Agroecological thinking in sectoral policies to support rural development and the difficulty of its escalation

Abstract

Agroecology has been developing for more than thirty years in Latin America and the Caribbean, in different ways and shades, with greater or lesser intensity. In the case of Bolivia, different milestones mark this progress that has been consolidated under research interventions, training events, seminars, conferences and the implementation of projects; which has allowed to discuss the scope and application of agroecology, its similarities and differences with organic agriculture and other approaches to agricultural science; A particular aspect is the impact that this has had at the level of public policies for the agricultural sector, especially in the framework of a government that at least in its discourse has proposed its adherence to agroecology and a large part of its precepts. Different enacted laws have been permeated by the agroecological concept. However, a more detailed look at the degree of implementation of these policies through a review of fundamental economic and sectoral indicators; allow us to see that in fact food sovereignty has been relegated, that deforestation has dangerously increased, that the relative importance of small producers has been falling in the course of two decades (between 1996 and 2006) to less than half, having been replaced by agro-industrial producers. Although there are known successful cases of the application of agroecological precepts in different parts of the country, these are not very representative, as shown by the data regarding organic production, versus total production. This leads us directly to confirm the difficulty of scaling agroecology globally.