The study examines the growing trend of agrarian counter-reforms in Latin America and the Caribbean and their impact on land rights secured through earlier agrarian reform processes. It shows how recent legal, institutional, and administrative changes are contributing to renewed land concentration and increasing pressure on peasants, Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendant communities, and other rural populations. The report also maps the main forms these counter-reforms take (legal reforms, land financialisation, corporate-led green grabbing, and state-led dispossession) and explores their implications for territorial justice and rural development.

It analyses current patterns of land concentration across the region, highlighting how long-standing inequalities are being reinforced by financialisation and large-scale land acquisitions, with these structural conditions providing the backdrop for contemporary counter-reforms. Drawing on case studies from Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Ecuador, as well as Caribbean countries, it explores a range of legal and institutional measures that have weakened land protections, including administrative reclassification, deregulation, restrictive territorial policies, accelerated expropriation procedures, the criminalization of land-related conflicts, and the revocation of land titles.

It further identifies broader regional trends and assesses them in light of international human rights standards, arguing that these reforms reflect a wider shift in land governance that favours economic concentration while eroding protections recognised under international instruments, especially the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP).

The study concludes by highlighting a pressing contradiction of the current agrarian moment: while significant progress is being made in formally recognising the rights of rural peoples, the administrative, procedural, and economic mechanisms needed to make those rights effective are being steadily weakened through a global legal architecture that places land, territories and natural resources as mere financial assets.

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La entrada Agrarian Counter-Reforms: Anatomy of a Dispossession in Progress se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

This study provides the first regional mapping of laws recognising peasants and other rural populations across Latin America. It analyses 170 legal provisions in force in 23 countries between 1917 and 2025, offering a comparative overview of how peasant rights are recognized in national legal systems.

The findings show that legal recognition of peasants is now widespread across the region. Nearly half of the laws analysed explicitly recognise peasant rights, while 88% contain some form of recognition or protection for rural populations. Brazil has the largest number of relevant legal instruments, while Colombia and Panama stand out for the strength of their legal frameworks. More than half of all identified norms were adopted between 2010 and 2025, demonstrating growing political attention to peasant issues.

The most common themes are family farming, access to land, agrarian reform, and food sovereignty. However, important gaps remain in areas such as the rights of rural women, agroecology, the right to seeds, and political participation.

The study also examines the relationship between national laws and UNDROP. Although only four legal instruments explicitly refer to the Declaration, many laws incorporate its principles. Colombia, Ecuador, and Bolivia provide some of the strongest examples of alignment with UNDROP.

The report concludes that Latin America has become a global reference for the legal recognition of peasants, while highlighting the need for stronger implementation of UNDROP through constitutional recognition, greater protection of rural women, stronger support for agroecology and the right to seeds, and improved mechanisms for political participation.

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La entrada Recognition of the Peasantry in Latin America Through the Lens of UNDROP: Key Findings se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

Within this framework, the text identifies a series of concrete lines of action to advance in this direction. Among them, it highlights the need to promote sustained advocacy strategies—combining pressure, lobbying, and dialogue with States—as well as to strengthen alliances between peasant organisations, civil society, universities, and trade unions. It also underlines the importance of producing and disseminating data-based information, structuring a public communication strategy, and addressing in a well-founded manner the main criticisms raised by States that voted against or abstained during the declaration’s adoption process.

Finally, the article proposes measures at both international and national levels, understood as part of a broader process of legal and political development. These include the creation of specific mechanisms within the United Nations system, the integration of UNDROP as a reference framework in global policies, the adaptation of domestic legislation, and its use in judicial and administrative decisions. Likewise, it emphasises the importance of documenting violations of these rights and analysing their application to different groups, with the aim of translating these standards into tangible impacts on the lives of rural populations.

The full article is available below (Spanish only):

La entrada Prospects for the Consolidation of the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas in the International Order se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

Human beings depend on care; societies and economies depend upon unpaid and paid care work to function.¹ Unpaid care work is mostly provided within households or families and contributes an estimated US$11 trillion to the global economy each year. More than three quarters of this unpaid care work is performed by women and girls², and this restricts their choices and opportunities, adversely affecting a wide variety of human rights, including the rights to work, social security, education, health, rest and leisure.³ Rural areas are often underserved, in terms of social and public infrastructure, transportation, childcare and health services, increasing the unequal share of unpaid care work⁴ performed by women and girls, further impacting the full realization of their human rights.

In our goal towards universal freedom, dignity and equality, and considering the complex variables and challenges rural women and girls encounter, it is vital that a human rights perspective be used to recognise and redress the realities faced by them.⁵ International human rights law can be a useful tool in this regard. Drawing on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), particularly Article 14, and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP), this article analyses the normative gaps and opportunities within international human rights frameworks to address this systemic issue faced by rural women and girls in relation to the unpaid care work they perform. The article concludes by advocating for legal and institutional reforms, grounded in an intersectional approach, to advance the rights of rural women and girls.

What is “unpaid care work”?

Unpaid reproductive labour can be described using various terms, depending on disciplinary perspectives and research interests⁶, including unpaid domestic and care work, domestic labour, social reproduction, care work, caregiving, familial care, unpaid caregiving, and affective labour.⁷ For this article, the term ‘unpaid care work’ will be employed per the definition articulated during a roundtable convened in November 2022 by the United Nations Deputy Secretary-General, heads of UN agencies, and external experts:

‘Unpaid care work refers to services provided within a household or community for the benefit of its members without remuneration. It includes both direct care for people, such as children, family and community members, older persons or persons with mental or physical conditions, persons with disabilities, and indirect care, such as cooking, cleaning, washing, collecting water and fuel, and household management, including tending to animals and livestock and agricultural work for own consumption, as well as transportation and travel. This work also encompasses unpaid voluntary community care work, like community kitchens and peer support.’⁸

Factoring in unpaid care work is crucial, considering that every day, 16.4 billion hours are spent on it. When valued at hourly minimum wage, it amounted to 9 per cent of global GDP, which corresponds to US$11 trillion. Women and girls perform 76.2 per cent of this work, accounting for almost 12.5 billion hours. In no country in the world do men and women provide an equal share of unpaid care work, and based on region, women can spend anywhere between 1.7 times more (the Americas) to 4.7 times (the Arab States) on unpaid care.⁹ Even when one considers total work (paid and unpaid work), women, on average, across 82 countries, spend an extra 38 minutes each day. This gap in total work between men and women may seem minor, but it has several repercussions and consequences and cannot be ignored.¹⁰ For instance, gender divisions in care responsibility limit women’s access to decent work. In 2023, 708 million women, as opposed to 40 million men, aged 15 and above, cited care responsibilities as the reason for being outside the labour market.¹¹

Rural women’s unpaid care work: a triple responsibility

Rural women account for approximately 22% of the global population¹², nearly a quarter. Although not a globally homogenous group, and with only a few exceptions, rural and indigenous women fare worse than rural men, and their respective urban equivalents on every indicator for which data is available.¹³ The barriers and opportunities they face vary across their lifetimes and their circumstances, and are influenced by their location, socio-economic status, identity, ethnicity, political identity, citizenship status, and other factors.¹⁴ Furthermore, apart from the region, farming system and other changing conditions like seasons, markets, and climate, the lives of these women are often affected by changes occurring in the lives of their male counterparts. Some of these include seasonal changes in tasks leading to labour peaks, men’s migration or off-farm employment, which results in women taking over agricultural production and marketing, household purchases, and social and community duties.¹⁵ Rural women like smallholder farmers, livestock keepers, fishers, and so on, simultaneously manage triple responsibilities. As part of a paid workforce, they can be wage workers, self-employed individuals, or contribute to the family business, performing a variety of tasks in agricultural production and operations, marketing, and maintenance. Household tasks include caring for the children and the elderly, collecting firewood, cooking, fetching water and so on. Community work is linked to preserving culture and tradition, including organising for religious ceremonies and other such functions like funerals, weddings, community service, etc. ¹⁶ In developing countries, rural women’s tasks often add up to a 16-hour day.¹⁷

Unpaid care work is most intensive, and disproportionate for girls and women living in rural areas of low and middle-income countries because of the lack of basic services and infrastructure, such as adequate access to a water supply, sanitation, financial services, electricity, roads, safe transportation, time-saving technology, education, health care and other social protection policies and services. Climate change and other extreme weather events also increase household drudgery (limited availability of firewood, water scarcity, etc.) and have negative impacts on the health of family members, who would then require additional care.¹⁸

This exacerbated unpaid care work constrains rural women’s opportunities for better-paid work. In coping with household poverty, they are left to find work within the informal economy, which is often precarious and poorly paid. Unpaid care work cannot be reduced or outsourced by market substitutes like purchasing ready-made foods or hiring care workers. Furthermore, because of discriminatory social norms and gender stereotypes, these tasks cannot be distributed to men and boys. Often, unpaid care work is delegated to older children, particularly daughters, which might eventually jeopardise their education and other opportunities. This invariably creates a trap where they are likely to face both income poverty and time poverty¹⁹, alongside other deprivations like education, health, and so on, thereby inhibiting the ability of societies to achieve gender equality.²⁰

CEDAW AND UNDROP: two main instruments for rural women rights

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against (CEDAW, 1979) and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP, 2018), are to this day the two main international law instruments used in the defence of peasants and rural women’s rights.

