A Puerto Rican recipe for food sovereignty

The foods we choose to consume and the strategies we use to produce our food are driven by political choices. And those choices either hinder or benefit the rest of society, the environment, and the economy. So highly-diversified farming systems will clearly promote more habitats for biodiversity and opportunities for soil formation than monocultures produced with toxic herbicides and other chemicals. And buying fresh vegetables from a local farmer has very different environmental and economic implications to buying a burger from McDonald’s.

We need, therefore, to ask ourselves to what extent are we, as consumers and producers, engaging in food and farming as a political issue rather than just a technical approach. These are the questions being addressed by advocates and practitioners of agroecology – a movement that questions dependency on externally-acquired agricultural inputs. It also promotes social and environmental justice through dialogue between science and local knowledge and practices.