This page presents my scientfic participatory research on two of the most important agroecological experiences in Latin American popular agrarian reform, which resulted in a master and a doctoral thesis. The first focused on a grassroots process on building a situated knowledge system about Syntropic Agriculture in Brazil. The second examined the development of Agroecological Agrarianism in Colombia. I also present the methodology I developed during my doctoral research, which made all of this work possible. Finally, I share the case of an association grounded in care as an ethical principle of which theorization was only made possible by the depth this method provided.
1. Barra Sustainable Development Project, Brazil
2. Cabrera Peasant Reserve Zone, Colombia
3. Methodology of Agroecopedagogical Walks
4. The ethics of care practiced by Organicampo
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Barra Sustainable
Development Project, Brazil
Syntropic agroforestry system in an advanced stage of succession in the Barra Sustainable Development Project.
Located in Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo, Brazil, the Sustainable Development Project is an unprecedented achievement in Brazilian popular history. Led by the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST), the former latifundio was officially recognized as a popular territory in 2007. Today, it stands as a model for cultivating agroforestry systems based on the principles of Syntropic Agriculture.
The development of a situated agricultural knowledge system began in 2014 with support from Cooperafloresta - a cooperative of quilombola family farmers in the Ribeira Valley in São Paulo, Brazil. Through the Agroforestry Project, intensive farmer-to-farmer exchanges helped establish agroforestry systems across more than 25 family units.
By building its own situated knowledge system, the Barra Sustainable Development Project has created cooperative structures and opened pathways for integration with other agri-food systems in Ribeirão Preto. The farmers have also shared their expertise with agroecological communities across the region, even supporting farmers in Haiti through international solidarity efforts.
Photographs taken by the author himself about the Barra Sustainable Development Project experience between 2024 and 2025.
The experience of the Agroforestry Project in the Barra Sustainable Development Project is reported and discussed in depth in my master's thesis "The development of the Agroforestry Project in the Mário Lago Settlement: from learning processes to the transformation of the activity," developed within the Postgraduate Program in Sustainability at the University of São Paulo. The study uses the theoretical frameworks of Rural Sociology and Peasant Pedagogy under a decolonial approach. This research resulted in an article published in the brazilian journal Retratos de Assentamentos. The analysis of the ontological transformation promoted by the settlers resulted in a doctoral dissertation that compared this experience with the Cabrera Peasant Reserve Zone in Colombia, as described below.
Master thesis in the Digital Library of the University of São Paulo:
https://doi.org/10.11606/D.100.2019.tde-24042019-194155
Article in the magazine Retratos de Assentamentos:
https://doi.org/10.25059/2527-2594/retratosdeassentamentos/2025.v28i1.614
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Cabrera Peasant Reserve Zone, Colombia
Peasantry and Andeans Cordillera integration. Photograph taken by the author, 2024.
Cabrera is a municipality in the Department of Cundinamarca, Colombia. Founded in 1911, it was officially recognized as a Peasant Reserve Zone in 2000. After nearly a century of resisting violence and forced displacement, this territory has become a cradle of peace. This transformation happened through recovering "the living peasant memory" and reinterpreting traditional agricultural techniques. These efforts have enabled the community to gradually abandon harmful practices and advance toward an agroecological transition.
The Cabreruno peasantry has been organizing to build social networks through peasant-to-peasant relationships, recovering memories and valuing local knowledge. Protecting the Sumapaz Páramo and restoring the forests of the Colombian Eastern Cordillera now guide their actions. With coordination from the FAO and UNDP, the SCALA program has supported the creation of peasant schools as a community-based educational foundation.
Several successful experiences are emerging on properties undergoing agroecological transition. It is necessary to highlight the work of Organicampo. Based in Vereda Santa Marta, it stands out as the only strictly agroecological local association formed solely by women. This collective is a benchmark in structuring agroecological backyards, implementing peasant technologies, and creating fair economic systems that value the work of peasant women while protecting the more-than-human worlds of Cabrera and Sumapaz.
Photographs taken by the author himself about the experience of the Cabrera Peasant Reserve Zone between 2024 and 2025.
