Acts ensured that the terms of economic development in Puerto

Rico were never truly autonomous. The flows of capital and goods were literally mediated by

these US laws. Eventually, these policies would lead to the crippling of the Puerto Rican

economy, but in the meantime, they facilitated the creation of a food system that was totally

dependent on US imports, and which undermined the island’s capacity to be self-sufficient

(Carro-Figueroa, 2002). For all intents and purposes, these and other measures served to extend

the colonial stronghold that Puerto Rico had been subject to during the Spanish colonial period

and throughout the early years of US possession, before the ELA status was adopted and the

island was deemed a “commonwealth” in 1951.

23

In the years that followed the Jones Acts, a series of government interventions attempted

to restructure agriculture on the island under the guise of crop diversification and empowerment

of smallholders (Gonzalez, 2016). Before the projects took off in the 1930’s, agriculture, mostly

sugarcane, represented 43% of the island’s Gross National Product (Gonzales, 2016). Despite the

economic value of the sugar plantations, agricultural activity was insufficient to meet the food

needs of the general population. Rural farmworkers who used to depend on subsistence

agriculture to meet their food needs were especially burdened due to the structure of the

haciendas, and depended on small colmados (corner stores) to acquire food, usually imported

from the US. During the 1930’s, however, the great depression exacerbated the poverty felt in

the mainland and in Puerto Rico. Food shortages led to a preoccupation with nutrition and public

health. In the US, military-related efforts at understanding nutrition and biochemistry gave way

to new approaches in nutrition science which influenced public health policy (Gonzales, 2016).

Nutrition-related policies in the 1930’s, informed by a discourse of scarcity, shaped the food-

scape in Puerto Rico.

Concerns over nutrition and the role of the landless rural workers shaped the political

discourse of the 1940’s. In 1941, public health, economic and political concerns coalesced into a

plan to re-distribute land and break the stronghold that haciendas had on agricultural production.

Farms over 500 cuerdas were broken up and parcelled out among tenants and agregados, with the

aim to diversify agriculture and supply rural workers with enough land to practice subsistence

farming (Carro-Figueroa, 2002). In practice, however, the policy did not do enough to distribute

power among rural families, or to create new markets for diversified crops. What it did was

allow those with the means to stay in rural farms in the coasts to do so, and gave indebted

agregado workers the freedom to migrate to the coastal cities in search of alternative labor.

24

Importantly, it worked as a political boost to the new Partido Popular Democratico, which

would implement a different series of economic reforms in the years to come (Guptil, 2008).

The late 1940’s into the 1950’s saw mass migration to the US (made possible by the

Jones Law) and to new urban centers around the island (Carro-Figueroa, 2002). The exodus of

people away from rural areas increased the need and dependence on imports, and undermined the

development of agriculture, which experienced a sharp decline. In 1944, political changes

allowed the people of Puerto Rico to elect their first Puerto Rican governor. Luiz Muñoz Marín

became the head administrator of the island, and the face of the Popular Democratic Party. In

1947, he launched Operation Bootstraps, an economic plan meant to industrialize and develop

the island by allowing US companies to settle tax-free for ten years. Operation Bootstraps saw

the official end of trying to restructure agriculture on the island, and instead shifted the economy

to one that was totally dependent on importing goods (Guptil, 2008).

The shift towards industrialization did not ameliorate the high rates of poverty, and so

new alternatives were found to supply the population with food. Before the 1950’s most people

obtained their food from small independent importers (Guptil, 2008), but because of the high

cost of shipping, food was not accessible enough to satisfy nutritional needs. This fact, coupled

with incentives for US corporations, gave way to the first supermarkets on the island, owned by a

US businessman in New Jersey (Carro-Figueroa, 2002). Nutrition science also developed a

public health campaign based on “protective foods,” which included milk, meat, eggs, rice,

vegetables and fruits, and ultimately undermined the traditional diets, and by extension

traditional food production on the island (Gonzalez, 2016).

25

Supermarkets were able to provide foodstuffs that satisfied the nutritional advice, and

were also able to absorb surplus food from the US markets at lower prices than the colmados.

Such institutions also enabled the government to roll out food-aid to supplement the purchasing

power of the growing urban population. In 1975, Puerto Rico was incorporated into the US’s

Food Stamps Program (Carro-Figueroa, 2002), which greatly increased consumption of diverse

food items on the market. However, because these were mostly redeemable in supermarkets,

only big producers on the island were able to provide food for the supermarkets because the rest

were unable to comply with the phytosanitary requirements of these new institutions (Carro-

Figueroa and Guptill, 2007).

Small rural farmworkers were sustained by the Food Stamps program, and so in a way it

also became a means of stalling the influx of rural migrants into the urban centers (Carro-

Figueroa, 2002). Though the program undermined local food production, it also gave poor rural

families the means to subsist on their land by supplementing their meager incomes. In 1982, the

Food Stamp Program was replaced with a direct cash transfer, the Nutritional Assistance

Program (or PAN, by its Spanish acronym) with stipulations that 75% of it had to be used on

food (Carro-Figueroa, 2002).

A couple of outliers in the agricultural production of Puerto Rico stand out. Namely,

tobacco producers, however small, were able to subsist beyond most coffee and sugar plantations

because of the nature of tobacco farming, which allowed for the simulations harvesting of

subsistence crops. During the industrialization campaigns, poultry and meat producers also

profited, due to special incentives by the government (Gonzalez, 2016) and educational

campaigns that claimed that local chicken and milk were more salubrious than the imports.

26

Overall, agricultural production in Puerto Rico fluctuated heavily, though it saw sharp

decreases in the last half of the 20th century (Dietz, 1986; Carro-Figueroa, 2002). Just as there

were uprisings for independence during the spanish colonial period, there were some widespread

mobilizations pertaining to labor, especially in the sugar sector. Different responses to

governmental and economic policies were leveraged by both public health bodies and civic

society, and some food movements that make up this response will be explored in the coming

sections. The importance of this overview is to understand the varied forces at play in the

development (or collapse) or Puerto Rican agriculture.

27

Chapter III: Empirical Portion

Leveraging old technologies into the future

Many food studies scholars are concerned with the agrarian question (McCune, et al.

2019), the idea that peasant agriculture persists despite capitalist mandates for high-yield

production and commodification of food crops. The agrarian question interrogates the ways in

which capital and resource accumulation by the dominant class displaces peasants and frees their

labor to be used in other industries. Mainstream agriculture pushed by the Global North through

the Green Revolution values technocratic solutions to the physical constraints of production,

demands that products destined for markets comply with global phyto-sanitary standards, and

ultimately might result in decreased food security (Elser, et al., 2014; Black, 2001). Yet despite

this, peasants, small-scale, traditional, indigenous farmers, among others continue to produce

over 20% of the world’s food (Altieri, 2009). Whether it’s done out of a need to subsist or as a

direct opposition to production practices that are detrimental to the environment and

communities, the persistence of small-scale farmers using traditional techniques is in itself a

resistance to conventional food systems.

The food sovereignty movement in Puerto Rico is a testament to this resistance. Despite

sharp drops in agricultural production and an attempt to industrialize the economy,

agroecological farmers persist all across the island, often in plots of land that are too small or

unproductive to even be considered in the USDA agriculture census.

Since the 1980’s farmers on the island have engaged in their livelihood as a direct

challenge to industrial agriculture. They have built networks, founded organizations, and

attempted to create policy mechanisms that would enable producers to compete on more equal

footing with bigger operations. Currently, the most prominent of these organizations is

28

Organización Boricuá de Agricultura Agro-Ecológica (Boricuá, n.d.). Boricuá acts as a hub of

knowledge and resource-sharing. Occasionally, it steps in to supplement and at times supplant

the government’s inadequate aid to farmers, which are often only allocated based on how well

farmers can write grants for them (Personal Communication, 2019). However, Boricuá is only as

strong as its members, and across the island there are myriad farmers that have crafted projects

with the aim of both sustaining their farms and employees and acting as a living classroom for

people who see food as a means of liberation for the island and wish to actively contribute to its

changing food-scape.

This chapter attempts to highlight the work of some of these actors. I employ a

framework inspired by El Josco Bravo’s agroecological course, Productores y Promotores

Agroecológicos (Producers and Promoters of Agroecology), which adequately captures the ways

in which activists on the island push the movement forward. I argue that this approach, one of

producers and promoters, is useful in elucidating the different strategies that farmers employ, as

well as how they come together with off-farm projects to enable the very persistence of the work

farmers are doing. In short, I argue that without agroecological production there would be

nothing to promote, but without promotion the reproduction of the agroecological movement

outside of farming communities would be more likely to fizzle out.

At the beginning of this chapter, I provide a brief overview of the current food

sovereignty movement and the scholarly understandings of it. Thereafter, most of the chapter

will be based on ethnographic field work carried out throughout a portion of the summer of

2019. The fieldwork is by no means extensive and is meant to 1) provide a starting point to

interrogate how the movement functions and 2) serve as a means of advocacy for the actors

involved. This empirical portion of the paper is divided into three parts: production, promotion

29

and resilience; under the assumption that combining both production and promotion works to

create resilience throughout the farmer networks and communities that host them.

Most of the farmers interviewed use the terms agroecology, permaculture, sustainable

agriculture or just organic farming to describe their work. I posit that the ways they engage in

their work, primarily through or informed by networks such as Boricuá’s, aligns them with the

international food sovereignty movement. Organización Boricuá itself, which most of the

farmers are members of or engage with regularly, is registered under the umbrella of La Vía

Campesina, the movement that popularized the term food sovereignty in 1996. La Vía

Campesina has also been responsible for advancing legal frameworks that safeguard people’s

right to determine their own food systems (Nyeleni, 2007). Their activities go beyond achieving

food security for all the population, and instead propose that food must be culturally appropriate

and environmentally sustainable in order to break with colonial paradigms. Furthermore, the

food sovereignty movement is mindful of the human impact of agriculture, and calls for

farmworkers to be treated with dignity and for farms to be managed in ways that are also

beneficial to their surrounding communities. These sentiments are echoed across all interviewees

and are clearly articulated in the ways that farmers and their neighbors organized themselves in

the aftermath of the hurricanes in 2017. Indeed, a year after the storms, Organización Boricuá

won the international Food Sovereignty Prize for its solidarity brigades, which were instrumental

in rebuilding farms across the island (Gies, 2018) and addressing the needs of communities that

went unmet by the government.

