Each One Teach One Agroecology Encounter & School

Through Rural Vermont’s membership with the National Family Farm Coalition (NFFC), we have been a member organization of La Via Campesina as long as it has been present in North America. La Via Campesina is the global movement of peasant agriculturalists numbering in the hundreds of millions, and some say it is the largest grassroots movement in the world. It is composed of member-based grassroots organizations across the globe, who work collaboratively to grow collective and local food sovereignty through agroecology.

Agroecology is the systematization of ancestral, indigenous, peasant, farm worker, and migrant ecological knowledge applied to food and farming systems. Agroecology is the basis for food sovereignty, the right of peoples to collectively build and defend their own food systems, based on ecology, culture and social justice.

Before, during, and after the opportunity to visit an agroecology school in Morelos, Mexico, Mollie at Rural Vermont has worked with the Agroecology, Seeds, and Biodiversity Collective of the North American region of La Via and local partners to co-organize an Each One Teach One Agroecology Encounter here in Vermont at the Center for Grassroots Organizing in Marshfield. The event last weekend celebrated and explored the emergence of a new agroecology and movement building school in VT, as a part of a growing network of schools across the Americas in partnership with La Via Campesina and numerous local partners  This work builds off of existing and successful models of agroecology schools in Central and South America, based on farmer to farmer technical agroecological education, popular political education, and traditional ecological knowledge, while being rooted in the specific and unique needs of local communities.

This Encounter marks the beginning of a long term school and movement building process here in Vermont, inspired and influenced by the global movement.  Due to town limitations on the number of people we could have in attendance at the encounter and the “speed of trust” nature of this initiative, we’ll continue working with local farmers, farmworkers, organizational partners, and Rural Vermont members to grow this process, with support from collective connections to the greater movement and our international partners and friends.

We spent the weekend listening, learning, and growing relationships that have sown seeds we hope will grow strong in the coming months and years as we co-create this opportunity here. Be in touch with Mollie to learn more.