Food sovereignty, permaculture and the post-colonial politics of knowledge in El Salvador

In this chapter I focus on the development of agroecological knowledge systems in El Salvadorover the last twenty years, focusing on their capacity to generate and sustain post-colonial foodnetworks. Agroecology is the study of ecological processes that operate in agricultural productionsystems. First used in the early twentieth century, the term was popularized after World War IIwhen increasing awareness of the environmental consequences of industrializing agri-foodtechnologies led to the emergence of new networks and forums of knowledge production thatemphasised a systems perspective. In Central America such networks emerged throughwidespread critiques of Green Revolution technologies introduced during the 1960s, and wereconsolidated through the development of a farmer-to-farmer (campesino a campesino; CaC)model for testing and sharing traditional agricultural techniques. The CaC model of organizingagricultural production was mobilized on a significant scale in El Salvador during the 1980s,when the country was reeling from a twelve-year civil war. The model was adapted for theSalvadorian context, and has also been hybridized with external forms of organizing associatedwith conflict-resolution and international aid initiatives.!The analysis in this chapter relates to the development of such alternative food networks (AFNs)that emerged in multiple locations in El Salvador during the 1990s, as associated with thepractices of agroecology and, more specifically, permaculture. Permaculture is an agroecologicalapproach to food production that employs a systems perspective by focusing its interventions onthe points of interconnection between qualitatively diverse systems of biophysical, socio-economic and socio-cultural life. Permaculture is also a principle of environmental design thatstrives to establish ‘permanent agricultures’ or ‘permanent cultures’ – multi-species ecologies thatsupport their various human and non-human components through mutually enhancing feedbackloops and interactions. As in agroecology, traditional and indigenous agricultural techniques arestrongly valued in permaculture, although these are always tested experimentally against existingpractices. Permaculture as a term is less widespread than agroecology, though in contexts like El Salvador the two terms are highly complementary.