At the end of 2025, I presented my thesis: "Agroecology as another agrarian structure: the peasant becoming in the Sustainable Development Project of Barra, in Brazil, and in the Peasant Reserve Zone of Cabrera, in Colombia." The study compares these two territories and shows that Latin American agroecological experiences are deeply rooted in situated knowledge systems, that are illuminated by pre-Hispanic and pre-Cabralian agricultural ancestries. Drawing on their historical particularities, these experiences create dialogue within a pluriversal agrarian structure, building a world where many worlds fit.
The thesis is available in the USP repository. An article showing how both territories have addressed climate change was published by the Brazilian Journal of Agroecology.
Thesis in the Digital Library of the University of São Paulo:
https://doi.org/10.11606/D.100.2019.tde-24042019-194155
Article in the Brazilian Journal of Agroecology (an English version is available):
https://doi.org/10.33240/rba.v20i4.57565
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Methodology of Agroecopedagogical Walks
A woman over 70 years old observing her biodiverse agroforestry system in the Barra Sustainable Development Project.
Agroecology is necessarily a post-humanist science. More-than-human worlds influence farmers' decisions, and their bodies compose the cultivated agroecosystems. Non-human bodies point the way to cultivating food and fiber in the agroecological context. Observing the co-productive dynamics of ecosystems is fundamental to understanding cultivated agroecosystems. This is how people living in these ecosystems become protagonists of knowledge: by communicating with non-human bodies and, through transcorporeal interagency, producing situated knowledge systems.
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Agroecopedagogical walks are a methodology I developed in my doctoral thesis that allows researchers to become true learners. The goal is not to visit agroecosystems to analyze productivity or conduct diagnoses, but to listen to farmers from their own perspectives. We must learn from those who live in the ecosystem. We must decolonize agricultural knowledge systems.
To understand how the syntropic identity of the peasantry formed in the Barra Sustainable Development Project, it was necessary to participate in the pedagogical processes that form the fundamental agroecological fabric of peasant-to-peasant interaction. This required being in the agroecosystems with the people who cultivate them and taking part in the processes that promote agricultural cultures and their situated knowledge systems.
The same occurred in Cabrera through direct observation of the agroecological fabric's development. In this Colombian case, agricultures for life seek not only to free the peasantry from chemical agriculture's demands, but also to strengthen bonds of peace. Cabrera has adopted agroecological agrarianism as its new identity in the modern world while recovering its agricultural ancestry.
Walk with farmers through their agroecosystems, listening to them where they most like to be: in the agroecosystem they've cultivated through non-alienated work. Establish informal conversations and show curiosity without asking investigative questions. Delve into agricultural culture to understand its nature and how daily work keeps traditions alive.
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The ethics of care practiced by Organicampo
Care territorialization in agroecological backyards
Organicampo began as a women's collective and became the only strictly agroecological association after Cabrera was officially recognized as a Peasant Reserve Zone. Its mission is to promote gender equality in the municipality by enabling Cabrera's peasant women to occupy leadership positions. It also implements technologies typical of peasant agriculture within the framework of agroecology, under the leadership of the association's women. Organicampo has multiple objectives: guaranteeing food security for Cabrera families, ensuring alternative income sources for its members, providing clean and healthy food for the community, and protecting the Sumapaz Páramo and Andean forests. The ethics of care practiced by Organicampo's peasant women thus encompasses both the human dimension and the more-than-human worlds in Cabrera
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Agroecopedagogical walks were conducted to explore how recovering peasant ancestry shapes the development of Agroecology on these women's farms. The greenhouses - a symbol of the association - are productive spaces that extend beyond organic gardens. They provide food security with nutritional diversity and reorganize family space, with women as leaders. The re-signification of the Cabrera space begins with caring for the spaces on their farms.
From the farms to the community, the peasant women of Organicampo have been preserving the living memory of the peasantry through agroecological production and building new economic relationships in the municipality. The ethics of care in agricultural practices has empowered these women. Through this, they promote new agroecological farming cultures and reaffirm their Nature-Culture.
