Compromise in the making of urban agroecology: grassroots initiatives and the politics of experimentation in Madrid, Spain

ABSTRACT

In some cities, food movements are mobilizing around agroecology, using the materiality of their lived environment and their social interactions to put their vision of future food systems into practice. These initiatives unfold in contexts where resources are often limited, forcing trade-offs between activists’ visions of agroecology and what they can do in the immediate future. Drawing on documentary research, 26 semi-structured interviews, and over 100 hours of observation, we examine the evolution of agroecology in Madrid, Spain, focusing on the deployment of three initiatives. We find that to cope with precarity, some activists adapt their practices by adopting scaling-up strategies that involve increasing the number of participants and collaborating with the City of Madrid. However, the political dimension of the simple acts like gardening or procuring agroecological food becomes less clear, raising questions and spurring debate within the social movement. The compromises made and the reflexive stance on what is gained and what is lost, we argue, ultimately are testament and contribute to agroecology’s political vision and goals, albeit in ways that are perhaps quite different from those initially envisioned.

KEYWORDS:

• Agroecology
• Urban food governance
• Urban agriculture
• Institutionalization
• Social movements
• Prefiguration

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank our local facilitator in Madrid for the support during the field work as well as the participants for their time and inspiring work. We would also like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. This research was financially supported by scholarships granted to the first author: a doctoral scholarship from the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture, and various travel grants from MITACS Globalink, the Fondation Famille Choquette and Université Laval.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Ethical approval

This research has been reviewed and approved by the Comité plurifacultaire d’éthique de la recherche of Université Laval, approval number 2019–117/28-05-2019.

Notes

1. With one exception, interviews were carried out in Spanish. All quotes are translations made by the first author.

2. In accordance with our ethical approval, all interviewees provided informed consent. This manuscript has not been revised by the interviewees but will be shared with them.

3. Here, the word cooperative does not refer to a legal status, but to the collective management of the production-distribution-consumption continuum. For a thorough description of how they operate, see López García and López López (2003).

4. At this stage, it must be noted that some initiatives appear to have a “softer” political dimension, which lead some interviewees to distinguish agroecological groups from other consumer groups.

5. In fact, they were described by producer G24 as marginalizing the participation of small producers. The producer we interviewed did not participate in these markets.

6. As of now, no resolution has been found around water payment.