Food sovereignty is key in that it purposefully politicizes food security in ways that other

alternative food projects, such as organics or locavorism, fail to do on their own. By combining

agroecological or permaculture practices, food sovereignty activists literally cultivate resilience

30

into their farming systems, but also use different strategies to involve politicians and the public

in ways that go beyond mere consumerism. As Wald and Hill (2005, p. 207) state, “Food

sovereignty is precisely an ethical–political framework” that helps overcome the constraints of

neoliberal capitalism. These practices are increasingly relevant given concerns over climate

change impacts on agriculture and agriculture’s own contributions to a warming planet. The

latest IPCC Food Security report, released in 2019, links food systems functioning with climate

change, and argues that if not managed adequately, climate change will only exacerbate food

insecurity globally.

The IPCC report highlights various aspects of food system complexity. For one, it makes

clear that climate change will impact not just the production of food but also its distribution and

accessibility. It emphasizes the fact that intersecting identities such as race, age, gender and class

complicate access for people in both rural and urban areas, and power disparities, especially

along gender lines, increase vulnerability to climate change. Furthermore, the report asserts that

“low income producers and consumers are likely to be the most affected because of lack of

resources to invest in adaptation and diversification measures” (IPCC, 2019, p. 15).

These data should ground any attempts at moving forward. Alternatives, mitigation and

adaptation strategies should consider the ways in which structural inequality puts certain people

at a disadvantage. These very people should be included in the conversations and projects to

pursue food security and food sovereignty. The IPCC (2019) report identifies water availability

and quality, soil moisture, soil nutrients, biodiversity, pollination, yields, pests and diseases as

areas of vulnerability that need concrete adaptation plans. However, many proposals at tackling

these problems prioritize technocratic solutions, without including the input or considering the

lived realities of the different stakeholders mentioned above. The solutions are also grounded on

31

the ideal of sustainable intensification, which continues to presume an exploitative relationship

to the land and create dependence on external inputs for farmers.

Miguel Altieri, a scholar of agroecology, posits that agroecology actually has answers to

most, if not all, of these ills. Agroecological practices include but are not limited to integrated

pest management, water flow management, intercropping to increase biodiversity and leverage

plant interactions to increase resilience, pollinator strips, and the recycling of nutrients

throughout the system. Some of these practices will be explored in detail further in this chapter,

to illustrate how agroecological approaches are used by farmers in Puerto Rico as adaptive

responses to climate change. The success of these systems is worth noting. As Altieri states,

“traditional multiple cropping systems provide as much as 20 percent of the world food supply,”

and the total yield from these systems outperforms the yield from single-crop fields of the same

size (Altieri, 2009, Small Farms are more Productive and Resource Conserving). Such claims

allude to the power of agroecology in actually addressing food insecurity but go beyond just a

preoccupation with access and availability of food. Furthermore, Altieri notes that farmers are

explicitly preoccupied with tackling these issues and draw on traditional, intergenerational

knowledge to decrease system vulnerability.

A study that spans 2007-2010, which explores resilience in African Smallholder farming

systems, shows that farmers are concerned with soil and water conservation but also with the

social structures that support farming (Altieri, et al. 2017). These trends are echoed in the

narratives of Puerto Rican farmers, who in the wake of the hurricanes of 2017 showed incredible

solidarity both for fellow farmers and surrounding communities.

Throughout this chapter, I will argue that farmers in Puerto Rico who subscribe to a

discourse of food sovereignty and use agroecological practices are likely to have farms that are

32

more resilient to extreme weather events or adverse climate than conventional farmers. I

showcase the specific practices that farmers in Puerto Rico use to address areas of concern

outlined by the IPCC and other scientific bodies, such as water depletion, soil erosion, increased

pest presence due to shifting climates, and loss of biodiversity. Furthermore, I argue that food

sovereignty activists, whether producers or promoters, contribute to creating a food system that

is delinked from neoliberal forces and as such less vulnerable to the shifts in external markets

and inputs, not to mention better able to feed local communities in times of crisis.

To lead into the discussion on resilience, decolonization and neoliberalism that surrounds

the food sovereignty movement in Puerto Rico, I begin by exploring previous alternative food

movements and how their values and goals determined widespread participation or ultimate

demise.

The Birth of a Movement: Organizations that Preceded Boricuá

The present Puerto Rican food movement did not arise out of thin air. Of course, it

responds to all the contradictions and injustices outlined in chapter two, but it also builds on

concrete attempts by different activists to create institutional power in support of alternative

food. In the 1980’s, for example, the Association of Small Farmers of Rabanal (APARI) led

educational campaigns, infrastructure improvements, and had a series of economic projects

intended to fund the organization. APARI, as such, prioritized community needs by both

addressing the needs of farmers and involving the Rabanal community in their struggle through

education and community improvement campaigns. Once established, APARI appealed to

government officials in an attempt to establish more environmental protections and ensure

farmer access to land held by the land authority. APARI played on two scales, appealing to the

immediate locality but also pushing for wider policy change that would affect farmers all over

33

the island. Their efforts, however, conflicted with corporate interests, and countercampaigns

emerged throughout the island to try and discredit the organization’s work. Still, APARI persists

and is part of a wider network of activists, organizing farmers markets and engaging in

infrastructure projects to aid in the different stages of production and ensure community

members have adequate housing (Guptil, 2008)

Another project that tried to leverage farmworker voices was the Fed, The Federation of

Agricultural Associations. The Fed funded organic certification for specific areas of different

farms in an effort to create an organic juice start up. Their strategy depended on effectively

utilizing unclaimed wild spaces that were free of chemical inputs and could quickly undergo the

organic certification process. However, this attempt failed due to damage from hurricane

Hortense in 1995, structural and economic barriers to growing the company, and the fact that the

company, led by US entrepreneurs, failed to motivate and rally farmers to its cause (Guptil,

2008).

These movements now seem removed from the collective consciousness, and especially

media coverage of alternative food in Puerto Rico. Despite this, I think their existence is

important to acknowledge and be considered through the lense of food sovereignty. The APARI

project, by trying to explicitly advance and look after the needs of communities, had a much

more expansive set of goals than the Fed. As such, it was able to garner enough momentum to

constitute a threat to corporate interests. The Fed, on the other hand, proposed an alternative and

a way to legitimize the efforts of farmers within the system, and didn’t represent much of a threat

to the status quo (Guptil, 2008). It was not as heavily repressed, but because it didn’t really

significantly alter the lived realities of those it tried to target, it failed to set up a project that

farmers could feel genuinely identified with.

34

Given Food Studies’ preoccupation with the cooptation of movements by neoliberal

frameworks — that is, movements that are intended to improve the livelihoods of people but

actually operate through free-market mechanisms— I think this juxtaposition is important. It

allows us to frame the work of the activists that built on the momentum or lessons of these early

projects. In essence, it allows us to clear up the differences between approaches that are

predicated on food sovereignty and those that are not. As Wald and Hill (2015) remind us, food

sovereignty “argues for a different approach to mainstream capitalism” (p. 204) which the Fed’s

project failed to do.

Wald and Hill (2015), as well as other scholars, point to the 2008 food crisis as a crucial

moment for the articulation of alternative food networks that are truly revolutionary and anti-

capitalist. Though they hold that yes, the alternative food movement did exist before, the crisis

laid bare the acute effects of the problematic relationship between agriculture and capitalism. A

sense of collective outrage and despair gave way to a reinvigorated discussion on alternatives.

Agriculture provided, for the press and for people disillusioned by the notion of individual

responsibility, a way forward that was both hopeful and predicated upon creation. Through that

energy, the movement came to be highlighted much more actively in the local and international

press, and a series of new projects was born. In many cases, the orchestrators of the food

movement did not come at it from a background in agriculture, but rather from that sense that

their energies needed to be redirected towards an island-wide effort for lasting change. Farmers

and activists, then, come from academia or other fields, and were introduced to agroecology

through other overlapping social movements or a realization that the way society functions is

unsustainable to planetary health (Personal Communication, 2019).

35

The following sections, Production and Promotion, draw directly from interviews and

field visits carried out throughout the summer of 2019 in Puerto Rico. Though the sample size is

small, the activities embodied by the farmers, educators and activists I talked to seem to be

illuatrative of the wider food movement in many ways. Specifically, when it comes to the

production side, many of the farmers have cross-trained or apprenticed with some other farmers

interviewed or have been affiliated with Organización Boricuá in some measure or other. This

phenomenon is due in large part to the lack of formal agroecological education in Puerto Rico.

The University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez campus, has the leading agriculture/horticulture

program on the island, and yet graduates of the program (of whom I talked to at least three)

claim that the focus was very much on conventional agriculture, including agrochemicals and

monocropping. Recently, the first ever sustainable agriculture program was started on the island,

in the UPR’s Utuado Campus, but such a program was not available when these farmers were

training. As such, many of the younger farmers chose to do apprenticeships with older members

of Boricuá, like Don Tato (featured below) or later, Plenitud. This common experience means

that agroecological practices and approaches are shared by many participants of the movement,

albeit modified for the specific microclimates or economic realities of each farm.

Interestingly, many of the farmers who make up the food sovereignty movement on the

island are under fifty and college educated. Some of them came into it by accident or through a

realization that food and agriculture were the islands’ cultural heritage and necessary for

survival. They switched tracks and ended up on a farm, without necessarily having a family

history of farming. Others who practice agriculture or aim to do so knew they wanted to pursue it

as a career and trained at the UPR Mayagüez campus from the get go, and are now either renting

land and starting up their farms, or pursuing apprenticeships on permaculture projects or

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agroecological farms. Some, like Don Tato, sow the land their parents harvested before them.

Others still, like Dalma Cartagena, dedicate their time to teaching kids or their surrounding

community the value of engaging with the soil through school or community gardens. Together,

these and other actors make up a diverse and interdisciplinary food movement and engage in

complementary actions that enable and make space for the rest to make a living in an

oppositional context.

Production

Water

Puerto Rico, even if not ravaged by category four and five hurricanes, is often beset by

heavy rains or periods of drought. Water availability is highly variable, with the south of the

island being much drier than the mountainous region or the northern coast. The fluctuations in

water availability and heat stress during the summer determine the rhythms of agriculture on the

island, and demand that productive, year-round harvesting make use of water management

strategies. This need is exacerbated when climate change is considered. The IPCC also highlights

water as an important agricultural factor that is going to severely constrain agriculture (2019).

Tropical regions are likely to be the most impacted in terms of water availability overall and

through the impact of large-scale climate events like hurricanes, both of which are disruptive to

agriculture.

