Agroecological Innovation: Decentralizing Knowledge and Democratizing Brazil's Agrifood Economy

Neocolonial regimes have promoted modernist agendas to centralize and standardize knowledge for strategies to plunder resources; this relates to a techno-diffusionist expert model that has characterized Latin America for the past half century. Toward alternatives, since the 1970s solidarity economy (<i>economia solidaria</i> or EcoSol) networks have sought to decentralize knowledge production and democratize the economy. In particular, <i>circuitos curtos</i> (short supply chains) help to bring producers socially closer to consumers. EcoSol agendas have converged with social movements promoting agroecology, which enhance agroecosystems for multiple benefits, including sociobiodiversity, healthy food, and nutritional quality. EcoSol-agroecology networks have promoted agroecological innovation through a horizontal knowledge exchange, often called <i>diálogo de saberes</i> (or <i>ecologia de saberes</i>), organized among agroecological producers with agri-extensionists and civil society groups. This EcoSol-agroecology convergence has had a long-term engagement with Latin American critical thought. Together they have developed collective capacities for decolonial counterhegemonic alternatives to decentralize and democratize the agrifood economy.