Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), like other regions, faces the extremely serious environmental consequences of the agro-industrial model and the corporate agri-food regime (McMichael 2006). This system, interconnected technologically, economically, culturally, and environmentally, operates analogously to the industrial metabolic process, causing severe damage to soils, such as erosion, compaction, salinization, acidification, loss of organic matter, and decreased biological activity. Environmental impacts include a dramatic reduction in insects due to pesticide use, as well as the consumption of 70% of the world's water, which is returned contaminated to the water cycle (MEA, 2015). Agro-extractivism contributes 12% of global emissions that cause climate change, a figure that can reach up to half when the entire food system is considered. Furthermore, it causes eutrophication of water bodies and is associated with deforestation and the consequent loss of biodiversity. The region has lost 30% of its biodiversity in the last 20 years. Monocultures like soy are an iconic example in Latin America, responsible for the deforestation of 20 million hectares in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Bolivia (WWF 2014). This unsustainable model simplifies ecosystem complexity, favoring pests and diseases, which increases dependence on agrochemicals. In turn, it reduces the biocultural diversity essential for feeding populations, both through the standardization of fields and the introduction of genetically modified seeds. It can be said that the agri-food sector generates the largest ecological footprint globally, acting as the main driver of biophysical transformations on the planet (Tilman 2001; Foley 2005; Weis 2013; Rockström et al. 2017).

The development of the corporate food system is framed within neoliberal globalization, where the number of people living in poverty has barely changed since 1990. By 2024, nearly 3600 billion people (44% of the world's population) were living below the World Bank's poverty line ($6.85 a day in Purchasing Power Parity—PPP). In a perverse symmetry, the wealthiest 1% of the world's population owns 45% of total wealth. Latin America and the Caribbean is the most unequal region in the world, where the richest 1% concentrates almost 43.5% of the wealth, while the poorest 50% owns barely 0.8%. This gap, exacerbated by unfair tax systems, the commodity-based model and the concentration of power, disproportionately affects women (one in ten lives in extreme poverty, with less than $2.15 a day in PPP, and there are 24.3 million more women than men in this situation), as well as indigenous and Afro-descendant communities (Oxfam, 2025).

The region is also the most unequal in the world in terms of land distribution (Oxfam, 2016). The largest 1% of farms control more than half of the region's agricultural land. Gender inequality in land distribution is evident, as women represent only 12% of those who have access to and control over land benefiting from agrarian reform processes. This phenomenon has worsened, with transactions since 2000 affecting more than 9 million hectares in Latin America and the Caribbean, destined for monocultures (forestry, soy, oil palm, corn, and sugarcane) and the expansion of cattle ranching (LandMatrix, 2019; Giraldo, 2015). This land grabbing, along with the dispossession caused by extractive projects (megamining, hydroelectric plants, hydrocarbon extraction) and infrastructure, impacts rural living practices, preventing young people from remaining in rural areas and increasing migration to cities and the United States.

The persistence of poverty in the region is a key factor. The poverty rate in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) in 2023 was 27.3% (172 million people), and extreme poverty affected 10.6% (66 million). Total poverty increased from 28.5% in 2014 to 37% in 2017 (FAO/PAHO/WFP/ and UNICEF, 2018). The disparities between urban and rural areas are striking: in 2017, almost 50% of the rural population lived in poverty. Although poverty among the non-Indigenous population has increased, the differences are overwhelming: there is 10% more poverty among the Indigenous and Afro-descendant populations. Extreme poverty is prevalent in rural, Indigenous, and Afro-descendant areas, which are precisely the areas of food production.

The corporate agri-food model has failed in its promise to eliminate hunger. The number of undernourished people has increased, reaching nearly 40 million (6% of the population of Latin America and the Caribbean). The region faces the coexistence of acute malnutrition (affecting approximately 700 children) and an epidemic of overweight and obesity, associated with an industrialized diet. Childhood overweight affects 7.5% of children under 5, and nearly a quarter of the adult population suffers from obesity, with projections indicating an increase to nearly a third by 2030. Dietary patterns have been transformed by the global agri-food system and the trade in processed foods (FAO/PAHO/WFP/ and UNICEF, 2018), causing chronic non-communicable diseases (cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes) to displace infectious diseases as the leading cause of death.

The State of Food and Agriculture report (FAO, 2023) highlights the hidden costs of the food system. More than 70% of these costs are due to unhealthy diets (ultra-processed foods, fats, sugars), which are the cause of obesity and non-communicable diseases. A fifth is related to the environmental impact, stemming from greenhouse gas and nitrogen emissions, changes in land use, and water consumption. These costs exacerbate inequalities, disproportionately affecting low-income countries, where they represent more than a quarter of GDP, compared to less than 8% in high-income countries.

In short, the hegemonic, extractive, concentrating, hoarding, exclusionary, violent and predatory corporate food model, through articulated technological, economic, cultural and environmental systems, generates inequality, poverty, exclusion, hunger, malnutrition and poor diet, violates rights and compromises the capacity to sustain the reproduction of life.

In this context, two aspects become central to facing the emerging crisis: the reconfiguration of food systems to guarantee accessible, sufficient, healthy, tasty, sovereign, and culturally appropriate food, along with access to, redistribution of, and management of goods, ecological infrastructures, policies, and institutions from the perspective of an agroecological project.