Given this, farmers have been leveraging water management techniques to ensure water

availability (through the dry season and when municipal water systems fail), the lack of soil

erosion through excessive rains and even soil/plant moisture loss through evapotranspiration due

to higher temperatures. Different strategies to achieve this include water collection, water flow

management in the fields and intercropping/cover crop use.

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Finca Plenitud, the first of the sites visited, has an exemplary water management system.

The farm project is both a site of production and a living classroom where a team of

administrators, farmers, educators and artists train interested participants in the basics of

permaculture and farm management. I took their ten-week course and was able to gain insight

into the different practices that made the farm run smoothly. In terms of water management,

these included “siembra al contorno” to break up the flow of water and prevent erosion, water

collection systems, and the construction and use of an artificial lagoon. The second farm,

Proyecto El Josco Bravo, which also has a teaching component, puts a lot of emphasis on water

management as well. El Josco Bravo’s system depends on an artificial lagoon, and recycled fire

hoses carry water from there to the different fields.

The presence of the lagoon in both of these farms serves multiple purposes. The lagoons

are placed at points of lower elevation on the farm and are able to collect run-off during heavy

rains. They also create microclimates within the farm, and different plants surround both

lagoons, contributing to total biodiversity. In the case of El Josco Bravo, it also serves social

purposes, providing asylum from the sun on especially hot summer days. The lagoon from El

Josco Bravo, much bigger than the one from Plenitud, was made possible through a government

grant given to farmers and other landowners for projects that try to address soil erosion and other

conservation concerns.

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Water collection system in Siembra Tres Vidas. (Orieta, 2019)

Water collection systems are used by all the farms interviewed. This strategy requires big

tanks that are able to hold rainwater, usually also connected to the gutters of physical structures

on the farms. The primary purpose of the tanks is to secure water for both human and plant

consumption. Finca Plenitud depended on their tanks to shower and drink after the hurricane

disrupted the flow of municipal water to the farm. In general, however, if properly set up, the

system can also help reduce water cost for farmers throughout the year.

The siembra al contorno strategy employed by Plenitud, which is also seen in El Josco

Bravo and Finca Tres Vidas, another farm in the central region of the island, is crucial for the

health of the soil and the harvest. Called contour farming in English, this agroecological strategy

acknowledges and works with the natural elevation of the terrain. Instead of levelling entire

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fields, farmers who practice contour farming create seed banks that follow the natural curvature

of the land. Using a system of mounds and valleys, they are able to direct water in a zigzag

pattern to the bottom of a hill. When it rains, the water moves through the valleys instead of

flooding the mounds where plants are growing. Because fertile soil is mostly placed on top of the

mounds, there is little risk of losing healthy topsoil from the flowing water. Ultimately, the water

ends in a lagoon or other low point in the farm where it can be collected and used for irrigation

or where other sorts of plants can grow (Plenitud Visit, Personal Communication, 2019)

Often contour farming is combined with strategies to halt or slow down the flow of water.

For example, along the roads of Plenitud, channels are created with rock speed bumps

interspersed throughout. By slowing down the water, farmers prevent the accelerated erosion of

the road. Though it requires upkeep and represents additional planning at the beginning of the

season, using this water management system safeguards topsoil during disasters, as it did in with

the passing of María. Paula Pajuil, one of the managers in Plenitud, claims that because they

managed water in such a way, they were able to go out into the fields a couple of days after the

storm and find that most of the healthy soil had remained. Their neighbors, however, struggled to

secure that important resource, and had a harder time getting back to business as usual.

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Member of Plenitud leading a lesson on water management, which includes contour farming. (Orieta, 2019)

Soil

Apart from water, healthy soil is probably one of the most important resources on a farm.

Healthy soil is related to plant health, yield, pest and disease resistance, and nutrient content in

plants (Thornton, 2018). Conventional agriculture, and even organic agriculture, uses petroleum

based or other industrial fertilizers to ensure their soil has the proper balance of Nitrogen,

Phosphorus and Potassium (NPK). NPK fertilizers, however, have been shown to be problematic

to the overall health of the agro-system, including farmer health (Davis, Hill, et al. 2012; Elser,

et al., 2014). A common outcome of industrial agriculture is the eutrophication of nearby and

distant water ways (the presence of too many nutrients), which results in excessive algae growth

and can suffocate the productivity of other organisms (Elser, et al., 2014; IPCC, 2019). The

manufacturing of these fertilizers in itself is also problematic. Because they’re petroleum

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derivatives, they release a significant amount of CO2. Furthermore, relying on the use of

commercial fertilizers traps farmers into an input purchasing scheme that can often result in debt

(Kenner, 2008). Basically, because they free the farmer from having to invest energy in the

actual health and life of the soil, they are essential in order to keep producing year after year.

Within agroecology, however, we can find a different story. All of the farmers

interviewed made hefty use of traditional compost and/or vermicompost, as well as compost teas,

to supplement the health of the soil. Because the composts are made from the very scraps left

over from the field or the kitchen, this practice helps close the energy cycle of the farm.

Additionally, because the nutrients in compost are embedded within the soil matrix, they are less

likely to erode at the slightest rainfall. Compost, of course, is created through the decomposition

of organic matter, and as such is host to myriad microorganisms, mostly bacteria and fungi, that

can be helpful to plant growth when applied on the field (Plenitud, 2019). These microorganisms

help make the nutrients more bioavailable to plant roots and take up niches that could otherwise

be occupied by harmful bacteria colonies.

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Compost piles in Huerta Semilla, a community farm in the UPR-Rio Piedras Campus. Members keep detailed logs

of where food scraps came from, when the compost piles were erected, when they were turned, temperature, and

even name (Orieta, 2019).

For farmers, the way compost is made is important. Most farmers had either a two-part or

three-part system, consisting of green material, brown material, and in the case of Plenitud, fire.

The green material is actively decomposing, while the brown material is plant matter that is

already dry. Fire is anything that is high in nitrogen, and its presence ensures that the compost

pile reaches a temperature high enough, around 150 degrees, to kill off undesired bacteria and

seeds (Plenitud, 2019).

Watching my classmates in Plenitud’s permaculture course put together a compost pile

really drove home how everything on the farm worked together. Plants on the periphery of fields,

which seemed totally irrelevant at first, ended up being prime sources of nitrogenous material,

and were promptly harvested for the compost pile. Other plants, like the Mexican Sunflower,

which is a bioaccumulator, were trimmed and placed directly on top of the seeded rows. Huge

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stalks were left to decompose around hopeful looking pumpkin seedlings. They provided shade

to the soil, which both prevented evapotranspiration and stemmed the growth of weeds.

The compost pile also represented other relationships, between the fields and the kitchen

staff, the community and the participants. In a micro scale, the compost attempts to remedy what

Marx calls the “metabolic rift,” the process wherein consumption and waste cycles are delinked

from nature, resulting in a loss of nutrients to the soil that used to be recycled in traditional

agricultural practices (Whittman, 2009). Dry cow and rabbit manure from a different neighboring

farm were added, in bucketfuls, to the compost. Plenitud got the manure in exchange for helping

their neighbor, but ultimately it ended up being more convenient to direct the waste through to

the farm than to dispose of it in a landfill. For Huerta Semilla, a community farm on the UPR

Río Piedras campus, compost was a similar endeavor. Every Tuesday, community members

would join to raise a compost pile. Participants would pick fallen leaves from around the

university campus, collect buckets of coffee grounds from the university café, and wheel in bins

full of kitchen scraps from nearby houses and restaurants. After all the materials were collected,

they were dumped onto a sidewalk. Large pieces of vegetables were hacked with shovels, and

once everything was compost-size, a flurry of grass, coffee and avocado pits would take to the

air as students and residents alike mixed all the material with their shovels. They moved in

synchrony, like a dance. Often, music played, and one of the old timers explained to younger

participants why they did the process in this way and what the goal was for each pile of compost.

As such, community members engaged not just in a process of production, but also in deep,

experiential learning, and developed community, camaraderie and curiosity throughout.

In addition to regular compost, vermicompost is another of Plenitud’s tools. At the back

end of the farm’s main house, kitchen scraps are added to a raised bed full of worms, and the

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decomposition of the material results in prime substrate for the farm’s bio-intensive “salad

nursery.” When large expanses of field need to be attended to, both the vermicompost and the

compost are diluted into compost-tea, where the aim is to create the equivalent of a probiotic for

plants. By infusing a bucket of water with compost and air for 12-24 hours, the staff at plenitud

ended up with a rich tea full of microorganisms, which they mixed with the irrigation water.

By using these technologies, farmers are able to simultaneously reduce on-site waste and

create their own bio-fertilizers. The on-site production and inexpensive nature of compost

ensures that farmers are not dependent on outside inputs. Furthermore, it limits the

environmental impact of agriculture by preventing eutrophication and diverting organic material

away from landfills.

Plants and Seeds

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Ecological seeds from Puerto Rico sold at the farmers market in San Juan (Orieta, 2019).

It is hard to have a productive vegetable farm without seeds from which the vegetables

grow. As such, good quality seeds are a precious resource to farmers, one that is increasingly

under threat from corporate seed producers. Companies like Syngenta or Bayer have a vested

interest in developing hybrid and GMO seeds. These seeds have become a source of contention,

because they often trap farmers into a debt cycle. Because of the qualities of the seeds, often

centered around herbicide resistance, they require specific fertilizer and herbicide in order to

produce high yields. This means that farmers must continuously buy these external inputs if they

use them. Furthermore, they are also forced to keep buying seeds season after season, because

the seeds from the original crop are less productive than the ones sold to them. GMO seeds are

also unsavory to consumers, who fear adverse health effects down the line. As such, the

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agroecological farmers in Puerto Rico (and around the world) make it a point to either buy

organic and sustainable seeds or save what seeds they can from their harvest.

Don Tato of Bosque Escuela el Guaraguao, regarded by many as the grandfather of the

movement, is a prominent seed saver. Members from Huerta Semilla and Plenitud often get corn

kernels or legumes to plant on their own farms from him. When he showed me around his farm,

we made a bit of an extended stop at a little roofed deck in the middle of his field, where

countless bushels of green beans and pigeon peas hung from the rafters. We talked as he de-

beaned the dry pods, and I remember my amazement at seeing all the different patterns and

colors of pigeon peas. The varieties that Don Tato has have been lovingly bred through

generations and no longer make it onto supermarket shelves. However, everyone that gets a

handful of these treasures is delighted to see them grow, and more delighted yet to get to eat

them- sometimes straight from the plant itself.

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Don Tato standing in front of drying beans (Orieta, 2019).

Many of the farmers who, unlike Don Tato, need to sell their produce through farmers

market or Community Supported Agriculture schemes end up buying seeds from online catalogs.

