Food comes from agroecosystems: the role of agriculture for the reproduction of life

This thesis explores the ecological interdependences of humans and non-human species in agroecosystems, focusing on food as a central point of encounter between them. Anchored in the framework of Agroecology (AE), this thesis examines how farmers and non-humans co-construct life systems. To reach this aim, this work integrates empirical and theoretical approaches across three main research questions (Chapters). The first two Chapters are empirical and were carried in two Indigenous territories of the Chiquitanía region of Bolivia. The empirical research intended to better understand the interdependences between humans and bees, which were taken as a relevant “boundary object” to understand part of the complexity of relationships found in agroecosystems. In the first empirical Chapter (II), the Indigenous smallholder households were characterized by including variables on Bee Contemporary Knowledge (BCK), which revealed a nuanced heterogeneity that challenges simplistic divisions between traditional and agroindustrial farmer households. It also showed that BCK seems to be more associated with the maintenance traditional agricultural practices such as crop diversification and that, in contrast, people relying on jobs outside their community had lower BCK, as well as less access to land. The second empirical Chapter (III) investigated how different agricultural settings (agroindustrial versus traditional) shape the flowering vegetation and resource use by the generalist stingless bee Tetragonisca fiebrigi (Latreille, 1811). The findings show that while overall floral richness was similar between agricultural settings, bees heavily relied on trees at both places. The results also show that the habitats with higher availability of resources for bees were home gardens for the agroindustrial setting and fallows for the traditional setting. Third, the theoretical Chapter (IV) assessed the integration of AE perspectives in Food Sovereignty (FS) research – a grassroots concept increasingly important in food-biodiversity research arenas – through a systematic literature review. Identifying a dominant focus on farming practices and social justice, this review showed that ecological topics such ecological processes (e.g. pollination, seed dispersion, nutrient cycles) are underrepresented in FS empirical research. Overall, the Chiquitanía case study revealed the importance of including local knowledge (e.g., BCK) for describing farmers, and traced back the relationships between land use, biodiversity, and culture (Chapter II). The empirical research also revealed the fundamental role of trees for bee diets, highlighting the importance of maintaining semi-natural vegetation in the agroecosystems (Chapter III). The theoretical Chapter IV demonstrated that incorporating ecological thinking into politically engaged frameworks such as FS could enhance sustainability transformations by addressing the systemic nature of food, and thus of the need of ecosystems health. Through a transdisciplinary and locally grounded research approach, this thesis unveils the need to understand the interdependencies of human and non-human foods in farming landscapes, and the fundamental role of traditional ecological knowledge to achieve life reproduction.