Article 14 of CEDAW was the first international treaty provision to explicitly recognize the rights of rural women. It affirms their right to participate fully in community life and in the elaboration and implementation of development planning at all levels. It also guarantees their ability to organize self-help groups and cooperatives to secure equal access to economic opportunities, and to benefit from agricultural credit and loans, marketing facilities, appropriate technology, and equal treatment in land reform and resettlement schemes. Building on the rights already enshrined in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR, 1966), Article 14 broadens these protections by tailoring them to the realities of rural women, explicitly recognizing their rights to adequate health care, social security, training and education, and to decent living conditions – including housing, sanitation, electricity, water, transport, and communications.

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP), adopted after more than 17 years of intense lobby by La Via Campesina and its allies, framed peasants and rural women as individual and collective rights-holders and dedicated a specific article to their rights. Indeed, Article 4, built on CEDAW’s heritage, reaffirmed the rights mentioned in Article 14, deepening rural women’s equal rights to land and natural resources, participation in decision-making and the necessary protection from all types of violence.

Filling the gaps in the recognition of rural women’s unpaid care work in the corpus of international human rights law

The CEDAW argues for a de facto, i.e. substantive equality²¹ directed at addressing the root causes of (gender) inequality embedded in society. While progressive for its time, CEDAW missed an opportunity in articulating unpaid care work as a form of discrimination, offering a narrow interpretation that limits care work only to ‘sharing of childcare responsibilities.’ It treats maternity-related responsibilities as exceptions rather than the norm, inadvertently reinforcing stereotypes where care becomes a woman’s role. Additionally, Article 11 on the right to work does not acknowledge unpaid care work as a limitation in accessing paid employment, while associating work only with paid, productive opportunities, thereby ignoring unpaid care work as work.²²

Like CEDAW, UNDROP too reiterates the emphasis to ensure women’s substantive equality, however, more nuanced feminist claims, like redressing the disproportionate burden of unpaid care work performed by women, were diluted because the UNDROP reinforced the “traditional” language from CEDAW which did not lead to newer inclusions and most notably many States firmly opposed the elaboration of a strong and ambitious language for this article 4.²³

However, further examination and interpretation of CEDAW and UNDROP’s provisions allow to recognise and create formidable opportunities for the redressal of the disproportionate impact of unpaid care work has on (rural) women.

In August 2013, the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Magdalena Sepúlveda, put forward a report that analysed ‘the relationship between unpaid care and poverty, inequality and women’s human rights.’ While pointing out the gender discriminatory nature of unpaid care work in households, the Special Rapporteur highlighted the relational nature of care work; the rights of caregivers and care receivers are intertwined. She further emphasised that care work is not a matter for the private sphere but one that needs to be assessed by a broader social lens while requiring immediate State intervention. The report highlights that unpaid care work affects several economic, social and cultural rights, especially of the caregivers (mostly women and girls in vulnerable societies). These rights include the right to work, rights at work, the right to education, the right to health, the right to social security, the right to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress (as a result of the lack of basic infrastructure and technology), the right to participation, and the right to rest and leisure.

Soon after, in March 2016, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women released their General Recommendation No. 34 on the rights of rural women, expanding the provisions of Article 14 of CEDAW, while reiterating the State’s duty to respect, protect and fulfil the rights of rural women. The document recognised the unpaid work burden of rural women and girls due to ‘stereotyped gender roles, intra-household inequality, and lack of infrastructure and services, including with respect to food production and care work.’ The document points out State failure in acknowledging ‘the role of rural women and girls in unpaid work, their contribution to the gross domestic product’ while closely linking it to ‘the macroeconomic root of gender inequality.’²⁴ Amongst other things, the General Recommendation advises State parties to adopt gender-responsive social protections for rural women engaged in unpaid and informal work, put in place programs that reduce the engagement of rural girls in unpaid care work, provide childcare and other such services to alleviate unpaid care work burdens rural women face, and lastly ensure environmentally sound and labour saving technologies be developed in consultation with rural women and should be available and accessible to them, to reduce their burdens.²⁵

The 2013 report by the Special Rapporteur and the General Recommendation No. 34 help establish a foundation, going beyond Article 4 of the UNDROP and Article 14 of the CEDAW, in the reconciliation of the rights of rural women and girls, regarding the unpaid care work they perform.

A progressive recognition of unpaid care work on rural women’s economic, social and cultural rights

Discriminatory gender stereotypes like “male breadwinners” and “women as carers/nurturers,” deem women as second-class citizens belonging in the home. Such stereotypes cause and perpetuate this unequal distribution of work.²⁶ Like the CEDAW, the UNDROP also condemns any kind of discrimination on the grounds of sex, social or other status, while directing States to eliminate conditions that perpetuate discrimination (Article 3). Article 5(a) of the CEDAW advises States to take measures ‘to modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct […] on stereotyped roles for men and women.’

Stereotypical assumptions coupled with chronic time deficits due to intense workloads limit opportunities to participate in decent employment.²⁷ Furthermore, women and girls from rural communities have limited opportunities in the formal labour market, and can be at special risk of violence, sexual exploitation and harassment when they seek employment outside their localities.²⁸ In rural areas, the gender pay gap can be as high as 40 per cent.²⁹ Article 11 of the CEDAW and Article 13 of the UNDROP establish the right to work of rural women. Interestingly, Article 13.2 focuses on the right of children to be protected from work that is likely ‘to interfere with the child’s education […]’ thereby, protecting ‘girls (who) are sometimes taken out of school to undertake unpaid care work.’ ³⁰ Article 10(f) of the CEDAW reestablishes the duty of the State to protect girls/women in such situations. Article 13.2 also gently establishes the right to education of rural girls, which is further expanded in Article 25 of the UNDROP and Article 10 of the CEDAW.

Unpaid care work inhibits a ‘women’s capacity to participate in public life […| in important decision-making processes at the community and national level.’ ³¹ Article 7 of the CEDAW, along with Article 10 of the UNDROP, reinforces rural women’s right to participate in ‘political and public life’ and in the ‘preparation and implementation of policies, programmes and projects that may affect their lives, land and livelihoods’ respectively.

Rural women and girls are most affected by water scarcity, which is further fuelled by the lack of access to basic infrastructure and services, including water and sanitation facilities. This exacerbates unpaid care work since they must dedicate a huge amount of time, often walking long distances, and sometimes risking violence to fetch water.³² Article 21 of the UNDROP establishes rural people’s right to water and directs States to ‘respect, protect and ensure access to water […] in particular for rural women and girls […]’. ‘Various forms of low-cost and effective technology exist that could ease the burden’ of water collection.³³ Article 21.1 of the UNDROP established the right to water supply systems and sanitation facilities, while Article 21.3 directs States to ‘promote appropriate and affordable technologies […] for water collection and storage.’ Tacitly, these statements underline rural women’s right to the benefits of scientific progress since governments rarely make investments in the development of infrastructure that can reduce the intensity and duration of unpaid care work.³⁴

Unpaid care work often forces women into precarious and informal jobs that are insecure, hazardous, poorly paid and not covered by social protection schemes like paid parental leave, unemployment insurance, or pensions.³⁵ Social protection measures can be protective, preventive, promotive and transformative³⁶ to rural women, but poor rural women not only lack access to information but also basic identification documents that could help them access such services.³⁷ The UNDROP directs States to recognise rural peoples’ right to social protection (Article 4.2(c) and Article 22). This is further strengthened by Article 11.1(e) and 11.2 (focused on maternity entitlements) of the CEDAW. The lack of infrastructure and services in rural areas can also mean that unpaid care work can be taxing (physically and emotionally), stressful, and even dangerous. Exposure to disease, risk and challenges from cooking and water collection can compromise the physical and mental well-being of rural women. Additionally, time and income poverty can hinder access to health services, especially in areas that are underserved by health services.³⁸ Article 12 and 14.2(b) of the CEDAW, read along with Article 23 of the UNDROP, validate rural women’s indiscriminatory access to healthcare.