In this manner they are able to meet their demand. Oftentimes, however, the catalog seeds are

placeholders until they are able to develop their own seed stores, which all of the farmers are

doing in some form or another.

Not all of the seeds that farmers trade are intended for human consumption. One seed in

particular, the canavalia, is in great demand. In Plenitud, it is used both to fix nitrogen in the soil

and to make tea that is employed in their integrated pest management (IPM) strategy. Other non-

edible plants are also helpful. If we recall, the compost required the presence of nitrogenous

material to reach adequate temperatures. As such, the farmers interviewed engaged in trading

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across the farming network to acquire seeds, seedlings, or vine clippings so they could populate

the periphery of their farms with plants to harvest for the pile. They also get patchouli through

government initiatives, in order to keep the soil banks from slipping (a strategy used in Huerta

Semilla, Plenitud, La Jungla and El Josco Bravo). Flowering plants like marigolds are also often

incorporated in the middle of rows of vegetables like tomatoes or cucumber to attract pollinators

and increase positive plant interactions through allelopathy (Plenitud, 2019; Gliessman, 2007).

The ultimate goal in these farms is to increase biodiversity by all means possible. As

such, monocultures are out of the picture. For the most part, farmers are using intercropping

within rows, or sowing one specific crop in alternating rows. The specific things grown vary

according to region, but include legumes, root crops, vegetables, fruits and other starchy crops

like plantains. Some of these, especially starches like yuca (cassava), malanga (taro), yautia and

plantains, or legumes like red beans and pigeon peas, carry on the island's culinary traditions.

Historically, these crops made up the bulk of the diet for subsistence workers and even

indigenous populations on the island. One of the interviewees from Finca Oro Rojo remarked of

her early experience on the farm:

“It was amazing to move up to Orocovis. Coming from Bayamon, I was

used to rice, beans and bistek. Minimal fruits and vegetables, and definitely not

any of the fruits and vegetables I eat now. In Orocovis, the community had

managed to maintain a different relationship with food, and I found myself eating,

for the first time, things like celeriac, guava, quince, sapotilla, mamey sapote,

sweetsop and soursop… (Personal communication, 2019)’

Not all of the farmers focus on these crops, or at least not for the market. But their

presence both in the field in Orocovis and in the local fruit section of select supermarkets speaks

to the permanence of their cultural importance. It is also a testament to the work of farmers

diligently saving seeds that seem to exist outside of what are considered commodity crops on the

local and international market.

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Integrated pest management

One of the big benefits of intentionally cultivating biodiversity on the fields is that it

helps implement more effective pest management strategies and provides a safety net for

farmers. The presence of diversified crops ensures that, if there is a pest outbreak, not all of the

harvest is lost. Crop rotation limits the harm that pests that live in the soil can produce, because it

constantly displaces their source of food. The plants themselves give each other protection, as in

the example of companion planting between tomatoes and basil, a combination employed by

both Huerta Semilla, La Jungla and Plenitud. The tomato plants attract hornworms, which are

huge green caterpillars that feast upon the leaves. The basil distracts the hornworm from fixating

on the tomato, which offers farmers a larger time window to identify the pest and treat the

problem (Personal Communication, 2019). Additionally, the presence of the basil improves the

growth and flavor of the tomatoes, so it’s a win-win all around.

Apart from companion planting and crop rotation, other pest management strategies

include the use of bioferments to confuse (or even poison) pests, sticky color traps, and the

presence of flower strips. Concoctions like Neem based herbicides, which include neem oil, dish

soap, baking soda, and water actually manage to trap and kill insects smaller than ¼ inch

(Plenitud, 2019). Strips of tape covered in molasses in bright yellow and orange attract flying

insects like white flies, which end up glued to the sweet coating. Flower strips are part of a

biological control strategy and are chosen specifically to attract ladybugs and parasitic wasps

(Plenitud, 2019). The ladybugs deal with aphids, while the wasps lay eggs in other insects, and

then their larvae eat them from the inside.

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Monitoring and careful planning are essential to integrated pest management (Plenitud,

2019; Gliessman, 2014). Ian Pagan Roig, from el Josco Bravo, speaks to this eloquently. As he

transitioned his farm to a summer growing schedule, he spoke to the importance of choosing

varieties of plants that are more resilient to the rising heat and scarce rains. If care isn’t taken to

make sure that the crop selection is intrinsically resilient to the climatic conditions, the plants

immunity will decrease, and they will be more susceptible to infestations. As such, there were

entire crops that Ian chose to keep out of his rotation, such as leafy greens and tomatoes, and

which he would re-incorporate at the end of the summer. For the crops he did keep, he added

extra protections, such as micro-tunnels to increase shade and protect them from the sun, or

additional irrigation. These techniques do not necessarily resemble pest management but

contribute to the optimal functioning of the system and as such decrease vulnerability.

Other attempts at sustainability

The techniques highlighted above definitely make up a foundational piece of the

agroecological practices that farmers in Puerto Rico engage in. They are by no means conclusive

and the ways they are carried out vary slightly from farm to farm. Given concerns over system

sustainability and climate change, and aware of the need to shift practices, other growers are also

adopting sustainability measures that resemble the ones above.

In Guanica, for example, a 300 cuerda (1 cuerda = 0.97 acres) farm called Finca

Gonzales is trying to integrate a sustainability mindset into their operation. Finca Gonzales

produces mostly plantains, bananas, onions, tomatoes, squash and papaya, as well as eggs.

Though their product is varied, it is cultivated in monoculture-like patches that require tractor

transport to get from one to the next. In an attempt to be more sustainable, they’ve added a non-

chemical nutrient compound to their irrigation water, akin to the compost teas that are employed

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in various of the agroecological projects. Through the use of soil tarps, they’ve also reduced

evapotranspiration and interrupted the reproductive cycle of burrowing pests. All in all, they’ve

reduced their use of chemical fertilizer by 60%, and diminished their use of pesticides.

Finca Gonzales is important because it supplies vast quantities of local fresh fruit and

vegetables that help to counteract the need for external imports in the island. However, to say

that the farm is part of a wider food sovereignty or agroecology movement would be a gross

misrepresentation. The farm is able to operate due to large amounts of private and public capital

investment coupled with strategies to reduce cost. In order to harvest and process all their

produce, the farm makes use of a packing house and employs a couple dozen employees. The

farmworkers in Finca Gonzalez toil under the sun for hours on end, many there out of necessity

more than passion. They get paid minimum wage, which in Puerto Rico can constitute less than

$7.25/hour for workers not covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Because their business model is predicated primarily upon the accumulation of wealth,

many initiatives that could help the surrounding community are not implemented. The farm sells

directly to big markets on the island, and in order to supply these with appealing produce, a lot of

ready-to-eat fruit and vegetable goes to waste on-site. Despite this, there is no opportunity for the

surrounding community to come purchase or collect these goods at reduced prices. Even

expanding such an initiative such as a pick-your-own vegetables day into a tours program in an

eco-tourism or agro-tourism fashion could capitalize on the sustainability of the farm.

An agroecological farm, on principle, would look out for the interest of its workers and

community members in an attempt to address the social health component of agroecology. This

is the case in the farms interviewed. Siembra Tres Vidas, for example, is incorporated as a non-

profit corporation where the employees are also co-owners. This structure allows them to have

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democratic decision making on the farm and also enables them to make a living wage at around

$10/hour. Their non-profit status also allows them to gear some of their activities towards

community support, such as the case of their CSA and solidarity brigades, which will be

elaborated on later in this chapter.

Promotion

For food sovereignty to be successful as a movement, more people than just the farmers

have to buy into it. Social movements are characterized by dense, informal networks, and group

identity (Porta and Diani, 2006). In Puerto Rico, the efforts on farms are sustained and made

possible by various actors who either create awareness of the movement, directly participate in it

through off-farm activities, or just show up when they are most needed. Organización Boricuá is

prominent within this group. Though the organization is made up of farmers, members are also

students, educators or just interested folk who answer the call for brigades or workshop

attendance. Other projects however, like Proyecto Semiteca, Cooperativa Orgánica Madre Tierra

and other farmers markets, Escuela Botijas I, Red Conucos or La Agroteca, provide support and

visibility to new or ongoing farmers through different strategies.

These projects make up the promotion side of the producers and promoters framework.

Throughout this section I will highlight some of their strategies and efforts and try to hone in on

the ways in which they both enable and depend on agroecological farmers themselves. This

portion is also based on in-person interviews, and as such is constrained by a limited sample. The

examples provided should be understood as a starting point in exploring approaches for

promotion, and not as a conclusive list of strategies.

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Producción y Promoción: On-site education

The first and most obvious examples of how production feeds into promotion is through

workshops lasting a week to a month, in which participants engage in both production and

promotion. El Josco Bravo is taken as a departure, but Plenitud’s Permaculture Workshop also

fits within this category. These projects are geared towards young and older adults, people who

either wish to start their own farm, collaborate on an existing project, or start honing their skills

for the future.

Ian Pagan Roig’s farm, El Josco Bravo, works as a for-market operation throughout the

whole year. He rents land from the Puerto Rico Land authority in Toa Alta. Ian is formally

trained as a horticulturist, a graduate from the UPR Mayaguez campus’ program. As mentioned

previously, Mayagüez does not offer much in terms of agroecological techniques, and as such,

when Ian graduated, he set out to develop a farm that also worked as a living classroom. His

course Productores y promotores agroecológicos explicitly intends to promote agroecology

within a larger food sovereignty framework. In it, students visit the farm every week for the

equivalent of a spring semester. As a cohort, participants make a plan for what they want to

harvest and when. Then, they learn to prepare the soil, plant seeds, weed, make compost, manage

water, etc. Apart from hands-on work experience, however, they also have a classroom learning

component where they have discussions about food sovereignty and a 50-hour apprenticeship on

a different agroecological farm.

Once they graduate from the course, participants become part of a rich alumni network,

and often go on to start their own farms (as in the case of Colectivo Güakía, finca Oro Rojo,

among others). Due to demand the course itself is growing. It is now offered simultaneously in

over five locations across the island, at no cost to participants. All people have to do in order to

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receive the training is write an essay demonstrating genuine interest. This way, Ian Pagán

ensures the democratization and accessibility of knowledge that is so essential for food

sovereignty and aligns himself with the belief that such an alternative must operate outside of

traditional neoliberal frameworks.