In this new term for which we are requesting the continuation of the Political Agroecology Working Group, we propose as our central focus a debate on how the agrarian question should be formulated today from an agroecological perspective. Those of us submitting this request are convinced not only of the relevance and urgency of the topic, but also of its potential to connect two fields that, with exceptions such as the proposals of La Vía Campesina, have progressed in parallel: agroecology and critical agrarian studies. We believe that this issue is equally relevant to both fields and that it can strengthen the Political Agroecology Working Group's ties with other established groups working on related issues. The agrarian question, which seemed to have lost its centrality in recent decades, has regained prominence in the face of new accumulation plans driven by the corporate food system and the severity of the environmental crisis. This resurgence, however, risks being co-opted by populist right-wing discourses, becoming an obstacle to the transition to sustainability that is required today (Mamonova, 2024; Mamonova & Franquesa, 2020).

Updating the agrarian question requires a critical review of its traditional tenets. The questions are unavoidable: Can it be resolved solely through access to land without challenging the dominant model of industrialized agriculture? Is the classical idea of ​​agrarian reform compatible with approaches based on food sovereignty and agroecology? For several authors, it is undeniable that the agrarian question of the 21st century cannot be separated from the current agricultural model. Maintaining an environmentally predatory, economically unviable, and socially unjust system would deepen the destruction of the productive fabric, rural depopulation, ecological deterioration, and dependence on concentrated markets, in addition to sustaining an unhealthy food pattern (Martins, 2000; Fernandes Mançano, 2025). In response, the Working Group aims to contribute to the debate on the conceptual and political updating of the agrarian question from a Political Agroecology perspective (González de Molina et al., 2020).

In recent decades, the agrarian question has undergone a process of “environmentalization” (Akram-Lodhi, 2010; Pinto, 2013; Tasdemir, 2022; Petras & Veltmeyer, 2015), although this process is still incomplete. The “new” agrarian question cannot be reduced to land distribution without considering the ecosystemic impacts of its management (Altieri, 1989; Shattuck et al., 2023). The full incorporation of the environmental dimension implies rethinking historical postulates, and in this process, agroecology contributes criteria for constructing a contemporary discourse adapted to current challenges (Holt-Giménez et al., 2021). A determining factor is the structural crisis of capitalism, which has generated the climate emergency and threatens the ecological base that sustains agroecosystems. Added to this is the ongoing debate about the role of the peasantry in solving the agrarian problem and about who should be the central subjects of public policy. Agroecology can illuminate this debate, highlighting the relevance of the peasantry and the "new peasantry" as strategic actors.

Regarding the redefinition of the agrarian question, this cannot be limited to access to land. The solution remains structural reform, but under criteria that integrate environmental health, economic viability, and social equity, moving beyond a focus on the farm and adopting a territorial and food chain perspective. This will be a central objective of the Working Group, which seeks to bring together researchers from various CLACSO Working Groups to advance consensus on this crucial issue for Latin America.

Historically, the agrarian question emerged in contexts of transition to industrial agriculture, where land and labor were the decisive factors. Inequalities in access to land gave rise to struggles for a more equitable distribution, based on three imperatives: ethical, economic, and political. The Working Group aims to update these imperatives. The ethical component implies not only equitable access to land, but also to water, other natural resources, and fair relationships within the food chain (Hornborg, 2017). All of this is currently framed within the logic of capitalist accumulation of the corporate food system (Wolford et al., 2024).

The economic imperative must also be re-examined. Classical criticism argues that large landholdings hinder agricultural development and that redistribution would allow for more intensive and efficient land use, increasing production, employment, and income. However, these premises must be considered in light of ecological limits and the need for sustainable management (McKay et al., 2024). Finally, the political imperative—agrarian reform as democratization in the face of landowning power—must be updated in light of the new network of national and transnational corporate interests that now control the food system. The configuration of power in agriculture has changed substantially, demanding new analytical and political tools.

The revised imperatives place at the center not only access to but also the sustainable management of land, viewed primarily from a territorial perspective (Gliessman, 1998). This necessitates rethinking who should be the beneficiaries of the reform. Although the Marxist tradition emphasized rural wage earners (Araghi, 2009; Bernstein, 2014; Martínez Valle & Martínez-Godoy, 2019), in recent decades peasants and their movements have gained prominence as political actors. Agroecology calls for halting the destruction of peasant farms and valuing their role in the socio-ecological transition.

Another key debate within the Working Group will be defining the criteria for an agroecological agrarian reform. This reform must guarantee equitable access to land and productive resources, while also ensuring the sustainable management of agroecosystems (Akram-Lodhi, 2021), maintaining and improving their stock goods, and optimizing ecosystem services (Guzmán Casado et al., 2022). It must be planned at the territorial scale (Poiani, 2000; Adriaensen, 2003; Patrizi et al., 2018; Altieri et al., 2024), prioritize intensification based on traditional and scientific knowledge, strengthen productive autonomy, and collectively manage natural resources.

Finally, the agrarian question must be linked to the main Latin American social movements (Edelman, 2024) and become a tool to promote the agroecological transition. This implies articulating struggles for land and territory with the construction of peasant food chains and with broad alliances that allow for the formation of social majorities capable of promoting institutional changes and profound agrarian reforms (Petersen & González de Molina, 2025).