Out of the several rights pointed out by Special Rapporteur Ms. Sepúlveda that are impacted by unpaid care work, there is no mention of the right to rest and leisure, both in the UNDROP and the CEDAW. However, these rights do find a place within the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 24) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (Article 7).

The above exercise of building and expanding on the normative framework of the human rights impact unpaid care work has on rural women and girls, helps pave ‘the way for care being increasingly seen today as a public policy issue as opposed to a private issue, as a social and economic issue, and as critical to thriving and just societies.’³⁹

A slow but growing recognition of rural women’s unpaid care work as a policy issue

It has been only in the last three decades that (unpaid) care work has started becoming a visible policy issue.⁴⁰

In September 1995, the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action linked the lack of public services to women taking on unpaid work and thereby impacting the economic rights and employment of women. Furthermore, in its objective to eliminate occupational segregation and employment discrimination, it directed governments, employers, employees, trade unions and women’s organisations to ‘address the excessive demands made on some girls for unpaid work in their household and other households.’⁴¹

In 2013, the 19th International Conference of Labour Statisticians (ICLS), with its standard-setting agenda in labour statistics, which is hosted by the International Labour Organisation, revised the definition of work to encompass unpaid care work. This definition states that work is ‘any activity performed by persons of any sex and age to produce goods or to provide services for use by others or for own use,’ where one of the five forms of work is ‘own-use production work.’ Own-use production work includes activities performed to produce goods or provide services mainly for the worker’s own final use or household consumption, and include: producing or processing agricultural and other products (including collecting firewood, etc.), fetching water, manufacturing household goods, building or repairing dwellings, household management including purchase and transport of goods, preparing and serving meals, cleaning and maintaining the household, and childcare, elder care and other such responsibilities.⁴²

In 2015, one of the Sustainable Development Goals, target 5.4, aimed to ‘recognize and value unpaid care and domestic work through the provision of public services, infrastructure and social protection policies and the promotion of shared responsibility within the household and the family as nationally appropriate.’⁴³ In August 2023, the General Assembly of the United Nations proclaimed 29 October as the International Day of Care and Support, ‘to raise awareness of the importance of care and support and its key contribution to the achievement of gender equality and the sustainability of our societies and economies…’ In July 2024, the Economic and Social Council adopted a resolution, the first of its kind that was solely focused on care and support, which urged States to create ‘enabling environments for promoting care and support systems for social development and implement all measures necessary to ensure the well-being and rights of care recipients and caregivers…’⁴⁴

However, despite the growing recognition of the value of (unpaid) care work, and the fact that in the past 20 years, men have never been more involved in family life than they are at present, change comes at a glacial pace. Data from 23 countries reveal that with current progress, closing the gender gap in unpaid care work is likely to take around 210 years (i.e. not until 2228).⁴⁵ It becomes even more concerning since at all levels, rural women’s rights and needs continue to remain ignored or overlooked in laws, policies, investments, etc.⁴⁶

Nevertheless, there have been promising signs. In October 2023, the Human Right Council adopted a resolution that expressed ‘concern that the difficulties, intensity and gendered distribution of unpaid care work create and perpetuate inequalities in the enjoyment of human rights… in particular for women and girls in vulnerable situations, women and girls in contexts of poverty, migrant women, rural women, Indigenous women…’ It further stresses ‘the need to adopt measures, with an intersectional approach’ in recognising, reducing and redistributing unpaid care work.⁴⁷ The resolution resulted in a comprehensive thematic study prepared by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, on the analysis of international human rights standards relevant to care and support. For comprehensive and integrated legislation and policies, one of the five-part conceptual framework is to recognise not only the rights but also the ‘the diversity and intersectionality⁴⁸ of the identities’ of care providers.⁴⁹

Introducing intersectionality into a human rights issue offers ‘transformative potential,’ while becoming ‘a tool for equity’ through a contextual programmatic approach. Furthermore, it helps connect ‘international human rights instruments through one lens,’⁵⁰ facilitating the human rights systems in overcoming its siloed thinking and structures where there specific instruments are used to address for discrimination affecting a group (women, migrant workers, persons with disabilities, etc.), rights categories (civil and political, and economic, social, and cultural), and phenomena (racial discrimination, torture, etc.).⁵¹

Intersectionality maps the role that characteristics like race, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation, migrant status, and poverty play in creating a reinforcing web of disadvantages.⁵² Rural spaces are shaped by policy interventions and omission choices that carry human rights implications, while intersecting with other identities such as gender, race, disability, age and so on, to produce distinct experiences of structural inequality and discrimination.⁵³ Additionally, there is an assumption that rural life mirrors the characteristics of urban life, resulting in a ‘metronormativity’ that fails to address the lived realities of rural life, creating further obstacles and exacerbating violations, ⁵⁴ herein creating grounds for discrimination, drawn from space and geography. Rurality then becomes an axis of inequality and needs to be added to the canon of intersectional identities. ⁵⁵

In the past, human rights instruments have not engaged with rurality as an intersecting axis of inequality affecting the rights set out in the foundational human rights treaties. ⁵⁶ Then there is the fact that rural girls and women are too often invisible⁵⁷ and continue to ‘face systematic and persistent barriers to the full enjoyment of their human rights.’⁵⁸ It is here, then, that Article 14 of CEDAW and the UNDROP (especially Article 4) come to our rescue, bringing both rurality and women to the law’s attention, expanding existing human rights norms and practices to explicitly include and apply to rural people.⁵⁹ These instruments recognise the ‘marginalization that rural women already experience by virtue of the physical geography…’⁶⁰ offering a sense of spatial justice, to ‘advance frames and solutions that identify and transform structural inequality related to space and geography.’⁶¹

It must be noted that UN systems tend to acknowledge rural differences within the context of (i) underdevelopment, deprivation, or limited access to services and resources, and (ii) conditions in developing countries. ⁶² Plus, progress and challenges reported under Article 14, focus on women’s roles in agriculture, access to services such as health care, education, and job creation and training. ⁶³ Although it is important to address these implications, they are framed in neutral terms and seldom clarify how such dynamics specifically affect rural livelihoods, as we have seen with the lack of recognition of the unpaid care work done by (rural) women and girls.

Conclusion

Still, Article 14 of the CEDAW, the UNDROP, General Recommendations like No. 34, thematic reports such as that by the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Human Rights Council resolutions like the one in October 2023 can be used to challenge and prompt law and policy makers to consider the relevance of the rural axis, and the needs of rural women and girls concerning infrastructure and the delivery of key services, such as health care and education. ⁶⁴ As Hilary Charlesworth points out, the ‘rights discourse offers a recognized vocabulary to frame political and social wrongs.’ ⁶⁵ By simply introducing the concept of rural as an intersection in policy design, it can prove critical in the implications of the impact it has on individuals, communities and societies.⁶⁶

In doing so, one can, for example, leverage the ILO’s 5R framework, which recommends that policies should recognise, reduce, and redistribute unpaid care work; reward paid care work; and guarantee representation for care workers through social dialogue and collective bargaining⁶⁷ to find innovative solutions to addressing rural women’s needs. For example, cash structures can shake-up or undermine, the rigid hierarchy of power and social structures⁶⁸ as seen in Brazil’s Bolsa Família program, where gender transformation was observed in urban areas with respect to the autonomy of women in making various household decisions. However, in rural areas these effects were either absent or negative, possibly even reinforcing typical gender norms by requiring mothers to fulfil traditional responsibilities while at the same time excluding men from participation.⁶⁹ In such cases, innovative complementary approaches like engaging religious and community leaders to promote a change in social norms for better recognition, reduction and redistribution of women’s unpaid work, exploring pay-as-you-go model to facilitate access to modern energy and technologies for domestic and productive uses, offering group insurance memberships to rural women networks and cooperatives for reduced premiums, capacity building interventions to improve technological literacy to access financial services, seek relevant information, and find new market opportunities, and so on, may prove to be more successful.⁷⁰

Ultimately, the normative developments surveyed in this article suggest that international human rights law offers a meaningful repertoire of legal tools through which rural women and girls can articulate claims, contest structural inequalities, and demand accountability. Politically, when these frameworks are invoked through collective organizing, strategic litigation, shadow reporting, and participation in policy-making spaces, they can serve as leverage to bring visibility to unpaid care work, contest its gendered tone, and reframe it as a matter of rights, redistribution, and public responsibility. Advancing such claims requires strengthening legal literacy, supporting rural women’s movements and networks, and fostering alliances across feminist, agrarian, labour, and human rights struggles. In this sense, the effective realization of rural women’s rights in relation to unpaid care work depends not only on the progressive interpretation of international norms, but also on their active appropriation by those most affected, transforming law from a declaratory framework into a site of social and political change.