Plenitud’s project is similar. For ten sessions distributed throughout eight weeks,

participants meet in Las Marías, where the farm is located. They get a lecture on a particular

topic, be it water management, composting and soil health, or effective marketing and planning,

and then get some hands-on practice. The course is designed as an introduction to everything

needed to start a farm, from production to marketing, and gives participants an opportunity to see

if doing so is viable for them. Unlike el Josco Bravo’s project, Plenitud’s is not free. A $100 fee

ensures occasional meals and salaries to the facilitators, a testament to the fact that farmworkers,

owners, and partners are and should be entitled to dignified wages and living conditions.

Plenitud’s project, organized as a non-profit, however, also exercises its role in

promotion beyond the course offered. They are very connected to the community, where they’ve

helped install water management systems and solar panels, and their farm functions as a

community and learning center for schools or groups interested in either agriculture or other

aspects of what they call holistic living. These programs are intentionally carried out for

community integration and service. Throughout the academic year, they have arrangements with

area schools and provide assistance with their huertas or vegetable gardens, carefully engaging

the kids and cultivating in them a healthier relationship with food and the earth.

Escuela Botijas I is also crucial in this sense. Hidden away along the curved roads of

Orocovis, Dalma Cartagena takes the lead of a local school’s agricultural component. Escuela

Botijas I is part of an island-wide network of schools that participate in occupational training

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programs (Departamento de Educación, Puerto Rico). For Botijas, the focus is on agriculture.

When Dalma arrived on school grounds, the small field designated for students to tend was run

with conventional practices: fertilizer, herbicide, and the like were prominent. Now, the school

has more than 20 years of agroecological management. Cartagena teaches kids from grades K-12

about the importance of healthy soil, fertile seeds, changing seasons, and caring for one another.

Often, graduates of the school will visit and tell her about their careers in agriculture. Through

her classes, Cartagena’s students learn more than just farm management, they learn how to have

a different relationship with their island (Personal communication, 2019).

Puerto Rico’s department of education is trying to incentivize schools around the island

to participate in more projects like Cartagena’s. They’ve created an academic component called

“Horas de contacto verde” or green contact hours, which intends for schools to have school-wide

projects through which kids can engage with a different aspect of sustainability (Department of

Ed and DRNA, 2015). Many of the schools, if for nothing else than ease of uniformity, have

integrated this curricular component through the use of on-site huertas. Red Conucos, operated

out of the University of Utuado campus, is testament to this. Started in 2012, the project’s

intended goal is to develop a robust network where educators can connect with each other and

share information on how to develop school gardens and build curriculums around them

(Conucos, 2019; Personal Communication, July 25, 2019). The project was initially funded by

the USDA and maintained through the volunteer efforts of the newly inaugurated Sustainable

Agriculture discipline in the university. Students and faculty worked together to train staff in

both practical garden management and course facilitation, and then visited surrounding schools

to ensure that the projects were running smoothly. Now, as more schools ask to join the network,

Red Conucos is moving online. Facilitators are creating curriculums and recording classes so that

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professors and students can do distance-learning and enjoy the same material without having to

overextend the limited resources of the university (Conucos, 2019).

Both the Horas verdes initiative from the Department of Education and the very fact that

the UPR Utuado Campus has a new associate degree in Sustainable Agriculture speak volumes

to the importance of sustainable agriculture on the island. Though there is much structural

resistance, evidenced by the lack of government aid in agroecological projects and diminishing

number of overall farms, the fact that institutional sectors are mobilizing in support of the

movement gives advocates new avenues of action. Currently, participants are trying their best to

both expand and preserve these programs and are leveraging their claims through calls of food

sovereignty. During the protests for the resignation of the governor in 2019, for example,

demonstrators called for the need for UPR Utuado to stay open if Puerto Rico was to see its

agricultural resurgence. The Utuado campus is key in preserving traditional techniques like bull

plowing and seed sharing, and provides formal education to people in the mountainous region

who would be unable to attend the Mayaguez Campus should they develop an interest in

farming.

Another attempt at expanding the reach of alternative practices is the UPR Río Piedras

extension service or agricultural experimentation center. There, the farm manager, Luis

Reynaldo Santiago, known on the web as Rey, hosts a YouTube channel called CompostaPR

where he shares horticulture techniques. Luis Reynaldo’s piece of the Río Piedras Botanical

garden is a site of experimentation where he tests out beneficial plant relationships and integrated

pest management among creative and artistic cultivation techniques. The farm is open to the

public, and he is happy to distribute both seeds and knowledge to curious visitors. The YouTube

channel, however, represents an important strategy in the dissemination of local agroecological

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knowledge. Like many authors and other actors who create guides and content that center the

experience and practice of Puerto Rican farmers, he contributes to the de-linking of agricultural

practices from the hegemonic power of US knowledge, which is ill-suited to Puerto Rico’s

unique climates.

Making agroecology viable: material resources

Formal and informal educational initiatives are not the be all end all of promotion,

however. Despite agroecology’s minimal reliance on external inputs, the propagation of the

practice still requires a degree of material viability. Viability, of course, starts with having land

on which to farm, but doesn’t end there. Seeds, tools and access to monetary resources or big

equipment are essential for many beginning or long term-farmers looking to expand.

A study in the journal Forest asserts that Puerto Rico actually has vast expanses of

cultivatable land (Gould, et al., 2017). In fact, 23% of land in Puerto Rico is well suited for

“mechanized and non-mechanized agriculture.” A lot of this land is, however, held in private

hands or under the land authority. As such, one means of movement support is making these

lands available. Colectivo Güakiás experience is exemplary of this. The collective is able to have

their farm thanks to the literal good faith of a nearby convent, who leases them a couple of

cuerdas for $11 (Personal Communication, 2019). In other cases, land is not so easy to come by.

El Josco Bravo, for example, has almost gotten evicted from their land, which they rent from the

land authority, and Siembra Tres Vidas has had to move more than once because of problems

with their landlords. These stories speak to the importance of more comprehensive and forgiving

land policy, especially from institutional bodies like the Land Authority, who could devise

alternatives that look to support budding agricultural projects.

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When land is not readily available or charitably given, farmers are finding loopholes to

traditional land ownership. Many young farmers, especially in metropolitan areas, are either

repurposing land or outright occupying it. Members of Huerta Semilla, for example, carry out

their community garden on occupied land from the university. Throughout the years, they’ve

reclaimed space that was variously a parking lot and basketball court. Now a grassy field, the lot

still has to reckon with a rocky foundation, so the members of Huerta Semilla have built raised

beds and implemented various soil amendment strategies. Their operation also speaks to the

resourcefulness of the movement: for their plant nursery and compost shack, they’ve collected

PVC pipes, old advertising tarps, wooden pellets and lots of cardboard. As such, they are able to

redirect their capital towards the purchasing of quality tools.

Recently, a different project called el Departamento de la Comida has gained visibility,

and through a series of fundraising strategies has managed to put its efforts towards the

bolstering of material resources for farmers. As of 2019, and with the help of volunteers, they’ve

developed an Agroteca (agriculture library) that features quality hand and power tools. Interested

participants can visit the small building and “take out” tools as if it were a library. The agroteca

allows new, and especially urban farmers, to have access to tools that might be out of their price

range and which they might only need a couple times a year for soil preparation. The initiative is

an attempt from El Departamento to make agriculture more accessible to people that don’t

necessarily come from agriculture backgrounds (El Departamento de la Comida, 2019).

Apart from land and tools, seeds are a necessity in any farming project. Local small

businesses are popping up throughout the island that sell seeds well-adjusted to the local

climates, but among these there are also “open source” seed libraries. Semiteca (seed library) is

one of these projects. Headed by María Cristina (also known as Mara), the project seeks to honor

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the seeds of generations past and create a repository of seeds from around the island. Mara

envisions the Semiteca as a potential Horas verdes project. The curricular component of it asks

students to collect seeds from people they know, be it grandparents, neighbors, parents or family

friends. Students are then to bring the seeds back for a kind of show and tell, where they also

index the area where the seed comes from, the variety, and their relationship to it. Schools or

communities that subscribe to the project would have their own seed portfolios, and the seed

portfolios could be shared or accessed by other schools or communities. Basically, the project

aims to reconnect participants with their own seed histories while creating a diverse catalog of

seed varieties (Personal Communication, July 13, 2019). Projects like these, in conjunction with

other initiatives by farmers like Don Tato, who freely shares his seeds with people he considers

trustworthy, ensure that the biological patrimony of each locality is preserved across the island.

Resources that enable farming are important, but so are initiatives that support farmers in

their craft and mission to feed the island. Though food sovereignty is ideologically opposed to

neoliberal structures, the reality is that farmers, too, are entrenched in a capitalist system and

must make use of capital to sustain themselves. Thankfully, there are concerted efforts across the

island to create alternative marketing schemes. Farmer’s markets and community supported

agriculture, or farm shares, are most prominent among these. Cooperativa Madre Tierra, for

example, is a farmer’s market in the San Juan area that partners closely with Organización

Boricuá. They host farmers who sell organic produce, prepared food or other goods, and also

host a series of talks and workshops on best practices. Though Cooperative Madre Tierra seems

to be the leading example, other markets like the Old San Juan market provide consistent outlets

for farmers to sell their goods and interact with consumers. Because of their visibility and

consistency, they provide good locus for promoting the movement.

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Municipalities are catching up to the energy of the masses, too. The San Juan

municipality started hosting various markets across its different towns, such as Mercado

Agrícola de Caimito Haydee Colón (Caimitoagricola, 2016), which expands opportunities for

farmers who can’t make it to the central markets to participate. In places like Rincón, the weekly

markets became so popular that they had to split them off into different food and artisanal market

days (Mercado Agricola de Rincon, 2013). At the time I visited, the market was also playing host

to a protest in solidarity of the big marches that were happening in the capital. Evidently, such

social spaces aren’t just seen as money-making opportunities, but stages where surrounding

communities can come together to express their collective joy or grievances in solidarity with

one another.

CSA schemes are also on the rise. CSAs, or community sponsored/supported agriculture,

are direct marketing schemes that get products from farms delivered straight to consumers. What

is so interesting about the nascent CSA scene in Puerto Rico is the spirit of solidarity within

them. Projects like Al sol de hoy: Cajitas nutritivas actually partner with various farmers who do

not produce enough independently to host their own CSA’s. The administrators of the program

buy directly from different farmers and create boxes of aggregated goods that they then deliver

to customers (Al Sol de Hoy, 2019). Others, like Siembra Tres Vidas or El Departamento de la

Comida (the first CSAs on the island) are looking to expand into a similar system, or at least

provide assistance to surrounding farmers in the distribution of their goods to either markets or

individuals. Siembra Tres Vidas, specifically, is incorporated as a non-profit, which in itself

represents another strategy the movement is using to stay afloat (Personal communication, July

16, 2019). By being a non-for-profit, Siembra Tres Vidas can afford to host educational

workshops and pay their employees a living wage but can also consider ways in which they can

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extend solidarity to their neighbors who might not have the time or expertise to engage in direct

marketing.

