This is a CTP of initiative: La Via Campesina/MNCI (Argentina)
In February 2014 the National dialogue Roundtable for Sustainable Agriculture was convened for the first time with the support of the Argentine Catholic Church and the national undersecretary of family farming. The dialogue roundtabletable was developed through various meetings throughout the years 2014 and 2015.
“It was a permanent Commission of work and dialogue with the objective to contribute to the construction of sustainable agriculture in economic, social and environmental terms, where large scale production models coexist with the production of family and peasant agriculture. The idea was analyzing, in a climate of respect, democratic openness and mutual recognition, the transformations produced in the territories from the expansion of the agricultural frontier; Identify and know situations of conflict in the territory; And to understand the impact of public policies in this area.”
The most significant novelty of this initiative is that it sought to bring peasant organizations, national and provincial government authorities, Catholic church authorities and institutions related to agribusiness into the same table. The proposal was to create a space for dialogue that will channel the conflicts generated up to that moment.
This CTP was a true milestone in the trajectory of the MNCI, because it defied its traditional discourse where the advance of agribusiness was identified as the main cause of the problems suffered by the peasant economy. With the dialogue roundtable, they recognized the possibility of the coexistence of both productive systems.
The initiative came from different exchanges that had the national undersecretary of Family farming, Emilio Pérsico and the Archbishop of Buenos Aires Jorge Bergoglio (the current Pope Francis) at the end of 2012 to begin discussing multiple issues of agriculture and social actors Which historically were excluded.
The proposal was directly related to the creation of the Confederation of Workers of the Popular Economy (CTEP, in its spanish initials) in 2011 with the support of the same archbishop Bergoglio. This organization intended to group all workers that were outside the formal economy (artisans, street traders, family farmers, etc.). Social movements with a more political profile, such as the Evita Movement (to which Emilio Pérsico belong), also joined the CTEP.
In this way, a fluid link was established between the undersecretary, the MNCI and representatives of the Catholic Church through the CTEP. Since then, the idea of opening a dialogue to achieve some minimum agreements that reduce the levels of confrontation that existed in the rural world was taking hold. In the meetings that were held in different provinces of the country, local representatives of different peasant organizations (some nucleated in the MNCI and others not) and business entities such as AcSoja (Association of the Argentine Soybean Chain) and Aapresid ( Argentine Association Of Producers in Direct Sowing). In each case, different local authorities (provincial secretariats of agriculture, environment, production, etc.) participated.
In the year 2013, the project took a new impulse by an absolutely unexpected fact.In March of that year, Jorge Bergoglio was appointed Pope and therefore left the archbishopric of Buenos Aires to move to the Vatican. With this change the proposal was revalued as a papal project that was consolidated at the end of 2014 when Pope Francis raised the slogan "Techo, tierra y trabajo" (roof, land and work), that is known as the three T in the The Spanish-speaking world. In that context, the first formal meetings of the dialogue roundtable table initiated in the 2014.
The National Dialogue Roundtable for Sustainable Agriculture was part of a series of activities carried out by the Undersecretariat of Family farming since 2012. In August of this year, Emilio Pérsico assumed as the national under-secretary of family farming and convenes (Ramiro Fresneda MNCI member) in charge of the National Directorate of support to family farming organizations.
At the end of 2012, the under-secretariat began planning meetings with Archbishop Jorge Bergoglio to generate a dialogue instance between representatives of export agriculture and family farming organizations. The constitution of the Confederation of Workers of the People's Economy (CTEP, in its spanish initials), with the participation of different peasant organizations and the support of Bergoglio, was essential. In March 2013, Archbishop Jorge Bergoglio became Pope.
In July 2014, the national government elevate the Family farming area to the status of state Secretariat. As part of this institutional consolidation, Ramiro Fresneda, was promoted in August to the post of undersecretary for Institutional Strengthening. In parallel, the United Nations declared 2014 as an International Year of Family farming recommending that member countries promote active policies for the sustainable development of agrarian systems based on the peasant, communal, indigenous and cooperative family units.
Finally, in December 2014, the national congress passed the law 27,118 on historic reparation of family agriculture for the construction of a new rurality in Argentina.
This CTP generated a great controversy within the peasant movement. For many MNCI referents, accepting these instances of dialogue under slogans of coexistence constituted a serious threat to the continuity of the struggles that peasant organizations had been carrying out against agribusiness for many years.
"While social movements, such as La Via Campesina, see agroecology as the alternative to industrial agriculture, and emphasize its promise of transforming rural realities, the institutional opening raised by the table of dialogue was limited to adding new tools to the Toolbox of industrial agriculture. Thus, discussions argued that agroecology could be compatible with large areas of monoculture, pesticides, and transgenic seeds. For us, this is not agroecology, but an attempt at cooptation, which had to be denounced and resisted."
"In the meetings of the dialogue roundtable, the secretariat of Family farming asked agribusiness representatives for a 2% increase in export retentions, making explicit an association between the secretariat and industrial agriculture. Thus, not only was agribusiness legitimized, but by the conviction of peasant leaders, Family farming was placed in a position of evident complicity and co-responsibility for the multiple social, economic and ecological consequences produced by the hegemonic production model of transgenic crops, since that familiar and peasant agriculture, will inexorably become this way, in lesser partner of the agribusiness and the model of the agribusinesses."
From a less radical perspective, many questioned the negotiating roundtable because it considered that to reach lasting agreements, it was necessary the commitment of the main referents of agribusinesses that were not part of the negotiations. In particular, reference is made to the most influential entities such as the Rural Society, the Argentine Rural Confederations (CRA, in its spanish initials), CONINAGRO and Agrarian Federation that led the 2008 lockout.
This CTP was the result of a process of negotiations between the family farming under-secretariat (with the participation of MNCI referents) and the Catholic Church since 2012. In this way, it can be observed that it was built and planned by the main actors involved.
In addition, the realization of the National Dialogue Roundtable for Sustainable Agriculture was conceived as part of the process of intervention of the peasant movement in the production of specific legislation for the sector:
"This space could go from being a government policy to becoming a state policy because it was a powerful space that was managing to address sensitive issues, and at the same time transcendent for all of society, such is the case of agrochemicals."
What could not be anticipated was the appointment of Bergoglio as pope as this fact gave a new impetus to the proposal that was incorporated among the actions developed by the Ministry of Agriculture in the framework of the international year of family agriculture.
One of the central objectives of the National Dialogue Roundtable for Sustainable Agriculture was to create a space for the exchange of knowledge between actors with antagonistic positions to reach minimum agreements to advance a proposal that would overcome the levels of conflict.
In this sense, the MNCI referents who participated in different stages of this process suggest that their objective was to be able to generate the bases to construct a model that surpasses the economistic look of the agricultural production:
"Being able to build an agricultural model for everyone has to do with being able to understand that it is the family farmer, peasant and indigenous, who also generates productivity in regional economies, a factor that is not only measured from an economic perspective, but also from others Paradigms, and from other perspectives, such as the ability to generate roots in the land, maintain and strengthen the identity of culture "
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