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14Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, International Fund for Agricultural Development, and World Food Programme, Rural women and girls 25 years after Beijing (n 2).

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16 Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Addressing Women’s Work Burden: Fact Sheet (Rome, 2016), available at: http://www.fao.org/3/a-i5586e.pdf (accessed 10 April 2025) ; Flavia Grassi, Josefine Landberg and Sophia Huyer, Running Out of Time: The Reduction of Women’s Work Burden in Agricultural Production (n 5).

17Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Addressing Women’s Work Burden: Fact Sheet (Rome, 2016); citing World Bank, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, and International Fund for Agricultural Development, Gender in Agriculture Sourcebook (Washington, D.C., 2009).

18 Laura Addati, Umberto Cattaneo, Valeria Esquivel and Isabel Valarino, Care Work and Care Jobs for the Future of Decent Work (n 11).

19Time poverty is broadly understood as the lack of time needed for individuals to meet their basic requirements for rest and leisure, also known as discretionary time, owing to an excess of paid work and unpaid care and domestic work. This understanding draws on the work of Vickery (1977), as cited in: United Nations, World Survey on the Role of Women in Development 2019: Why Addressing Women’s Income and Time Poverty Matters for Sustainable Development (New York, United Nations, 2020), ST/ESA/371, available at: https://www.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2019/06/world-survey-on-the-role-of-women-in-development-2019 (accessed 10 April 2025).

20United Nations, World survey on the role of women in development (n 18).

21The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women states that a purely formal legal or programmatic approach is insufficient to guarantee women identical treatment to men. Biological, social and culturally constructed differences must be taken into account, and non-identical treatment may be required to overcome the underrepresentation of women and to ensure the redistribution of resources and power. An enabling environment is essential to achieve equality of results and to transform systems grounded in historically determined male paradigms of power and life patterns. From: Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, General Recommendation No. 25 on Article 4, Paragraph 1, of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, on Temporary Special Measures (2004), paras. 8–10, available at: https://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/recommendations/General%20recommendation%2025%20(English).pdf (accessed 11 July 2025).

22Ana Belen Sobrino Gonzalez, CEDAW: Why Care about Equality? Exploring the Principle of Equality and Non-Discrimination in the Context of Women’s Unpaid Care and Domestic Work in Development Discourse and Practice (Oslo, University of Oslo, 2016), available at: https://www.duo.uio.no/bitstream/handle/10852/51389/HUMR5200_thesis_uio_Candidate_8021.pdf (accessed 1 April 2025).

23Priscilla Claeys and Joanna Bourke Martignoni, Women are peasants too: Gender equality and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants (n 7).

24Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, General recommendation No. 34, CEDAW/C/GC/34 (n 3).

25Ibid.

26UN General Assembly, Report of the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, A/68/293 (n 23).

27Ibid.

28Ibid.

Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, General recommendation No. 34, CEDAW/C/GC/34 (n 3).

29International Labour Organization, Rural Women at Work: Bridging the Gaps (Geneva: ILO, 6 March 2018), available at: https://www.ilo.org/publications/rural-women-work-bridging-gaps (accessed 10 April 2025).

30UN General Assembly, Report of the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, A/68/293 (n 23).

31Ibid.

32UN General Assembly, Report of the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, A/68/293 (n 23) ; Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, General recommendation No. 34, CEDAW/C/GC/34 (n 3).

33UN General Assembly, Report of the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, A/68/293 (n 23).

34Ibid, para. 55.

35UN General Assembly, Report of the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, A/68/293 (n 23); Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, General recommendation No. 34, CEDAW/C/GC/34 (n 3).

36Stephen Devereux and Rachel Sabates-Wheeler, Transformative social protection, IDS Working Paper No. 232 (Brighton: Institute of Development Studies, 2004), as cited in Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Empowering rural women through social protection, Rural Transformations – Technical Papers Series No. 2 (Rome: FAO, 2015), p. 5.

37UN WomenWatch, Rural women – overview: Social protection, available at: https://www.un.org/womenwatch/feature/ruralwomen/overview-social-protection.html (accessed 10 April 2025).

38UN General Assembly, Report of the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, A/68/293 (n 23).

39 United Nations, Transforming Care Systems in the Context of the Sustainable Development Goals and Our Common Agenda, UN System Policy Paper (New York, 2024), p. 29, available at: https://unsdg.un.org/sites/default/files/2024-07/FINAL_UN%20System%20Care%20Policy%20Paper_24June2024.pdf (accessed 1 June 2025).

40While policy discourse typically addresses care work in its entirety, this document focuses specifically on unpaid care work. Care work includes both paid and unpaid activities that “encompass direct care for people (physical, emotional, psychological and developmental) as well as indirect care (e.g. household tasks, including collecting water and firewood, travelling and transporting), taking place within and outside the home.” Definition adapted from: United Nations, Transforming Care Systems, p. 6.

41United Nations, Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, A/CONF.177/20 (1995), adopted by General Assembly resolution 50/142, available at: https://archive.unescwa.org/sites/www.unescwa.org/files/u1281/bdpfa_e.pdf (accessed 11 June 2025).

42International Labour Organization, Resolution concerning statistics of work, employment and labour underutilization, ICLS/19/2013/R.1 (adopted 11 October 2013), available at: https://www.ilo.org/global/statistics-and-databases/standards-and-guidelines/resolutions-adopted-by-international-conferences-of-labour-statisticians/WCMS_230304/lang–en/index.htm (accessed 11 June 2025).

43 United Nations, Goal 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls, Sustainable Development Goals, available at: https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal5#targets_and_indicators (accessed 11 June 2025).

44United Nations Economic and Social Council, Promoting Care and Support Systems for Social Development, resolution E/RES/2024/4 (2024), available at: https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/4054737?v=pdf (accessed 16 July 2025).

45Laura Addati, Umberto Cattaneo, Valeria Esquivel and Isabel Valarino, Care work and care jobs for the future of decent work (n 11).

46Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, General recommendation No. 34, CEDAW/C/GC/34 (n 3).

47United Nations Human Rights Council, The Centrality of Care and Support from a Human Rights Perspective, Resolution A/HRC/RES/54/6 (11 October 2023), available at: https://docs.un.org/en/A/HRC/RES/54/6 (accessed 16 July 2025).

48Intersectionality is a concept and theoretical framework that facilitates recognition of the complex ways in which social identities overlap and, in negative scenarios, can create compounding experiences of discrimination and concurrent forms of oppression. United Nations Network on Racial Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, Guidance Note on Intersectionality, Racial Discrimination and Protection of Minorities (Geneva: ILO, 2023), available at: https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/issues/minorities/30th-anniversary/2022-09-22/GuidanceNoteonIntersectionality.pdf (accessed 16 July 2025).

49United Nations Human Rights Council, Human Rights Dimension of Care and Support: Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, A/HRC/58/43 (30 January 2025), available at: https://docs.un.org/en/A/HRC/58/43 (accessed 16 July 2025).

50UN Women, Intersectionality resource guide and toolkit (New York: UN Women, 2021), available at: https://www.unwomen.org/sites/default/files/2022-01/Intersectionality-resource-guide-and-toolkit-en.pdf (accessed 16 July 2025).

51Allison J. Petrozziello, “Intersectionality as method for human rights research,” Journal of Human Rights 24, no. 2 (2025): 182-198, https://doi.org/10.1080/14754835.2025.2477493 (accessed 16 July 2025).

52Meghan Campbell, “The distance between us: Sexual and reproductive health rights of rural women and girls,” in Shreya Atreya and Peter Dunne (eds), Intersectionality and human rights law (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2020), pp. 112-130, available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3587464 (accessed 16 July 2025).

53 Amanda Lyons, “Rurality as an intersecting axis of inequality in the work of the UN treaty bodies,” Washington and Lee Law Review 79 (2022): 1125-1148, available at: https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/wlulr/vol79/iss3/8 (accessed 16 July 2025).

54Meghan Campbell, The distance between us (n 53).

55Amanda Lyons, Rurality as an intersecting axis of inequality (n 54); Meghan Campbell, The distance between us (n 53).

56Ibid.

57Meghan Campbell, The distance between us (n 53).

58Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, General recommendation No. 34, CEDAW/C/GC/34 (n 3).

59Lisa R. Pruitt, “Deconstructing CEDAW’s Article 14: Naming and explaining rural difference,” William & Mary Journal of Women and the Law 17 (2011), available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1770054;  Amanda Lyons, Rurality as an intersecting axis of inequality  (n 54).

60Ibid (n 60).

61Amanda Lyons, Rurality as an intersecting axis of inequality (n 54).

62Ibid.

