Mapping seeds of freedom with Red de Huerteros Medellín

Le résumé fourni par la source

According to the Lefevbrian approach of the “right to the city”, urban inhabitants could be subjects of a revolution to transform the economic system that supports unfair, unequal, and life-dangerous cities. Could urban farmers contribute to those goals? As a part of the collective Red de Huerteros Medellín (RHM), we mapped urban agriculture in the city. As an activist-researcher I wanted to know what features and problems urban agriculture in Medellín have, and also help to improve connections and performance of urban gardeners. The main problem we found was that there was a bad connection or no connection at all among urban farmers and some key organizations like seed keepers. This connection map matches perfectly with other data we have found: Only few urban farmers have knowledge about ecopolitical implications of the seed business and even less of them get their seeds from seed keepers or show any consideration for their labor. A lot of people believe urban agriculture to be a good way to raise ecopolitical awareness. According to our findings in this research, urban agriculture could either be a way of keeping practices related to agribusiness or a way to confront it and the whole system that supports it and build a different city. In this chapter I want to explain why an urban agriculture that does not confront the relationship with seeds can never be an agriculture that confronts the system. Also, I will explain what we at RHM have been doing to confront that.

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