Getting started

After an amazing ten days of travel from Boulder to Brasília, I arrived at my parents' home, where I lived while growing up, and already on the following day I met with Sérgio Sauer, who was very friendly and extremely helpful to me. We talked for over three hours about where I've come from, what I am doing, and where I am going, and all the while he taught me much about what has been taking place in our country, how academia works around here, and many important things about our struggles for agrarian reform. The most exciting thing I took from this first personal exchange is the awareness that there is a space into which I can move through my own work. Agroecology is hardly developed in the Center-West (my own region in our vast country), and where it is developed, it remains focused on the natural science end of the deal. There is an important lack and need, therefore, for theoretical articulations of this praxis/concept that can relate it to our struggles for land. I was surprised to find that, among those who advocate agrarian reform, there has been a not-too-fruitful debate over whether the terms "small farmer" or "peasant" should be promoted in opposition to the increasingly hegemonic role of *agribusiness* in Brazil. Our traditional agrarian reform debate charged the "latifúndio" (akin to "plantation", but with the connotation of lands unused for productive activities, but still maintained by its supposed owners as reserves of value or wealth) with being unproductive, and demanded the expropriation of its unproductive portions and redistribution for the small family farmers, peasants, or landless populations. With the advancement of industrialization into the countryside, agribusinesses began to employ hitherto un- or underused land for the production of agricultural commodities, through massive, mechanized, highly energy and chemical input dependent monocultures, geared towards export. The large landowning class and its enmeshed industrialist (and financial and bureaucratic) elites have been attempting to dismiss, therefore, the arguments for the necessity of agrarian reform, claiming that since the latifúndia are no longer the foundation of our rural economy, demands for agrarian reform are misguided, anachronistic, and plain old counterproductive for the economic development of the country. The employ their control of/alliance with major media to promote an image of the agribusiness as "modern" because of its employment of industrial technologies and as "efficient" because of its massive production of commodities through large scale monocultures. Against these, some say, it is difficult to promote the image of "small farmers" who seem inefficient, or "peasants" who seem anything-but-modern. Proponents of the latter charge advocates of the former for employing a term that does not, itself, differentiate between capitalist and non-capitalist modes of production (since, after all, a small farmer could still produce commodities for a market, or food for her communities). In turn, proponents of the former charge advocates of the latter for employing a term that seems simply unable to win for itself the good-making-quality labels of "modernity" etc. Here is where I find my own niche: an articulation of *agroecology* that is able to break out of the natural science boundaries in which such praxis/concept has been coined sidesteps this entire debate, employing a term that is both "modernistic" in its "green" appeal (in addition to being a neologism imported from English, which serves precisely the desired purposes on debate) and also directly conflicting with the agribusiness practice of subjecting all considerations (not only social but also ecological) to the capitalist goal of profit-maximization. Its "logic" is precisely that of the small peasant famers, but it is more than a "good label" with pragmatic appeal for the same thing under dispute: in fact, agroecology necessarily ties the broader socio-economic-ecological context of peasant agriculture to the particular terms in which our Constitution demands the expropriation of land for purposes of agrarian reform. That is, instead of entering into debates about the productivity of agricultural production (the only terms in which any land has been expropriated so far in the 20 years of our Constitutional demand), which is precisely the terms in which the proponents of agribusiness attempt to promote their own cause, the shift towards agroecology highlights the social and ecological preconditions of ownership of property (including in land) regardless of its productivity (or lack thereof). In a way, the "modern" agribusinesses should be even easier to expropriate *in agroecological terms* than the old latifúndia, since the latter at least let the land lie fallow and refrained from infusing it with toxic agrochemicals and wasting the soil with industrialized irrigation and/or erosion from overproduction. And here is the last, and perhaps most important, niche into which I am already setting myself on the move: the SOCIAL FUNCTION of property, including the social function of land. Our Constitution ascertains that all property rights can only be valid in so far as the property in question fulfills its social function (Article 5). However, the Constitution hardly spells out what this means, save in terms of the social function of land, where the focus remains on the productivity of the land (as explained above). Hence, the vast majority of discussions about the concept of the social function of property remain limited to legalese back-and-forth-ing in extremely limited circles of Constitutional scholars and attorneys. There is a lack and need for more philosophical/political articulations of the concept of social function, in order for its articulation to further imbue a praxis of democratic regulation of property relations such as, of course, the expropriation of those would-be-properties that cannot-be-private-property because they fail to fulfill their social function. This is where I come in, this is what I am setting myself up to do, and this is likely going to be the basis for a dissertation of mine (if I do end up taking on such a task for myself). In the meantime, however, I have been finishing a short essay for oral presentation at our national bioethics conference this September on "Agroecology or Agribusiness?", arguing briefly, as I did far more fully in my thesis in Colorado, that these alternatives are ultimately a matter of "Revolution of Genocide!" The essay was submitted today, and I would be quite disappointed if it is not accepted into the conference. (My mother helped me write the essay in Portuguese, since my abilities with spelling and grammar are, how do I put it, hardly better than the 8th grade level at which I stopped formal studies in Portuguese... The cool thing, then, is that I'll now have a co-authorship with my mom!) Now I'm also starting to translate some sections of my thesis for publication in Portuguese journals, and tomorrow or next week Sérgio is going with me to the MST encampment here at the capital to introduce me to the folks of the Movement. They are here to demand the release or some 800 million Reais the State had promised for the agrarian reform settlements already won, as well as the settlement of millions more landless peasants who are encamped throughout the country. On Monday morning, Sérgio is also taking me to Planaltina (one of the satellite cities around Brasília, where he teaches) to meet other folk who work with, research and promote our land struggles. Things are well on their way, then, for my own participation in our common struggle and search for our Promised Land. That is why I've named this blog accordingly, and if you, my friend, are reading this now, then the purpose of this writing is fulfilled. So many of you, dear friends, said to me you wanted me to keep you posted on my work while we are apart, and I will do my best to update this with some regularity, highlighting at least the important developments pertinent to my life of such interest. I hope you all are well too, loving this beautiful life of ours and advancing strongly in your own paths towards our common goal!