63Lisa R. Pruitt, Deconstructing CEDAW’s Article 14 (n 60).

64Ibid.

65Hilary Charlesworth, “What are ‘Women’s International Human Rights’?” in Human Rights of Women: National and International Perspectives, p. 58 (1994), as cited in Lisa R. Pruitt, Deconstructing CEDAW’s Article 14 (n 60), p. 347.

66Sarah Redshaw, Cate Thomas, Nathan Kerrigan, Branka Krivokapic-Skoko, and Susan Flynn, “Rurality and intersectionality: a literature review,” Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal 44, no. 9 (2025): 208-226, available at: https://doi.org/10.1108/EDI-10-2024-0482 (accessed 16 July 2025).

67Laura Addati, Umberto Cattaneo, Valeria Esquivel, and Isabel Valarino, Care work and care jobs for the future of decent work (n 11).

68 Francesca Bastagli, Jessica Hagen-Zanker, Luke Harman, Valentina Barca, Georgina Sturge, and Tanja Schmidt, with Luca Pellerano, Cash transfers: What does the evidence say? A rigorous review of programme impact and of the role of design and implementation features (London: Overseas Development Institute, 2016), available at: https://odi.org/en/publications/cash-transfers-what-does-the-evidence-say-a-rigorous-review-of-programme-impact-and-of-the-role-of-design-and-implementation-features (accessed 16 July 2025).

69Francesca Bastagli, Jessica Hagen-Zanker, Luke Harman, Valentina Barca, Georgina Sturge, and Tanja Schmidt, Cash transfers: What does the evidence say? (n 69); United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women), The effect of cash-based interventions on gender outcomes in development and humanitarian settings (New York: UN Women, 2019), available at: https://www.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2019/12/effect-of-cash-based-interventions (accessed 16 July 2025).

70 United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women), Innovative Solutions to Recognize, Reduce and Redistribute the Unpaid Care Work of Rural Women in Senegal (2023), available at: https://africa.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2023/06/innovative-solutions-to-recognize-reduce-and-redistribute-the-unpaid-care-work-of-rural-women-in-senegal (accessed 16 July 2025)

La entrada Rural Women and Unpaid Care Work: Gaps and Opportunities within International Law se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

This article provides a summary of an academic paper written by Romberg de Sá Gondim (avaliable here)

Introduction

As digital tools tend to incorporate a top-down and corporate driven approach, these technologies have been easily assimilated by large-scale farms and in particular with the Green Revolution (Shelton et al., 2022). On another hand, peasants and small-scale farmers face unequal access, ability of accessing, finding, and benefiting from such technologies (McCampbell et al., 2025). The complexity and technocratic approach of technologies also risks minimizing peasant participation, agency and co-creation of knowledge by replicating (Hilbeck and Tiselli, 2020), and even replacing previous horizontal and inclusive social interactions between small-scale farmers, peasants, and rural communities, threatening a cornerstone element of agroecology (Shelton et al., 2022). While peasant literacy, participation and access to technology are not new dilemmas on agroecological studies, the rise of the digital revolution comes with new nuances. More specifically, on how how emerging digital technologies are or aren’t considering agroecological principles (Ajena et al, 2020). This dynamic raises fundamental questions about peasants rights, and in particular the right to develop agroecological practices, which are enshrined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP).

The impact of digitalization on peasants’ rights

The effects of digitalization on the co-creation of knowledge and peasant agency within agroecology remain insufficiently understood – not only in the academic literature but also among peasant communities and agroecological activists themselves (Silva, 2022). Tensions emerge between agri-tech and agroecological approaches, as the former often replicate the discourse and practices of the Green Revolution, seeing in contradiction with agroecological approaches and peasants’ rights. Digital tools have been linked to the devaluation of traditional knowledge systems, the standardization of practices through datafication (Ajena et al., 2022; Shelton et al., 2022), and the emergence of predatory intellectual property dynamics, such as the digital sequencing of germplasm (Vogliano et al., 2021). These practices are not only at odds with agroecological values but also contravene key provisions of the UNDROP – notably Article 19 on the right to seeds, Article 20 on biodiversity, and Article 26 on traditional knowledge. Yet, other scholars argue that agroecology and digital technologies are not inherently incompatible, and that these technologies may foster agroecology scalability (Rotz et al., 2019), which can also create problems of inequality, as differentiated  access to these tools can exacerbate inequalities among peasants, generating asymmetrical productivity gains that benefit adopters while excluding non-adopters (Brunori, 2024).

Considering the complex dynamic between digitalization, agroecology, and peasant agency and participation, this research paper explored these themes through the following central question: To what extent do digital tools enable or constrain meaningful participation in agroecological transitions at the territorial level? To answer this, a set of three sub-questions were posed: (i) What tensions and opportunities emerge in the digitalization of agriculture to small-scale farmers? (ii) How do digital tools align or conflict with agroecological principles such as co-creation of knowledge and resilient governance?; and (iii) Who are the actors involved in the design and governance of agroecological digital tools, and how do their participatory approaches affect peasants’ agency and inclusion?

To answer these questions, the paper was also structured in three parts. First, a literature review addresses the subquestions using academic articles, policy briefs, and program reports on the digitalization of agroecology. This includes a descriptive analysis of a dataset on how digital tools incorporate agroecological and social inclusion elements (from Dittmer et al., 2022a). Second, two case-based sections explored: (i) digital tools as a way for co-creation and knowledge sharing, focusing on the Solis app developed in Pará, Brazil under the Inclusive Digital Tools (ADTD) component of the Agroecological Transitions Program for Building Resilient and Inclusive Agricultural & Food Systems (TRANSITIONS), financed by the European Union (EU). And, (ii) governance perspectives drawing on semi-structured interviews conducted by the author with agroecological activists from La Via Campesina in Brazil and Paraguay, alongside insights from the TRANSITIONS interviews with policy and technical actors and small-scale farmers prior to Solis implementation (Freixêdas et al., 2022). Finally, the conclusion reflects on the findings and limitations of existing literature and how the case studies respond to the research questions.

In this summary, the main findings from the case studies and the key conclusions of the paper are outlined below. For further details, including additional references to interviews conducted with La Via Campesina leaders in South America, Perla Alvarez (CONAMURI, Paraguay) and Marciano Toledo (MPA, Brazil), please refer to the full article [insert link again].

Case Studies

Firstly, a section on the co-design and implementation of  Solis, an app designed for increasing peasants’ digital agency in small livestock farming initially in Novo Repartimento, Anapú and Pacajá cities (Pará State, North of Brazil). This section highlighted how small-scale farmers were included, and the challenges during and after the process, through documentation analysis of reports and presentations about the programme. A second session addressed governance issues faced in including peasants and agroecological elements in the digitalization of agriculture in Brazil. For this, documental analysis of publications and interviews conducted by the Transitions Programme in Brazil with agents in ministries, governmental agencies, state governments, cooperatives, developers, private sector, and NGOs (Freixêdas et al., 2022) will be complemented by interviews conducted by the author with peasants and social activists within La Via Camponesa International in Brazil and Paraguay (while also a representative for the Latin American Coordination of Rural Organizations – CLOC).

The Solis app, a project developed in the Pará region of Brazil, serves as a powerful example of how digital tools can be designed to align with agroecological principles. A civil society organization, Solidaridad Latinoamerica, partnered with peasants who had little access to technical assistance but were already familiar with smartphones and social media like WhatsApp. Instead of presenting a finished product, the project used participatory methods like co-creation workshops and field days to involve peasants in the design process from the start. This approach was crucial for adapting the app to local needs. For instance, peasant input transformed the app’s initial concept, leading to the creation of a digital learning community where users could share videos and content about local agroecological practices. This peasant-to-peasant knowledge exchange, a core tenet of agroecology, became a central feature. This co-design process aligns with the UNDROP’s articles 10 and 18,   which establish the rights of peasants to meaningful participation in decision-making and control over their resources.

The app demonstrates that inclusive digital tools can empower peasants and help them transition away to more agroecological models. However, it also highlights significant challenges. The extensive participatory design process delayed the app’s launch for a year, and the need to keep the tool free for peasants places a financial burden on its developers. This raises further questions: how can these valuable, peasant-centric initiatives be sustained and scaled without compromising their core principles?

Also, while local initiatives like Solis show great promise, the broader landscape of digital governance in Brazil and in Latin America in general is far more challenging. Interviews with government and industry representatives conducted by the Solis team revealed that many existing digital tools are designed with a “one size fits all” approach that does not account for the diverse needs of peasants and small-scale farmers. Although some officials acknowledged the need for peasant input, their definitions of “participation” often stopped at simply consulting peasants or communicating them about existing policies. The idea of peasants as co-developers or participants in administrative governance was rarely mentioned.