Resilience

The strategies employed on and off farm by the food sovereignty movement attend to the

various needs of individuals and collectives and ultimately help build resilience. In the paper

“Peasant balances,” (McCune, et al., 2019) the authors explore the disparities in ability to resume

on-farm operations among coffee farmers who were alternatively conventional farmers or

subscribers of agroecology. From the sample of coffee farmers interviewed, 18 out of the 20

small to medium scale coffee farmers surveyed found it difficult or impossible to get back on

their feet after hurricane María. Alternatively, agroecological farmers were able to leverage their

social networks towards farm reconstruction, and all but one showed almost immediate

recovery.

The conventional farmers in the study faced problems acquiring enough capital and

manual labor to rebuild structures and recover crops. Agroecological farmers, on the other hand,

had significantly reduced rates of soil erosion due to their water management strategies, and

were able to re-sow their crops speedily (McCune, et al. 2019). Additionally, they tapped into the

activity of Solidarity brigades from both Boricuá and Departamento de la Comida. The brigades

brought voluntary manual labor to the fields, and through one or more days of work helped

farmers rebuild structures, plant seeds, or reign in debris from the storm. The brigades

themselves were made up of a mix of farmers, experts in the field, or other interested

participants. Often, these participants are also among the ones who show up for workshops

across the island or participate in other, off-farm forms of food sovereignty promotion.

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This trend also rears its head throughout my own interviews. Don Tato, for example, lost

his home due to the hurricane, but through a day of brigading a group of volunteers was able to

rebuild a chicken coop and construct a small liveable structure for him and his wife. Over a year

later, Don Tato still lives in what is, for all intents and purposes, the tiny house volunteers built,

but is in the process of building a new house where he can stay long term. Daniella Besosa, from

Siembra Tres Vidas, speaks to her own experience with post hurricane recovery. She says “we

lost 97% of our harvest. But when we got back out into the field, we found that it was quite easy

to get back on our feet. There had been no soil erosion, and the contour banks had stayed in

place. I know that that was also the experience of many other farmers that use these practices:

they just had to get back on the field and resow their fields.” (Personal Communication, July 16,

2019)

Besosa also speaks to the lessons from the hurricane. The damage that the storm dealt to

farms but also to the wider structure of food distribution on the island made it clear that the farm

needed a contingency plan for possible future disasters. For Besosa, the plan involved pulling in

all the harvest before the storm hits and finding ways to store and preserve it in anticipation of

food shortages in the aftermath. Because the farm also runs on solar panels and rainwater, they

are able to refrigerate produce and ensure clean water. Though she is hesitant to express

positivity about the storm, Besosa also spoke to the non-material lessons they gained. She

highlights community-level resilience and visibility, claiming that now, she feels she doesn’t

need to push for agroecology as hard. “People lived through the consequences; they know the

importance [of agroecology].” She goes on to say,

“As a community, we learned that no one was going to come and save us. I’m in a group

[of farmers] where for two years we’ve been talking about getting together and it didn’t

happen until the storm hit. We either did it or all of our work would have been lost. So,

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we set up our own brigades, and over a year later they’re still running. Not to mention,

too, the other initiatives in the community. We went in and asked at the community

center if there was anything we could do to help, and that conversation led to the

establishment of a community garden… It all came back to food sovereignty, to the idea

that we had to have resilient and local production if we were going to make it through

another disaster like this.” (Personal Communication, July 16, 2019)

Another testament to the power of agroecology and its ability to increase community-

level resilience is the case of Guakiá. The Guakiá Collective was able to move into its Dorado

field a couple of months before hurricane María struck the island. In the aftermath, they

participated actively in community level activities such as clearing roads of debris and assessing

the needs of families or individuals who might be at higher risk given the scarcity of resources.

At this point, the collective shifted its timeline, previously concerned primarily with getting the

farm up and running and building relationships with community members throughout that

process second. Given the emergency status, they decided to focus instead on creating

community links, and since the hurricane the community in Dorado has built a community

center, weekly movie nights, and established steady flows of resource exchange from the farm to

the community and vice versa (Personal communication, August 1, 2019). The Collective also

started hosting regular gatherings that bring together local musicians, friends, cooks, among

others. Such a space lends itself well to strengthening interpersonal relationships that are key in

building agricultural networks.

Beyond the personal experiences of farmers and individuals on the island, the power of

agroecology is well documented within disaster resilience frameworks. Miguel Altieri,

throughout his scholarship, draws explicit relationships between agroecology, food sovereignty,

and resilience in the face of climate change. He writes about the impacts of Hurricane Mitch,

which hit Central America in 1998, and how farmers who used sustainable practices were better

adapted to deal with the hurricane damage (Altieri, 2009). His review of different studies that

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measured resilience and vulnerability are part of a long body of research that advocated for the

benefits of agroecological management. In post-Mitch Nicaragua, for example, agroecological

farms lost 18% less topsoil than conventional farms and experienced 48% less landslides (Holt-

Gimenez, 2002). As mentioned previously, the IPCC (2019) also advocated for alternative

agricultural practices as an integral part of climate change mitigation and adaptation.

The examples above, especially in the face of Hurricane María, clearly illustrate both

mitigation strategies and adaptation. In many cases, farmers have chosen to engage in

agroecological practices because of the moral imperative to do so, and for its explicit integration

of social justice perspectives. However, the strategies in themselves represent powerful

mitigation strategies that have been shown to withstand the tests of extreme weather. Water

collection, water flow management, cover crops, and soil amendments work together to

ameliorate on-farm impacts (Altieri, et al., 2015). But the ways in which farmers like Besosa

have taken the lessons learned from the hurricane in stride, and implemented corresponding

contingency plans, illustrate the willingness and need for farmers to engage with the realities of a

worst case-scenario and adapt their practices accordingly.

Even beyond the risks of extreme climate, practices cultivating healthy soils and

increasing biodiversity help farms fend off the more insidious effects of climate change.

Intercropping systems, for example, reduce risk of complete yield loss in the case of pests or

diseases, which are anticipated to increase in frequency and impact (IPCC, 2019). Furthermore,

given migrating climate, having crops that are well adapted to local contexts but also resilient to

changes in temperatures (especially when it comes to extremes) is crucial, because as the globe

warms and weather patterns shift latitudinally, pests, diseases and weeds shift with them. The

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presence of well-established polycultures ensures that these pests and weeds have less niches to

occupy, and as such also serve to reduce their impact (Gliessman, 2014).

Resilience and… decolonization?

In Puerto Rico and other places that were victims of colonization, food sovereignty

movements often go hand in hand with rhetoric around decolonization. It is no mystery, and is in

fact well documented within food studies scholarship, that many of the problems with the current

conventional food system find their roots in processes of colonization and capital accumulation.

Even as countries are able to move beyond plantation agriculture and “take charge” of their local

production, their activities are constrained by international trade and neoliberalization (Sam and

Raj, 2015). The structural adjustment policies of the 1980’s promoted a development agenda that

was imposed on the global south by western developed countries. This development, however,

was predicated on the erosion of public services. In the case of agriculture, production was often

corralled by phytosanitary standards that farmers had to meet in order to be competitive in

international commodity markets (Black, 2001). More often than not, countries were forced to

remove trade barriers and tariffs, which allowed for subsidized US food items to flood their

markets (Black, 2001).

Now, food sovereignty must contend with these various forms of neocolonialism, which

is why self-determination of food ways is at the center of how movement participants imagine

their resistance. Within this resistance, decolonization is a common theme of discussion. It

happens across different scales and through both material and discursive practices. The

decolonization itself seems to take shape in the attitudes of participants more so than the specific

practices. For example, a farmer that is using agroecological practices like water harvesting or

composting need not automatically be seen through a lens of decolonization. However, when the

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actions are carried out dialectically, through an understanding that both water harvesting and

composting enable farmers to reclaim the means of production from a corporate system, then

decolonization is present in the extent to which the action represents a challenge to the status

quo. Such actions, however, must be critical and relational. They cannot be decolonial if they

only aim to provide an alternative that does not challenge the status quo of the system. They

cannot be decolonial if they do not consider the health of farmworkers, community members,

and the resounding impacts throughout the food system. They must necessarily be politically

embedded. Otherwise, they fall into the all too common trap of neoliberalization and work

alongside but not against processes of capital accumulation (Wright & Middendorf 2008;

Heynen, 2009; Lyson, 2007).

A lot of the scholarship that ties decolonization to food sovereignty is predicated on the

experience of indigenous knowledge. In North America, indigenous communities like the

Haudenosaunee have explicit values around sustainability and stewardship of the earth. Their

cosmology demands that they think seven years into the future, and that their relationship with

the land is dialectical and not based on domination (Environmental Symposium, 2020). This

cosmology dictates their notion of food sovereignty (which some indigenous activists contest

over the etymology of sovereignty meaning “ultimate domination”) and calls for land to be

delinked from capitalist modes of exploitation (Sam and Raj, 2015; Hoover, 2019).

In Puerto Rico despite the lack of formal indigenous communities, farmers and other

activists are directly confronting their colonial realities through a host of strategies. Some of

these are evident in their direct participation in the political life of the island. In 2017, when the

Financial Management and Oversight Board (La Junta) was set to take over management of the

island’s finances, Organización Boricuá hosted what they called an “Agroecological

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Encampment for Political Formation” (Laedlein, 2017). There, over a series of days, they

discussed how agroecology fit into a model of resistance against the current system. They also

created visual displays to draw attention to the importance of agriculture, through a roadside

garden they called “Garden of Resistance.” The member’s commitment to the political life of the

island is also evident in the fact that many of its participants, crucially the members of Huerta

Semilla, were involved in protests against the Fiscal control board and against the defunding of

the university in 2010/11. For some farmers, these social protests actually drove their desire to

turn to agriculture as an alternative form of subsistence that severed their dependence on

corporate food. This was the case for Josué Lopez of the family farm La Jungla, in Orocovis.

When I asked him why he left his bachelors to pursue farming as a profession he responded,

“this, for me, is creating Nation”. (Personal Communication, December 17, 2018).

