Agroecology for Europe

Peasant agroecology is a way of life. ECVC supports life-enriching systems and oppose life-alienating systems

Ecologically we work together with nature and not against it. We cherish synergies between living beings and prioritize traditional farmer knowledge and participatory, transgenerational, and experiential learning processes

Economically we base our principles on forms of economy that is truly beneficial for communities: solidarity, circular, regional, within ecological boundaries

Politically we put the small-scale food producers’ rights as a priority on the agenda and we form a movement towards equality and social justice for all people worldwide

Alessandra Turco, ECVC Coordinating committee member

European Coordination Via Campesina (ECVC) is a confederation of unions and organisations of peasant farmers, small and medium-scale farmers, and agricultural workers across Europe.

ECVC is currently composed of 31 national and regional peasant farmer organisations from 21 European countries. ECVC members bring their experience and knowledge from national and regional levels to European policy spaces through their membership and active participation in ECVC. It is the collective voice of European farmers, as all of the political work is done by farmers and farmers’ organisations.

Follow this link to find a list of our member organisations and their websites.

Rooted in the right to Food Sovereignty, the main objective of the ECVC is the defence of farmers’ and agricultural workers’ rights, promoting diverse and sustainable small-scale and peasant farming. These principles, in turn, demand food and agricultural policies based on legitimacy, fairness, solidarity and sustainability. These are necessary to ensure food security, food safety, public health, employment in rural areas and to tackle the issues of the global food crisis and climate change. ECVC is fighting for a new and improved EU agricultural policy to be developed based on the above principles.

Each member organisation works in diverse contexts and realities, but all members are united in fighting for better food systems by the principles of our Common Base, a document that summarises our values and priorities.

ECVC is the only organisation at the EU level that solely and comprehensively represents the voice of peasant, small and medium farmers, consolidating their positions, experiences, and best practices, and facilitating stronger communication channels between peasant farmers and European and international policymakers. ECVC plays a critical role in guaranteeing the participation of peasant farmers in EU and international policy processes, coordinating our responses, and helping to demonstrate ready-made solutions.

Vision of ECVC

ECVC’s vision for fairer and more sustainable agricultural systems can be summarised into three core concepts: food sovereignty, agroecology, and peasants’ rights. These three concepts are complementary and together represent the essence of our political vision.

The movement is made up of peasants, small and medium-scale farmers and farm worker organisations. Through their everyday experiences and coordinated action, ECVC members are best placed to bring about the systemic change needed to improve the European agricultural model and ensure peasant, small and medium-scale farmers can feed populations with local healthy food, whilst working in dignified conditions.

In Europe, the lack of institutional support for peasant, small and medium-scale farming continues to cause thousands of farms to disappear each day. By 2040, Europe may only have 3.9 million farms left, down from 15 million in 2003. As part of its efforts to improve the condition of farmers and farm workers in Europe and reverse this trend, we work to incorporate food sovereignty, agroecology and respect for peasants’ rights into regional and international agricultural policy processes.

ECVC in AE4EU

European Coordination Via Campesina (ECVC) is involved in several work packages but specifically, in leading the Work package  4, task 4.3 and through this task developed three training programmes for agroecology with the support of Toekomstboeren[1] in the Netherlands, Land Workers’ Alliance (LWA)[2] in the UK and FADEAR[3]/ Initiatives Paysannes in France based on the identified training needs in WP4.1 and by bringing together the experiences in different countries related to WP4.2. All three trainings have received funding from H2020 “Agroecology for Europe” project. Read more about the trainings here!

Trainings designed to reflect the Nyeleni Declaration[4] on learning in agroecology and also the vision of ECVC to Peasant agroecology[5]  which are rooted in traditional farmer knowledge and have contributed since the beginning of agricultural practices to better understand the relationship between food production and the surrounding ecosystems: agriculture is fully integrated in ‘the territory’ which includes the environmental but also social and cultural dimension.

Author: Olcay Bingol

[1] https://toekomstboeren.nl/agroecologietraining/

[2]https://landworkersalliance.org.uk/

[3] https://www.agriculturepaysanne.org/

[4] https://www.foodsovereignty.org/forum-agroecology-nyeleni-2015-2/

[5] https://www.eurovia.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Agroecology_EN.pdf