This disconnect is a major concern for agroecological movements like La Via Campesina. The interviews conducted by the author with activists from Brazil and Paraguay revealed some skepticism towards digital agriculture. This does not come as a rejection of technology itself, but of the corporate, top-down approach of many digital tools that lead to the same problems as the Green Revolution. Interestingly, the interviews showed a relationship between data ownership and previous forms of resource privatization, such as corporate appropriation and patenting of local crop varieties. Now, it comes to the preoccupation of “what will they do with my data?” and “how is it being used?”, which  reinforces UNDROPs importance in emphasizing the rights of peasants in controlling their own resources and traditional knowledge. Furthermore, other challenges in the latin american environment, such as the lack of secure access to land, a fragmented and opaque public policy landscape, and current fights on seeds rights are priority to social movements, which dislocate their attention to the current debates on digitalization.

Ultimately, the research shows a clear gap between the potential of digital tools to foster agroecology and the reality of how they are currently designed and governed. While grassroots efforts like Solis are creating inclusive alternatives, they operate in parallel to a broader policy environment that largely excludes peasant movements and fails to address the fundamental issues of power, participation, and data sovereignty.

Conclusion

The paper aimed to understand the extent to which digital technologies enable or constrain meaningful participation in agroecological transitions at the territorial level. The findings reaffirm many critical concerns raised in the academic literature. While it mentions the possibility of co-creation of digital tools for agroecological purposes, most of the current tools mapped are far away from incorporating agroecological principles and social inclusion in their design (Dittmer et al., 2022a). Thus, the dominant top-down, corporate-driven approach may continue to frame most digital agricultural tools, embedding them within narratives of standardization and productivity associated with the Green Revolution (Klerkx & Rose, 2020; Shelton et al., 2022). These models tend to marginalize smallholders, exclude traditional knowledge, and risk deepening inequalities. While power relations are underlined in the literature, little is mentioned on the peasants movement agency in digitalization of agriculture outside – valid – concerns with peasant data ownership and the corporate vision behind such tools. Their engagement on co-creating horizontal digital tools is yet not clear.

Future research should expand both in depth and breadth, in themes such as financing for digital tools in agroecology, so as to understand their operational model – and how peasant knowledge is incorporated –, return on investment, and in identifying how different financial mechanisms that may be related to more agroecological elements and social inclusion realization, that is, more participation. Also, incoming research should focus on the role of peasant movements in co-creating, implementing, or even resisting digital technologies, and in understanding how these actors influence the governance – locally or nationally, institutionalized or not – and values embedded in digital technologies is critical for a more democratic digital transition. Considering the time of writing, the article did not incorporate recent efforts, such as the “Inteligência Artificial da Reforma Agrária e Agroecologia” (IARAA, AI of Agrarian Reformation and Agroecology) project, coordinated by the Landless Rural Workers Movement and the World March of Women.

Ultimately, if agroecology is to serve as an alternative to industrial and productivist agriculture, its engagement with digital tools shall not replicate the very structures it seeks to replace. Instead, it must be reimagined from the ground up – rooted in peasant agency, collective knowledge, and equitable governance (Laurens et al., 2023; McCampbell et al., 2025; Sheldon et al., 2022), thereby fulfilling rights recognized in the UNDROP. This includes, but moves beyond inclusive design, towards also understanding governance and power dynamics (Rosset et al., 2025; Rotz et al., 2019). As digital technologies are rapidly embedded in food and agriculture systems, this paper highlighted how the challenge is not merely technological, but fundamentally about power, participation, and the future of agroecology, its practices, principles, and actors.

To consult the bibliographic references cited in this article, please refer to the full paper provided below.

On this topic, read also:

1.) https://www.eurovia.org/publications/ecvc-position-on-digitalisation/

2.) https://defendingpeasantsrights.org/los-desafios-de-los-movimientos-campesinos-frente-a-la-digitalizacion-de-la-agricultura/ (Spanish or French only)

La entrada Bridging or Excluding? Peasant Participation in the Digitalization of Agroecology se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

Article first published in July 2025 by the Padova University Press.

In this academic article, Alexandre Mortelette examines how civil society actors, primarily La Vía Campesina, CETIM and FIAN International, contributed to the co-construction of UNDROP by translating grassroots demands into international legal standards through an inclusive, participatory, and iterative process.

La entrada When Civil Society Plants the Seeds of Normative Change: the Role of Non-state Actors in the Adoption of UNDROP se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

“Building on this tapestry of human rights configurations, the UNDROP’s affirmation of peasants’ right to land represents a turning point in longstanding efforts to connect land to human rights. It raises questions about the legal contours of the right to land and how this newly affirmed right complements, and intersects with, other human rights. Although such questions are theoretical, they also have practical implications. Restrictive interpretations can hollow out the emancipatory potential of a new right from within, while clarifying the full reverberations of that right can facilitate its use in processes of change. It is therefore important to explore the social, economic, and political circumstances that led to the affirmation of the right to land, what the right to land entails in practice and its potential for bringing about the change peasant movements are fighting for around the world.“

La entrada THE RIGHT TO LAND se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

Abstract
Focusing on the Guarani Mbyá and the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) in Santa Catarina, this thesis explores the similarities and differences between indigenous and landless food sovereignty. It shows how their narratives are intertwined and how their unique legal and cultural positionalities shape their food practices. Brazil’s high land concentration and dominant agri-food practices put pressure on both groups. This pressure generates similar food sovereignty practices to preserve their food systems while promoting favorable public policies. Uniquely, the MST, as part of the settler society, sees agrarian reform and food practices as a means to change the Brazilian land and food system. Instead, for the Guarani Mbyá, food practices are an integral part of their culture and a way to preserve their self-determination. The Guarani case illustrates the complex, non-linear relationship between mental health and access to traditional food production and consumption, both within their territories and in public spaces.

La entrada Common Struggles, Different Roots: Indigenous and Landless People’s Food Sovereignties in Southern Brazil se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

La entrada What is a peasant? What are peasantries? se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

Abstract

This chapter explores the human right to land from both a historical and a normative perspective. It analyzes the key developments that have led to the recognition of the human right to land in international human rights law. The 􀁿rst part of the chapter explores land as a key component of other human rights, such as the rights to food, housing, property, and other economic, social, and cultural rights. The second part then describes how various international legal instruments came to recognize land as a self-standing human right. It discusses the various dimensions of the right to land and what this right means for di􀁼erent groups, with a focus on Indigenous Peoples, peasants, and other people working in rural areas. Finally, the third part explores current challenges for the implementation of the right to land, with an emphasis on forced evictions and displacements, the gender and intersectional dimensions, and the impacts of transnational corporations. The overall objective is to highlight the benefits of adopting a human rights approach to land issues, seeing land, not as a mere commodity, but as central to the realization of human rights.

La entrada Land Is a Human Right se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

Editor’s introduction

Seventeen years of struggle. That’s what it took for the United Nations to adopt – on 17 December 2018 – the Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP 2018). UNDROP recognises the dignity of the world’s rural populations, their contributions to global food production, and the ‘special relationship’ they have to land, water and nature, as well as their vulnerabilities to eviction, hazardous working conditions and political repression. It reiterates human rights protected in other instruments and sets new standards for individual and collective rights to land and natural resources, seeds, biodiversity and food sovereignty. Readers of this Grassroots Voices forum will encounter some of the key actors that made the Declaration happen: peasant activists from Indonesia, Belgium, France, Germany, Senegal and Argentina; a farmworker union activist from the United States; a women’s rights activist from Spain; a Bolivian diplomat; the Indian leader of a transnational Catholic farmers’ movement; an advocate for small-scale fishers from Uganda; a Swiss jurist; an indigenous peoples’ rights leader from Mexico who had participated in the negotiations of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP); and human rights advocates from CETIM and FIAN International, two organisations that played key supporting roles in the process. Together they describe a new kind of people’s diplomacy and an innovative, bottom-up process of building alliances, lobbying, and authoring international law.

READ THE PDF VERSION HERE

La entrada The United Nations Declaration on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

Introduction

In the preamble of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP) the concern for youth leaving agriculture and rural areas because of the lack of opportunities and strenuous conditions of agricultural work is expressed. Ensuring access to land is one of the strategies to facilitate, or safeguard, youth’s commitment to rural and agricultural livelihoods. Following a human rights approach, the UNDROP refers to the right to have access to, use and sustainably manage land and natural resources in articles 5 and 17 (United Nations 2018). Ensuring continued and widespread access to land for new generations of farmers is crucial to upholding a peasant agriculture, in turn fundamental to the food sovereignty of communities. The importance of, but also challenges to, access to land for youth have predominantly been discussed in the context of regions where livelihoods of a high percentage of the population depend on small-scale agriculture, with a particular focus on sub-Saharan Africa (see for instance Gichimu and Njeru 2014; Kosec et al. 2018; Yeboah et al. 2019; White 2019).