Implicit in Josué’s statement is a series of value judgements that he elaborated on upon

later visits. He’s clear that farming, for him, is about more than generating profit. His farm serves

as a means of sustenance for his family and as a sort of occasional experimentation lab in the

process of developing an agricultural body of knowledge that is based on the Puerto Rican

agrarian experience. His mind is looking towards the future. He hopes to develop a collective

with surrounding farmers, even a small shop in Orocovis proper, where the community can

easily access quality goods and where farmers can have a central point in which to organize their

solidarity work (Personal Communication, July 24, 2019).

In talking to him other aspects of colonization become clear. He mentions how many of

his decisions on-farm are driven by the market, and how the market itself is heavily influenced

by outside expectations. For example, he mentions the year-long demand for fresh salad greens,

despite the fact that salad greens are much more susceptible to pests and diseases during the too-

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hot summer months. As such, he hopes to promote more traditional and hearty crops that are

more resilient to the climate, a sentiment that Ian Pagán of El Josco Bravo echoes (Personal

Communication, 2019).

Other farmers, like Daniella Besosa, think of the process of decolonization as a steady

domino effect of sovereignty. Seed sovereignty, she says, can lead to food sovereignty, which

can lead to water sovereignty, energy sovereignty, and other forms of decentralizing existence

and breaking with external dependence (Personal Communication, July 16, 2019).

The food sovereignty movement on the island also explicitly critiques modes of corporate

domination. Organización Boricuá, together with student activists and other concerned citizens,

expressed their solidarity with other social movements with a clear enemy, such as the Nada

Santo Sobre Monsanto (Nothing Saintly about Monsanto) group. Hundreds, if not thousands of

protestors took to the streets to show their discontent at the purchase that seed companies like

Bayer and Syngenta have on the island and implored the government to kick them to the curb.

The protest was able to leverage its discontent at the corporatization of agriculture while also

highlighting potential alternatives, and did so by ending the march at the Cooperative Madre

Tierra market, where consumers were able to support local farmers and engage in discussions

around the future of agriculture (Inter News Service, 2017).

In recognition that public demonstrations are not enough to effect change, activists also

engage in other strategies. Boricuá, again, provides a great example through their development of

an alternative organic certification scheme, which recognizes the lack of accessibility of the

USDA certification for many small-scale farmers on the island. Their certification is created

democratically through conversations with local farmers, and as such represents the interests of

the people who would be impacted (Boricua, n.d.). Another decolonial aspect of this resistance

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mentality is the explicit attempt to include those who are left behind by the way the system

operates. During my fieldwork in 2019, various grant writing workshops were offered

throughout the island with the goal of capacity-building for farmers (Adiestramiento

Introductorio, pictured below). With the way that agricultural funds are handled, farmers can

apply to receive money from the government to purchase machinery, build infrastructure, or

address other on-farm needs. However, allocation of that money depends on the ability of

farmers to write grant applications that are able to compete with those of big businesses or

conventional farmers that already have an in with government officials. By creating workshops

and taking these workshops to the specific villages that host farming communities, activists hope

to democratize access to those government funds. Such efforts are spreading into certain

institutional bodies like the extension services in certain municipalities, which represents a big

win for the movement (Extension Agrícola Yabucoa, 2019).

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Poster from The Extension Service offering workshops on grant proposal writing. (Extension Service,

2019)

Finally, the food sovereignty movement in Puerto Rico is characterized by deep and

extensive ties with other organizations abroad. So much of resistance depends on collective

action, and Puero Ricans are creating a transnational network of allies across the Americas.

Queer Kitchen Brigade out of New York State, for example, was instrumental in fundraising and

organizing food aid packages in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane. In early 2020, a group

of delegates from a newly formed agroecological youth collective in Puerto Rico went to

participate in a weeklong series of workshops hosted by Soulfire farm in New York State

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(Personal Communication, 2019). Soulfire farm workshops are structured around agricultural

capacity building with a focus on social justice and uprooting racism (Soulfire Farms, n.d.). By

participating, delegates from Puerto Rico reinforced their ties and also acquired strategies to keep

pushing the ideological grounds of the movement on the island. A different group of delegates

also travelled to a food sovereignty summit in South America, where they were able to network

directly with representatives and participants of La Vía Campesina and other grassroots

organizations.

Discussion:

The beginning of this chapter presented two alternative food organizations working to

change some aspect of food production in Puerto Rico, with the aim of making it more

sustainable. As was discussed, the aims and ways in which these organizations garnered

community support was instrumental in determining whether they would withstand the test of

time. The Fed, after facing various obstacles which included natural disaster, disappeared, while

APARI remains active to this day because it was better able to work with the community and fill

a gap that was not being met by other organizations. To be sure, there are other collectives and

individuals working to address issues within the food system, from working conditions to

organic agriculture, but not all of these operate within the discourses of food sovereignty that this

paper focuses on.

The sample of people that made up my fieldwork does identify with the discourse of food

sovereignty. They use or support agroecology as a means to establish more sustainable

agriculture on the island. Beyond just being food movement advocates in their own right, the

ways in which these different actors participate in the food system is important because it is

politically embedded. The projects they have devised work to ensure environmental health, but

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also address social and political needs. They have created loci, such as farmers markets,

restaurantes, and other consumer supported ventures, that exist alongside conventional markets,

and obligatorily work through the structures of capitalism. However, they have also devised

networks, workshops, and programs that work to directly support farmers through solidarity

work, without the aim of generating profit. Finally, they have participated in movements and

political projects meant to directly challenge negative agricultural policies and suggest

alternative courses of action. The political participation from food sovereignty advocates also

extends to other areas of social and political contention, such as access to essential services,

education, or calls to audit the island’s debt. These interconnections were evident throughout my

interviews, as some farmers and activists talked about their political involvement through strikes

hand-in-hand with their agricultural work.

The framework that I propose above, of producers and promoters, serves as a bouncing

board to understand how the food sovereignty movement organizes itself on the ground. No

movement would be successful if every participant did the same task; rather, movements must

make use of their participant’s strengths to advance their cause through various avenues (Porta &

Diani, 2006; Ortiz, 2002). By examining some aspects of what is involved on the production side

of the food sovereignty movement, it is clear that farmers are taking environmental relationships

into account and delivering ‘products’ (food) that consumers can feel good about supporting. The

promoters, whether through education or the establishment of markets, ensure that more people

become interested and aware of what is going on with Puerto Rican agriculture. They are often

successful in getting consumers to embrace the power they hold through their ability to show up

to protests, support farmers, and demand that governmental institutions (like in San Juan) meet

their need for fresh, healthy, local food.

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The hurricanes in 2017, most poignantly María, provide the perfect window through

which to conceptualize the dire need for a food movement that values environmental and social

health. The concerns of international institutions like the IPCC about the threat of climate change

to agriculture come to bear almost painfully on the island. And yet, because the farmers who

make up this movement use agroecological practices that value soil health, diversity, and water

management, after the hurricane it became clear that their farms were more resilient and able to

recuperate production. Here, again, the framework of promoters and producers comes to bear,

because despite agroecological farms receiving ‘less’ damage from the hurricane, it was only

through networks of solidarity that they were able to rebuild so speedily.

The hurricane also gave local visibility to the movement, and in the recuperation process

new projects have sprung up that align themselves with the values of the food sovereignty

movement: democratization of knowledge and resources, solidarity, and the right to self

determination. The recuperation from the hurricane is complicated by ongoing crises on the

island, but as these ideas gain momentum it will be interesting to see how (or if) the people of

Puerto Rico mobilize and organize themselves to demand a government that is more accountable

to the people and economies that honor the health of the land and of communities.

In the following (final) chapter, we will see briefly how the food sovereignty movement

fits in and responds to other structural issues, as part of a wider response to the legacy of

colonialism on the island.

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Chapter 4: Conclusion

In this thesis, I set out to understand how the food sovereignty movement is addressing

the food crisis in Puerto Rico in a post-hurricane context. With so many articles speaking of

resilience, of a food revolution or an agricultural renaissance, I wanted to know how these groups

of activists and farmers were able to organize themselves to establish farms that seemed to

withstand destruction and serve as hubs for community. To do so, I employed a lens that

considered the intersections of colonization, agroecology and food sovereignty, resilience, and

climate change.

Colonization is important to the story of agriculture in Puerto Rico because the direct

domination by external powers and the legacy of it determined how agriculture was organized on

the island. It created widespread structural inequality, and a food crisis characterized by import

dependence and a rupture with traditional foodways. The food sovereignty movement responds

to this history. It attempts to reclaim the people’s agency over the food they consume, from the

very selection of crops to how it is produced. Agroecology serves as a tool for production within

the food sovereignty discourse that honors traditional knowledge and ecosystem relationships.

Both in Puerto Rico and abroad, agroecological approaches have been proven to be more

resilient to pests and disturbance than conventional agriculture systems (Altieri, 2009). This

system resilience is crucial for an island like Puerto Rico, which faces increased risk of extreme

climate events such as the hurricanes of 2017. Agroecology helps mitigate and adapt to the

effects of climate change by establishing farming systems that are materially well suited to

bounce back. However, because in Puerto Rico these agroecological practices are being

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leveraged through a food sovereignty framework, they are coupled with dense social networks

that can be mobilized to the aid of farmers and communities across the island.

This framework offers a context through which to study and a motivation to bolster the

activities of the food sovereignty movement on the island. I focused specifically on how the

dense social networks of the food sovereignty movement are organized and proposed a

“producers and promoters” lens to categorize the different activities of the movement in the

island. Within it, producers are those who are actually using agroecology to tend the land and

establish farms for local production. Promoters are educators, activists, lawyers, administrators,

or anyone else who is involved in giving visibility or expanding the reach of agroecology outside

of the farm. Sometimes producers and promoters are one and the same, as is the case for Ian

Pagán of El Josco Bravo and the team at Plenitud, who both produce and lead workshops on their

farms. Overall, the aim of the movement is to create a foodscape that honors traditional food and

farming practices by both producing the food and creating space for this food to compete with

conventional foodways. Doing so, however, also involves interplay with other movements and

struggles on the island, from gender violence to demanding basic services. This was evidenced

through the cross-participation of food sovereignty advocates in other realms of political activity,

especially through the protests that periodically take center stage on the island. The work ahead

for advocates of food sovereignty is long, but headway is being made through a diversity of

avenues.

