We pose that Agroecology, which is already a hybrid science, is further overcoming disciplinary isolation and stagnation through explicit processes of interdisciplinary recombination, in what might be termed “second generation hybridization”. We refer to the intellectual contact zone of Agroecology – mainly with Cultural Geography, Historical Ecology, Archeology, Ecological Anthropology, and Ethnoecology – as “Historical Agroecology”. We discuss the following five theoretical methodological foundations of our proposal toward an Historical Agroecology: (1) regional agroecological histories, (2) agroecological landscapes as palimpsests: human-mediated disturbances and their cumulative effects, (3) alpha and beta as agrobiodiversity on the table: manifestations of human niche construction, (4) agroecological ethos as landscapes of knowledge, and (5) infrapolitics and collective action as other forms of agroecological resistance aside from social movements. We illustrate these points through case studies based on our research in peasant communities of the Maya lowlands in the Mexican states of Yucatan, Chiapas, and Campeche. We conclude by reflecting on the need to further develop historical agroecological perspectives in those regions with agricultural systems that have resulted from profound diachronic legacies that are spatially rooted in broad geographical areas.

La contingencia sanitaria COVID-19 pasó a ser una más, aunque no cualquiera, entre las crisis de diferente naturaleza y envergadura que suelen afectar al sector turístico en la Península de Yucatán. Ante la recurrencia de múltiples crisis, las cooperativas que se dedican al turismo comunitario han adoptado diversas estrategias para sobrevivir a los períodos de adversidad, destacando entre ellas la pluriactividad que ha sido la forma histórica y cultural de respuesta de los hogares campesinos a las eventualidades de sus prácticas productivas. Sin embargo, debido a la prolongada duración de la reactivación del sector ocasionada por el confinamiento de la emergencia sanitaria, las empresas de turismo comunitario que ya han visto afectados sus ingresos en más del 50% con respecto al 2019, están surgiendo nuevas respuestas y resistencias para lidiar con la ambivalencia de afrontar la pérdida de dos temporadas de alta afluencia, por un lado, y el no poner en riesgo la seguridad sanitaria de sus comunidades, por el otro. Entre las estrategias de respuesta sobresalen el retorno al autoabasto, el intercambio solidario de productos entre empresas sociales, el ahorro y la previsión; entre las expresiones de resistencia el blindaje de los pueblos y los conflictos intercomunitarios vinculados a reaperturas. Partiendo de la experiencia de acompañamiento a 24 empresas de turismo comunitario ante dicha coyuntura, en la última sección presentamos una reflexión teórica para imaginar las posibles reconfiguraciones post-pandemia que podría experimentar un turismo comunitario “profundo”, a la luz de ideas-fuerza como las de proximidad y cotidianidad turística.

Summary: The relationship between ecosystem disturbance and biodiversity levels has been a central focus of ecological research for the past half-century. The intermediate disturbance hypothesis, which suggests that maximum biodiversity is achieved through the coexistence of early and late successional species, however, has been challenged for its lack of clarity regarding the intensity, duration and extent of disturbances. This Perspective article advocates for a broader biocultural framework to move from the notion of disturbance to an understanding of human–environment mediations. Our proposed biocultural hypothesis acknowledges that, in certain cultural contexts, interventions by Homo sapiens at different environmental scales – mainly at the landscape level – can generate peaks in beta and gamma biodiversity compared to reference ecosystems. We illustrate these human–environment mediations through studies conducted in the biocultural region of Mesoamerica and comparative research findings, particularly from the Amazon Basin and West and Central Africa. In our conclusions, we discuss the need to establish collaborative research programmes around the proposed biocultural hypothesis, addressing management and institutional actions that will strengthen the engagement of Indigenous people and rural local communities with their historical territories that we name ‘Priority Biocultural Areas’.

García-Barrios, L., T. Rivera-Núñez, J. Cruz-Morales, J. Urllapideta-Carrasco, E. Castro-Salcido, I. Peña-Azcona, O. Martínez-López, A. López-Cruz, M. Morales, and J. Espinoza. 2020. The Flow of Peasant Lives: a board game to simulate livelihood strategies and trajectories resulting from complex rural household decisions. Ecology and Society 25(4):48. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-11723-250448

In this article we connect theoretically the concepts of structural vulnerabilities, recursive crises, and disasters through the linking-up of the COVID-19 pandemic with extreme hydrometeorological events in three municipalities in southern Yucatan, Mexico. The main research goal was to show the effects in productive and commercial systems in beekeeper and farmer households and their coping strategies to highlight the inter-relationships between historical vulnerabilities, crises, and disasters. The methodological approach included ethnographic fieldwork, 101 semi-structured interviews, and five focal groups. In the results, we reconstruct the agro-productive and commercial vulnerabilities built up since 1960 and contextualize the health and hydrometeorological crisis to show how some 87% of households suffered severe consequences to their incomes. The prices of main products (maize, fruit, honey) reached historically low levels as a result of conditions within local markets during the crisis. Half of the households surveyed had to make use of savings and more than 60% received no support from government or from development agencies. We conclude by pointing out the need for accompanying the design and implementation of community mitigation plans, which should take as a starting point the recovery of knowledge and local organization in order to demand from government co-managed, preventive programs, and capacities that would enable communities to confront increasing negative consequences in situations of global climate change and market instabilities in local peasant contexts. Our study aims to reach policy-makers, social organizations, and communities in order to highlight the importance of developing joint capabilities to respond to growing environmental, economic, and health vulnerabilities.

Seasonal food scarcity during pre-harvest months is, widely, considered to be the principal manifestation of food insecurity, for some 600 million members of smallholder families, who rely on a variety of coping strategies. This paper analyses both the peasant-economy variables that explain the presence and intensity of seasonal food scarcity, and the coping strategies of 120 rural households in a microregion of southern Mexico. We, also, examine how supply networks for six archetypical foods of the peasant diet express robustness or vulnerability during seasons of abundance and scarcity. The method combines surveys, ethnographic fieldwork, statistical models and social network analyses. Results show that 74% of households experience at least one month of food scarcity annually, and 34% of shortages last more than six months. In total, 29% of affected households gather wild foods, and 14% use intense coping strategies, such as international migration, taking out rural loans, and parental food buffering. During scarce seasons, self-sufficiency networks for maize and beans contract, but still maintain the food supply of peasant households, while cash-consumption networks such as those of beef become accessible only to a small sector of economically differentiated households. In contrast to the vast majority of research, which simply reports the presence of seasonal food shortages and describes the coping strategies of rural households, this paper provides an in-depth analysis—based upon a novel methodological integration—of the socioeconomic, agrifood, and land tenure conditions that may determine why many peasant territories in the Global South face the “farmer–food-scarcity paradox”.