However, also in the canton of Geneva in Switzerland, access to land for young people aspiring to engage in agricultural production, and especially for those not inheriting a farm, is a challenge. At the same time, around half of the existing farmers in Switzerland are entering retirement in the current decade and stopping to work their lands (FSO 2021a). The explanation for the seemingly paradoxical situation of unavailability of farms for youth despite high retirement rates lies in the financial, legal and social barriers to access to land for youth. An elaboration of those barriers is followed by a sketch of pathways to lower the barriers that are pursued in Geneva and a reflection on the findings’ revelation of and implications for the development of Swiss agriculture.

The analysis is based on discussions in a round table on access to land at an event in Geneva organised by the Artisans de la Transition (November 17, 2021) and semi-structured interviews. Interviews have been conducted with, firstly, young people engaged in agriculture in the canton of Geneva, mainly from La Touvière. The second interlocutor was Valentina Hemmeler Maïga, the General Director of the cantonal office of agriculture and nature,who is a defining actor in pushing for access to land for youth in Geneva, and, thirdly, Johanna Huber, a doctoral candidate who is studying the access to land in Switzerland. Further information was collected through an email exchange with two employees of the association for small peasants (Kleinbauern-Vereinigung) about their programme on extra-familial farm succession. These data are complemented by a critical reading of Swiss agricultural laws on the one hand, and social science literature on Swiss farmers and agricultural development on the other hand.

Barriers for young (aspiring) farmers to accessing agricultural land

In Switzerland, for activities officially being recognised as farming and eligible for receiving the state’s direct payments, a farmer, farmer family or group does not just require land, but at least one member with a certified agricultural education, a building counting as agricultural infrastructure, machines, and implicitly the money to finance all of these elements. Therefore, the barriers to accessing farmland are only part of the hurdles to starting a farm. Obtaining an agricultural education is accessible and the shortest way only takes two years. In fact, more people obtain the certification to run a farm than there are farms available, which is particularly an issue in the canton of Geneva. Geneva has its own agronomic school, HEPIA, attracting numerous young people from (peri-)urban, non-agricultural backgrounds that graduate without any prospect of inheriting a farm, but wishing to perform the farming profession. Education, but also basic machines and agricultural tools are easily accessible, therefore the focus in this research lies on the constraints to land, and to a lesser extent agricultural infrastructure such as farm buildings, as barriers to carrying out the agricultural profession. The constraints are of interlinked social, legal, and economic nature.

Social constraints: Land for one’s own blood

Social constraints to access to land are predominantly linked to the dominant logic of family agriculture and its associated heritage structures. In order to understand the social logics in agriculture, understanding models of heritage is crucial (Augustins 1989). Indeed, preserving the farm and the family identity connected to it for inheritance is one of the main motivations of farmers in Switzerland to carry out their occupation even in difficult health and financial circumstances (Droz 2017; Forney and Droz 2018, 66). Social factors add a gender dimension to access to land in Switzerland; Historically, daughters and wifes are disadvantaged in matters related to the farm, including succession (Droz et al. 2014; Contzen 2004).

Several social aspects complicate the transmission of a farm. Because the farmers’ identity is generally deeply connected to the farm, the process of farm succession is profoundly emotional and often not tackled early enough (Häberli 2021, 58). Retiring farmers, or farmer couples and families, find themselves suddenly overwhelmed by all the decisions that are connected to handing over a farm. Oftentimes, the farmhouse is not set up for hosting two family units. This poses difficulties in making space for the new generations, as the older generation usually wishes to continue living on the farm. Not only are they connected to the farm, but the lack of savings and pension of retiring farmers complicates the renting of another space (Rossier and Felber 2007, 245). Furthermore, diverging values and ideas on how to run the farm between generations are a common source of conflict (Häberli 2021, 61). Financial as well as value-related concessions are made to preserve the heritage and transmit the farm to a child (Forney and Droz 2018, 50). However, in the case of lack of successors from within the family, making such concessions becomes harder. The simplest solution for retiring farmers in this case is selling or leasing the land and continuing living on the farm, leading to a further farm disappearing.

The case of La Touvière is illustrative of this dynamic. The retired farmer is leasing the farm to the motivated group of young farmers on a 20-year contract. Initially, his son had carried on the business but did not enjoy it enough to continue. Wanting the farm to be sustained and liking the group’s project of social and environmentally friendly farming as an organic farmer himself, the retired owner supported the young group in installing themselves. However, he continues living in the residential house of the farm, meaning the young farmers have to live elsewhere, posing financial but also organisational constraints on them and the farm business. Furthermore, as the farm is rented, there is uncertainty on the medium-term future of the business built up by the young farmers. If one of the owner’s grandchildren wishes to take over the farm, which is the hope of the owner, then the current group has to leave again.

Many young aspiring farmers, like those from La Touvière, increasingly seek organisational forms other than family farming. Wishing for more independence from the farm and a lower financial burden to be carried by an individual, they aim to work as collectives. This is a clear break from the entrenched helvetic family farming model (see for instance Forney and Droz 2018, 51). The typical peasant ethos includes not only a strong logic of family heritage but also an image of a farmer as an independent entrepreneur (Droz 2001). Value clashes in the respect of models of organising a farm hamper farm succession further.

While the system of inheritance and family farming in Swiss agriculture facilitates the farm takeover of one child within the family, it restricts further children and outsiders of the family from performing the farming profession, particularly if they seek organisation models other than family agriculture. The system of family farming and farm inheritance is not just of a social nature, but also anchored in law.

Legal constraints: Entrenching family farming

Three main laws govern agricultural land in Switzerland, aimed at preserving agricultural lands from disappearance, favouring family farming businesses and avoiding speculation on agricultural land. The first law is the Raumplanungsgesetz (Spatial planning act) with its initial version in 1979 which led to a clear differentiation between zones, not least to protect land for agricultural production and food security from urban sprawl. In the demarcated agricultural zones, the possibilities for new construction are strictly limited. Land and infrastructure in the agricultural zones fall under two other laws, namely the Bundesgesetz über das bäuerliche Bodenrecht(agricultural/peasant land law) adopted in 1991 with its latest revision in 2014, and the Bundesgesetz über die landwirtschaftliche Pacht(Law on agricultural lease) adopted in 1985 and also revised most recently in 2014. These laws prescribe that only people with a certified agricultural education can own or lease farms and farmland to ensure its use for farming purposes, thus preserving farmland.

The laws favour transition of farm infrastructure and land within the family, and in case of a lack of interest within the family, its lease to neighbouring farmers. When the farm is sold to a family member, the agricultural/peasant land law provides that it can be done so under the return value (Art. 17). Outsiders to the family, on the other hand, are required to pay the market value which is around two and a half times higher (Droz and Forney 2007, 56). The effect is that very little land and even fewer farms become available and financially accessible for aspiring farmers who do not inherit those infrastructures.

The laws pose constraints on more collective modes of farming. Firstly, if a group of people wishes to farm together, they cannot do so as a collective or association, but have to form a private limited company and designate one member who has an agricultural education to be the principal farmer for receiving the conditional direct payments, a crucial form of subsidies for farming, by the state. This has been done by the group at La Touvière. Secondly, each farm is only allowed to host one business. In a time where coworking spaces are common in offices, the same is not possible for farming. Valentina Hemmeler Maïga mentioned how there are numerous empty buildings in existing farms, also in Geneva, that could be used for entering farmers who might have land but no building. Such shared uses of farms would help economise and make the starting of a farming business more accessible, however it is not allowed under current legislation.

Lastly, the laws protect farmers who are leasing land. Most farmers who stop farming and close their business choose to lease or sell the land to neighbouring farms. Once a farm is closed and its lands disintegrated, it becomes difficult for new generations to re-establish the farm and take back the land. According to Valentina Hemmeler Maïga, the current laws ensure the protection of existing farmer families, but are not aimed at the creation of new peasants. The legal and social constraints are tightly interlinked with economic constraints to accessing land and farms.

Economic constraints: Bigger and less affordable farms

The economic constraints to accessing land are probably the most severe constraints and are mainly resulting from the meagre income that farms generate under the current Swiss political-economic system. Swiss agriculture experienced a wave of liberalisation in the Nineties which led to a decoupling between the situation of farmers and the general well-being of Switzerland. In 2018, the median monthly salary of a Swiss person amounted to 6067 CHF for women and 6857 CHF for men, whereas income for skilled agricultural, forestry and fishery workers lied at 4657 CHF for women and 5302 CHF for men (FSO 2021b), with significant differences between mountain and low-land regions and despite substantially longer working hours and fewer holidays of agricultural workers. The income reflects the low profitability and often even indebtedness of farm businesses, which hinders access to land in several ways.