Intersections of action and visibility

On October 4, 2019, two years after Hurricane María scoured the island of Puerto Rico,

the Extension service, led by Agronomists Luis R. Santiago and Luis G. Sierra, offered a

workshop to 45 public school teachers on garden establishment and maintenance. The workshop

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addressed growing techniques, but also centered around discussions of food security,

environmental stewardship, and the importance of solidarity (Informe Agrícola, 2019). The

program echoes many of the goals of Red Conucos, a virtual network of teachers supporting each

other to establish school gardens. Red Conucos provides online curricula developed by the newly

established Sustainable Agriculture department at the Utuado campus of the UPR (Red Conucos,

2019). However, coming from the extension service, this initiative is a testament to the ways in

which sustainable agriculture has infiltrated, albeit slowly, the realm of governmental

institutions. The themes the workshops were organized around also point to the growing

legitimacy of sustainable agriculture and food sovereignty. Projects like these represent small

wins for the people, who for years have had to contend with a government that has sought self-

interest above the needs of the population.

The Board of Professors Self-Assembled in Solidarity Resistance (PARES), a group of

university professors that came together after the hurricane to hold discussions around disaster

capitalism, said it best in their foreword to Naomi Klein’s book, The Battle For Paradise: “What

concerned us was not only the enormous physical damage caused by the storm, but also the

intensification of neoliberal policies to come.” They continue, “We wanted to denounce the

exploitation of Hurricane María to promote widely rejected neoliberal policies that undermine

our country’s well-being, especially that of our most vulnerable inhabitants. These policies will

limit access to basic rights such as water, electricity, and housing, and will destroy our

environment, health and democracy, as well as our economic stability” (Klein, 2018: Foreword).

Klein’s book is a result of these discussions, a poignant account of just how these

neoliberal policies, culminating in the establishment of the Financial Oversight and Management

Board (the Junta), are putting the interests of US bondholders and greedy politicians before the

77

needs of the Puerto Rican people. Klein expertly (and savagely) calls out the government’s use

of the well-known “shock doctrine.” In Puerto Rico, measures looked like this: following a

fiscal crisis in 2006, attempts at boosting the economy included illegal borrowing through triple

tax exempt bonds, which resulted in over $73 billion in debt, a “state of emergency” in which

thousands were laid off, and, ultimately, the establishment of the Junta in 2016, which imposed

strict austerity measures that affected, among other things, public education (Klein, 2018).

This context is important not just because it names the abuses to the Puerto Rican people,

but because it fueled, in various sectors, widespread outcry across the island: a two month strike

at the university to protest budget and campus cuts and a massive protest on May 1st to audit the

debt (Klein, 2018). When the hurricane hit the island in November, everyone’s condition was

exacerbated. After the shock of the storm started to clear, however, an already angry population

turned to the government, both local and federal, for help. But the help didn’t come. Warehouses

full of supplies remained shut, to be found years later (Martinez & McNamara, 2019), and rural

residents remained cut off from essential services for months (Robles & Bidgood, 2017). The

energy that fueled the protests earlier that year and in fall of 2016 came back, now in a different

form. All across the island, people discovered that the government would not respond to their

needs, so they had to work towards the future together.

This energy gave birth to JuntaGente, a collective of non-profit organizations across

different sectors banding together to have discussions about decolonization and other pertinent

issues. Prominent among the organizations that take part are Boricuá, other collectives trying to

push for agroecology, unions and associations of University Professors, Public Health Educators,

women’s rights activists, and the Partido Pueblo Trabajador (Workers Party). In their manifesto,

JuntaGente calls for action to ensure adequate housing for all, a sustainable food system with less

78

waste, alternative energy programs, an end to violence against women and LGBTQ folks, among

others (JuntaGente, 2018). Though the panels and activity from JuntaGente died down in 2019,

the very articulation of these goals, together, is significant. For people to join, each from

different sectors, to articulate goals for a shared future is powerful, and points to the ways in

which living with dignity on the island of Puerto Rico necessitates accountability and action. The

manifesto from JuntaGente called for agroecology as a guide for a new Puerto Rican agriculture,

and for sustainable housing and energy projects to be developed in ways that consider mitigation

and adaptation to climate change (JuntaGente, 2018).

Of course, Food Sovereignty movements in Latin America and abroad already recognize

the intersections of injustice that give rise to the need for new agricultural and livelihood models.

La Vía Campesina denounces all different forms of colonialism, and continues to articulate

strategies and grassroots projects for campesinos, jibaros (the Puerto Rican equivalent of peasant

workers), and allies to participate in as a challenge to corporate-led development (La Vía

Campesina, n.d.). What is happening in Puerto Rico is another iteration of this, standing in

solidarity with a worldwide network of activists. This network was highlighted in the post-María

context, and as Josué from Finca La Jungla said in our interview, agroecology and food

sovereignty are the tools and discourses that activists and farmers are using to come together in

order to build a nation.

Throughout this project, I set out to understand the motivations and participants of the

food sovereignty and agroecology movement in Puerto Rico. I wanted to understand the different

strategies that were at play in the process of giving visibility to a movement that has been

ongoing on the island for over 30 years. Furthermore, I wanted to explain how these agricultural

processes responded to and resisted a history of colonization, and how, in moving forward, they

79

were presenting models that could breed resilience in the face of climate change, both socially

and ecologically.

What I discovered was that in situating themselves as a political entity, food sovereignty

proponents are connected to and active in spaces where other activists are grappling with

questions about what it looks like to demand an equitable, safe future for the people of Puerto

Rico and the environment. Food, then, occupying its rightful place as an essential necessity,

becomes a powerful tool, especially when it is denied. With Hurricane María, farmers that

practice agroecology were able to prove to their communities that these alternative farming

methods will sustain them even when no one else will. The hurricane created an opening where

the value of the farmers' resources, in this case their knowledge, increased at the same time that

the government’s discursive power decreased and it lost legitimacy in the eyes of many (Ganz,

2012).

Much of the popular media that covered agroecology and food sovereignty within Puerto

Rico in the aftermath of hurricane María focused on certain projects and statistics. Publications

like Vox, the New York Times, CivilEats and The Guardian (Graf, 2019; Halpuch, 2018;

Resnick & Barclay, 2017; Gies, 2018; Holtz-Gimenez, 2018) all featured articles about Puerto

Rico’s agricultural resurgence, about the solidarity brigades that became so emblematic of the

post-María recovery, or about the history of colonialism that had led to the islands current state

of disarray (to put it mildly). Such articles, however, and even the Food Sovereignty prize

presented to Organización Boricuá for their recovery efforts (Holz-Gimenez, 2018; Vía

Campesina, 2018), fail to truly highlight the various layers of involvement that make such a

movement possible.

80

The promotion and production model I’ve presented in my empirical section is an attempt

to address all the different ends of the food sovereignty movement and see how they come

together to address those initial themes I outlined: decolonization, climate change, resilience. By

understanding the work of different organizations or individuals as producers within the

movement, I think we can come closer to an understanding of the ways in which knowledge and

material goods are created and disseminated. Throughout the thesis, I have understood

agroecology as a material tool in the toolbox of food sovereignty, which, as has been established,

is a discourse that encompasses much more than just the presence of food, and gets at questions

about what we owe each other and the land, and how, as a collective, we can reclaim the

resources and modes of learning that suit us best.

The work of the producers is essential because it serves as a testament to the theories of

agroecology, and as a productive alternative in Puerto Rico. The calls from scientific bodies like

the IPCC about the need for agricultural alternatives as the effects of climate change increase is

answered here: this way of producing food yields results, it supports people through crises, and it

cares for the land so that it may sustain us for years to come. The work of promoters, though, is

also crucial. They help develop collective consciousness to rally support for agroecological

farmers, but also to engender a whole new generation of food activists. Promoters that amplify

the value of seeds and traditional foodways, that hold panels about techniques and about how to

access resources, that build networks to enable people to connect across space and time— they

contribute to the necessary work of “decolonizing the mind,” through which the citizens of

Puerto Rico learn to start asking for the future they want as opposed to settling for the present

that is dealt to them.

81

Future Directions

This initial exploration of the food sovereignty movement is part of the work of

promotion. Though media coverage has been effective in shining a light on what is happening on

the island, the scholarship that studies food sovereignty in Puerto Rico is scarce. This work is

complicated by a lack of quantitative data and adequate promotion from the department of

Agriculture, both on the island and in the US mainland (Gonzales, 2019). As such, this thesis

should stand as an invitation for others to celebrate and honor this tradition of resistance by,

among other things, granting it the legitimacy it deserves so that activists can leverage their

arguments with some of the tools institutions have tried to rob them of. The movement lends

itself to more study, though it is heartening to see that in the development of this very thesis,

studies about post-María agriculture in Puerto Rico have started to surface (McCune, et al. 2019;

Diaz & Hunsberger, 2018). Let’s keep them coming.

As for the movement itself, there is much work to do. In talking to farmers and teachers,

some common requests arise. The first is for a centralized facility to do agroecological

composting. Having good soil is a prerequisite for growing healthy food, and agroecological

farmers recognize that, although the ideal is to create it yourself, sustainable suppliers that are

able to bolster waste-reduction cycles on the island are in dire need. Such a facility would enable

consumers throughout the island to reduce the amount of organic waste they produce and would

serve as an essential resource for larger growers.

Accessible knowledge, too, is in high demand. Though hands-on programs have been

started and are popular around the island, little literature exists about doing agroecology in

Puerto Rico. In 2019, Plenitud published its first guide on agroecological biointensive

harvesting, which serves as an invitation for interested people to learn what it takes to start their

82

own gardens or farms. Another notable example is “La Tierra Viva” a collaborative manual by

Manuel Alonso Febles (1993) about agroecology and traditional agriculture in Puerto Rico.

These books do not just serve as knowledge troves on how to care for a farm in the distinct

climate and soils of Puerto Rico, but also do a lot of the heavy lifting of creating knowledge and

awareness of decentralized agroecological projects and resources across the island. We need

more resources like these, so that the agroecology we practice on decolonized land is not one

prescribed by northern climates.

Beyond what the food sovereignty movement can accomplish on its own, Puerto Ricans

need more from their government. The workshop highlighted above, on sustainable growing

techniques for the establishment of school gardens, is a step, but is not a big enough one. There

has to be an institutional push for the revaluing of traditional agricultural knowledge, and an

influx of government funds to struggling farmers so that they can subsist on more than earnings

from bi-monthly farmers markets and food stamps. Agroecological farms need to be highlighted

on the department of agriculture’s website, and new categories have to be created for the

agriculture census to account for small farms using alternative techniques.

Finally, I want to highlight that, as Daniella Besosa said in our interview, this struggle is

really about different sovereignties. It’s about food, and seeds, and energy, and housing, and

about working in collectivity to ensure that these rights are shared by all.

83

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