A POSTCAPITALIST PARADIGM: THE COMMON GOOD OF ...

processes, on the submission of agricultural production to laboratories
producing new technologies and to industry; that makes it follow the
pattern of extensive monoculture – with intensive use of chemical inputs,
toxic agricultural products, transgenic seeds – and production
aimed at exportation that expands the commodities exchange; in other
words, connecting it with the speculation that turns world economy artificial
and makes the increase in food prices fit into the reproduction
strategy of financial capital.
Peasants who are organized in Via Campesina strive to guarantee the
collective territories of indigenous peoples and of traditional communities,
as well as to put an end to the big estates, redistributing the land
to increase the number of family peasants. They also fight for the recognition
of peasants as the real producers of food for human beings. They
even assert that, provided peasants have the necessary support, they
can multiply production and evolve more and more towards supplying
agro-ecological food.
It is here where a specific contribution by peasants comes into play: added
to what is taking place in the collective territories of indigenous peoples
and of traditional communities, the agro-ecological processes of land cultivation
recover the natural vitality of the soil and combat the global warming
process in the planet, contrarily to monoculture of chemical farming,
responsible for the increase in methane emissions and nitrous oxide, powerful
gases causing the greenhouse effect. They are, for that reason, essential
actors in the search for the Common Good of Humanity.
It is worthwhile to further emphasize a contribution of the peasant world:
the rescue, defense and assertion of traditional knowledge linked to agriculture
and health, much of which was illegitimately appropriated and
patented by laboratories and industries. This knowledge, of millenary
history, was preserved and elaborately redeveloped by generations of
communities connected to the care and cultivation of the land. It is practical
and theoretical wealth, absolutely necessary in the recovery of soils
exploited and almost exhausted by modern chemical agriculture. It is
also useful, not only in relation to the rich diversity of seeds, characteristic
of each biome and ecosystem, but also in relation to creating new
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