PUERTO RICO: AGROECOLOGY, FOOD SOVEREIGNTY AND THE 2012 ELECTIONS

Photos: J. Burgos/Cooperativa Organica Madre Tierra

Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero
November 1 2012

Last month, University of Puerto Rico (UPR) students and faculty hosted an forum with the six gubernatorial candidates running for election in the upcoming November 6 elections, in which they presented and debated their proposals for the nation’s agriculture. The activity, which took place at the UPR Law School, was organized by the National Environmental Law Association (ANDA) and the Agriculture Students Associaton (AEA).   

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Puerto Rican voters who advocate food sovereignty and agroecology have very little to look for in the upcoming elections. None of the six parties are critical of industrial conventional agriculture in any real way, and none of them present any fundamentally new way of looking at farming and its connection to sustainability. By heaping praise on ecological agriculture and sustainable alternatives without rejecting the dominant toxic, corporate-dominated, business-as-usual model that exacerbates biodiversity erosion and global warming and perpetuates hunger, they sell the fantasy that both models are compatible and can coexist without any major conflict or controversy.

In the photo: Rafael Bernabe, Rogelio Figueroa and Luis Vega-Ramos