VIDEO: Organización Boricuá Explains Agroecology

In the video above, Jesús Vasquez Negrón discusses the work of Organización Boricuá de Agricultura Ecológica de Puerto Rico — and the importance of its partnership with Grassroots International.

Organización Boricuá is a 33 year old grassroots organization that uses agroecology as a tool to achieve food sovereignty, social justice, and environmental justice. It has a diverse, intergenerational, and multiregional member base consisting of farmers, jíbarxs-campesinos (peasants), agricultural workers, educators, and activists from all across the archipelago of Borikén (Puerto Rico). The organization’s primary mission is to achieve a sustainable, free, sovereign, healthy, and happy Puerto Rico.

Organización Boricuá promotes agroecology: a science, social movement, lifestyle, and agrifood system grounded in justice, sustainability, and ancestral wisdom. Through education and the practice of agroecology, Organización Boricuá works to achieve food sovereignty, the fundamental right of all peoples to control food and agricultural systems and policies to ensure that everyone has adequate, affordable, nutritious and culturally appropriate food.

In addition to increasing agroecological farming, Organización Boricuá defends the national heritage, natural commons, and the families and communities that work with the land. Mutual aid in the form of solidarity brigades is a vital tool in reaching these goals. The brigades include educational workshops, community building, and hands-on rebuilding of small farms through peasant-to-peasant practices.

With a vision that transcends borders, Organización Boricuá is active in regional and global networks including the Climate Justice Alliance, the People’s Agroecology Process, the Latin American Coordination of Rural Organizations (CLOC), and La Vía Campesina.

From Hurricane Maria until today, Grassroots International and Organización Boricuá have been building up relations of mutual trust. We remain committed to accompanying this vitally important movement organization on the archipelago and to supporting their and others’ work for a liberated and sovereign Puerto Rico.

Intern Anna Marklin contributed to this piece.