Hannah Wittman

Agroecology is both a practical agricultural science that mimics ecological functions to enhance and protect the integrity of agroecosystems and a political movement of grassroots actors, including women, rural peasants, and Indigenous farmers. Agroecological transitions aim to address localized issues of food insecurity, ecological and biodiversity crises, the legacies of slavery and colonialism, and the privatization and concentration of agricultural land. We are part of a research collaborative, Agroecología en Latinoamérica: Construyendo Caminos, working closely with the Ecuadorian Movement for Social and Solidarity Economy and the Andean agroecological collective, Ayllu Kurikancha, to explore how agroecological practices intersect with individual and collective well-being. This project involves storytelling and theorization from collaborator-participants through a feminist, decolonial, and relational research methodology. Project collaborators characterize agroecology as a way of life and set of conditions that facilitate well-being through “good relations,” putting into practice the prefigurative politics of Ayllu Kurikancha in shaping sustainable and equitable futures on the land for generations to come. This vision of relational well-being is tied to a narrative of autonomy and freedom which makes agroecology a desirable way of life. The lifeways shared here offer “possibility models” for transitioning toward a future of well-being for humans and nature through agroecological practices.

Crop diversification plays a central role in agricultural sustainability transitions, which require not only ecological innovation but also economic viability at the farm level. Despite robust evidence of ecological benefits, the socioeconomic implications of diversification remain insufficiently examined. This study analyzes the economic performance of crop diversification and community-supported agriculture (CSA) schemes in small-scale horticultural systems in Northern Patagonia, Argentina. Drawing on detailed production and marketing data from three farms and using a participatory action research (PAR) approach, we simulated farm performance with the Profit Impact Simulator for Horticultural Farms, a framework that calculates profitability based on the temporal dynamics of cash flow. We modeled three crop portfolio scenarios—a highly diversified system (BES1, 35 crops), a moderately diversified system (BES2, 6 crops), and a low-diversity system (BES3, 3 crops)—and identified a systematic diversification gradient: profit rates decline from 409% (BES1) to 347% (BES2) to 239% (BES3). This gradient is driven not by differences in end-of-cycle revenues but by the temporal structure of cash flows each portfolio generates: in highly diversified systems, short-cycle crops generate early income that offsets the financing needs of longer-cycle crops, reducing committed capital and increasing capital efficiency. CSA participation further improved financial viability, reducing committed capital by 24% and raising the profit rate from 409% to 519%. These findings suggest that diversification and consumer-based financing are complementary strategies that enhance liquidity stability and reduce dependence on external credit, with important implications for smallholder economic sustainability and sustainable food system transitions.

Farmers and agri-food movements are responding to rapidly changing trends related to digitalization and datafication in agriculture. However, there is a lack of consensus on the potential of common ‘best practices’ to resolve agricultural data governance challenges and achieve data justice. To explore these complex dynamics, we present analysis from 40 workshops, conferences, and community dialogue events related to digital agricultural technologies and data governance between 2020 and 2023, involving the participation of farmers, farming organizations, government policy and programs staff, civil society, and academic researchers. We use a data justice lens to reorient the treatment of data governance challenges and approaches. We apply multiple dimensions of justice to examine the power relations and capabilities of diverse agri-food system actors to navigate the changing landscape of agricultural datafication. We find that many common practices in agricultural data governance have fundamental limitations to achieving data justice. Overcoming these limitations will require structural change, including new laws and regulatory frameworks, novel governance structures, capacity building, and solidarity across movements.

Agricultural simplification continues to expand at the expense of more diverse forms of agriculture. This simplification, for example, in the form of intensively managed monocultures, poses a risk to keeping the world within safe and just Earth system boundaries. Here, we estimated how agricultural diversification simultaneously affects social and environmental outcomes. Drawing from 24 studies in 11 countries across 2655 farms, we show how five diversification strategies focusing on livestock, crops, soils, noncrop plantings, and water conservation benefit social (e.g., human well-being, yields, and food security) and environmental (e.g., biodiversity, ecosystem services, and reduced environmental externalities) outcomes. We found that applying multiple diversification strategies creates more positive outcomes than individual management strategies alone. To realize these benefits, well-designed policies are needed to incentivize the adoption of multiple diversification strategies in unison.

Food sovereignty movements emerged in the 1990s as a global constellation of struggles against the corporate food regime. Here, we propose a radically relational ‘sites, stakes, and scales' framework for analyzing food sovereignty mobilization, adopting a flat ontology that considers both actual and potential relations. ‘Sites' refer to the actually existing relations between actors engaged in a social struggle; ‘stakes' are dynamic interests that change as relations in the site change, and ‘scales’ capture how potential relations, such as relative social locations, can become actual relations, reconfiguring the site and stakes involved over space and time. We apply the framework to the work of CEPAGRO, a Brazilian agroecology NGO, tracing mobilizations from rural agroecological transitions, to urban agroecology, to building settler-Indigenous relations of solidarity. The ‘sites, stakes and scales’ framework provides a relatively simple set of concepts to explore how social movement mobilizations change over time and across contexts.

Agroecological transitions aim to redesign the structure of contemporary global food systems to improve food security, ecosystem health, community development, worker livelihoods, and social and ecological justice. A fundamental principle of agroecology is the responsible governance of land. Yet land—as a concept, resource, and territory—is heavily contested through processes of colonization, enclosure, commodification, and financialization. The governance of land and natural resources is also intimately tied to questions of power and privilege—Who governs land? Who benefits, and who is excluded? These questions presuppose an ontological understanding of land that can also be contested: What is land, what purpose(s) does it serve, and for whom? In this article, we review key concepts at the intersection of land governance and agroecology. We take a case study approach to highlight how tensions around ontologies of land mediate agroecological futures in 2 settler-colonial contexts: Brazil and Canada. We then explore how land governance for agroecology might be experienced and understood across different land governance institutions—including relational and community commons, private property regimes, and new forms of hybrid land relations that challenge land privatization. We discuss how these land regimes influence people, landscapes, and agroecological outcomes and conclude with a consideration of the access, equity, and justice implications of different land governance approaches for sustainable food systems.

Summary: The extent of intraspecific variation in trait–environment relationships is an open question with limited empirical support in crops. In organic agriculture, with high environmental heterogeneity, this knowledge could guide breeding programs to optimize crop attributes. We propose a three‐dimensional framework involving crop performance, crop traits, and environmental axes to uncover the multidimensionality of trait–environment relationships within a crop. We modeled instantaneous photosynthesis (A_sat) and water‐use efficiency (WUE) as functions of four phenotypic traits, three soil variables, five carrot (Daucus carota) varieties, and their interactions in a national participatory plant breeding program involving a suite of farms across Canada. We used these interactions to describe the resulting 12 trait–environment relationships across varieties. We found one significant trait–environment relationship for A_sat (taproot tissue density–soil phosphorus), which was consistent across varieties. For WUE, we found that three relationships (petiole diameter–soil nitrogen, petiole diameter–soil phosphorus, and leaf area–soil phosphorus) varied significantly across varieties. As a result, WUE was maximized by different combinations of trait values and soil conditions depending on the variety. Our three‐dimensional framework supports the identification of functional traits behind the differential responses of crop varieties to environmental variation and thus guides breeding programs to optimize crop attributes from an eco‐evolutionary perspective.