The costs of buying a farm, especially when it is not inherited, are immense and can hardly be covered by agricultural activity alone (Forney and Droz 2018, 50). Bank loans require aspiring farmers to have the prospect of running a farm that is profitable. Furthermore, to receive bank loans, farms need to be officially recognised as such. Official recognition demands at least the prospects of land, machinery and farm buildings, the securing of which is a struggle in itself for aspiring farmers who do not inherit farms. The costs of taking over a farm from within the family are lower but still substantial. The farm succession in the helvetic family farming system is, in theory, enabled by family capital (ibid, 50), but such family capital is increasingly absent, or even negative. Current farmers oftentimes manage to stay afloat until retirement, but not much beyond. Farmers then rely on the farm infrastructure for their pension. The lack of savings of retiring farmers constrains the selling or leasing of the farm at lower friendship or family prices. The economically and legally easiest solution for retiring farmers without successors is to continue living in the farm rent-free and leasing the land to neighbouring farmers seeking to expand.

Another economic reason for the unavailability of farmland is the development towards larger farms. Farms expand as an answer to the market pressures which favour an economy of scale. However, as farms grow, not only is the number of farms for potential take-over reduced, but those that persist are even more expensive for new generations of farmers due to their larger size, a point stressed by Valentina Hemmeler Maïga and also Marie Brault, engaged in the urban Ferme de Budé. In the experience of Willy Cretegy, a farmer and politician in the Genevan commune Satigny, it is generally the already biggest and most profitable farms that then take over the freed land. Furthermore, the territorial expansion of farms as well as their increased mechanisation require investments often leading to indebtedness and therefore further problematizing succession even within the family (Droz and Forney 2007, 135).

After a farm is taken over, further investments by the new generation are required. The young farmers generally seek to make changes to the way the farm is organised, and explore the possibility of opening other production branches or changing to organic farming. In the ideal case, the farm taken over is already close to the vision of the new generation. Marie Brault brings forward that finding a farm is not just complicated by the problem of general access to land and farm infrastructure, but also by the mismatch between the conditions of most available farms and the specific type of land and farm infrastructure that the aspiring farmers seek. The Association for Small Peasants therefore stresses the need for flexibility by farm seekers in the ideal image of what the farm should look like at the point of take-over, and flexibility from the side of the retiring farmers in their vision of what the farm should look like in the future (Kleinbauern-Vereinigung 2021).

Renting, rather than buying a farm, and making partial investments is the strategy that the team at la Touvière but also the Jardins de Cocagne, one of the oldest collective farms doing contract agriculture, pursue. Renting a farm often comes with further insecurities, especially if the rent contract is for a limited period of time. It complicates long-term investments, such as planting fruit trees. Furthermore, if the owners continue living in the farm building, as is the case with La Touvière, the young farmers are required to pay for housing elsewhere. This is a major problem in the canton of Geneva where the rent in relation to a farmer’s income is tremendous.

Valentina Hemmeler Maïga expresses how the situation of young (aspiring) farmers is intrinsically connected to the situation of retiring farmers. Put differently; there is no solution for the young farmers, if there is no solution for the retiring farmers. However, as the situation of the retiring farmers is linked to how they can economize while still working in the profession, there also needs to be a solution for current farmers. Farmers need to be able to stay afloat and have savings for their pension in order for small-scale peasant agriculture to continue in Switzerland.

A patchwork of pathways to access to land for youth in Geneva

In Geneva, more than in other Swiss cantons, the problem of access to land for youth is recognised and has led to a set of individual, but also administrative strategies. Individual young farmers’ strategies to starting a farm business commonly include renting land and investing partially into the farm, rather than buying one. Crowdfunding has also been used to start the business. Others squat small pieces of unused land temporarily, such as the Collectif Terre Libre did before its closure in 2020, or produce on urban, non-agricultural land, such as the Ferme des Vergers in the agro-eco-neighbourhood in Meyrin. These strategies bring with them their own set of insecurities and constraints, such as the inability of being recognised as an official farm and receiving the federation’s direct payments.

The administration of the cantonal office for agriculture and nature is motivated to tackle the issue of access to land for youth. Geneva was the only canton that responded favourably to the clause for improving access to land for youth in the discussions of the new agrarian politics AP22+, which, however, got suspended. The main guiding document for action on access to land in Geneva is the law on the promotion of agriculture in Geneva, particularly its modifications that were passed in the parliament in 2021, manifested in theLoi modifiant la loi sur la promotion de l’agriculture (Modified law on the promotion of agriculture). Hemmeler Maïga, who played a crucial role in drafting the modifications, was inspired and guided by the UNDROP. The modified law states that it is the goal and responsibility of the canton to facilitate the installation and take-over of farm businesses by reinforcing the access to information and to counselling in the frame of the attribution of buildings and agricultural lands belonging to the state (Art. 1d, Art. 8c).

The modified law gives justification to actions that are already underway in practice, as well as to plan further actions. For instance, since two years ago, cantonal land that is becoming available needs to be published on the internet to grant all people equal access to the information. However, only around 600 ha of the total 10’000 ha of the agricultural land of the canton belongs to the state, and little more to the communes. The Geneva administration therefore encourages the communes to follow the same strategy to increase transparency, and furthermore sensibilise farmers who are (close to) retiring to start the succession process early so that farms can be preserved.

Much of the action in Geneva revolves around finding loopholes in the current federal legislation. If young farmers find land, but not a farm building, the cantonal administration sometimes accepts temporary buildings such as sheds or tunnels as agricultural buildings so that the farm can officially be recognised as such. The administration furthermore tries to give authorisations to build farm infrastructures to young people with a salient, long-term project.

A further set of actions led by Hemmeler Maïga is the regional and national mobilisation for the topic of access to land for youth. Hemmeler Maïga has initiated a meeting with all the agricultural offices from the French speaking part of Switzerland and found that the problems were shared across the region. In the beginning of 2022, Hemmeler Maïga initiated a meeting with the agricultural offices from all cantons to exchange about further strategies to improve youth’s access to farming more promptly, as long as there is no change in the national legislation.

However, Hemmeler Maïga stresses that only 10% of the power for shaping agricultural policies lie with the canton, and the other ninety percent with the federation. The actions possible at the cantonal administration are very limited and more radical policies to improve the situation of current and future farmers, such as fixing prices for food products to improve farming viability, need to come from the national legislature.

Switzerland’s choice between a ‘natural’ decay of peasantry or a thriving peasantry through access to land for youth

Access to land is a concept whose implications and symbolics transcend the physical availability of land for farmers. The reason for access to land for farming, particularly for youth, to receive widespread attention is because of its crucial role in the sustained existence of small- and medium-scale farms that produce diverse foods for local communities and thus support food sovereignty. The accessibility of land defines if the profession, lifestyle and know-how of farming can persist in diversity over generations. If the development of Swiss agriculture continues in the same trends, agriculture will take the form of, on the one hand, not more than a hobby, at the expense of the quality of work on the farm (Droz and Forney 2007, 152–53), and, on the other hand, large mechanised, industrialised farms likely to be less sustainable and financially resilient (van der Ploeg 2020). Access to land is not a singular issue that can be solved by making more land physically available, but for access to land to be fulfilled in a manner that allows new generations of farmers to make use of it in a sustainable way, it requires favourable social, legal and, particularly, economic conditions.

Before discussing some changes that could encourage access to land for youth on the social, legal and economic front, it is crucial to underline that the problem of access to land for youth in Switzerland is in several ways a privileged one. Sufficient economic opportunities exist for youth outside of agriculture, and overall livelihoods are not deeply dependent on agriculture. Already now, farmer families earn roughly a third of their income outside of the agricultural activities (FSO 2021c). Furthermore, there is an absence of land grabbing, corporate take-over or forced displacement, which are the more imminent threats to access to land. Rather, the agrarian politics of Switzerland triggers a ‘natural’ – so the official euphemism – death of farms by encouraging an economic environment in which farms are pressured to grow, to be run as a hobby, or to disappear. The farms disappear through farmers’ entering of retirement without successors (Droz and Forney 2007, 76). The disappearance is slow, however only in relation to a human’s lifespan and not in the perspective of larger history.

The UNDROP can function as a guide to improve access to land in the fulfilment of the right to land (Golay 2020). The first crucial aspect for the Swiss case is the freedom from discrimination (Art.3.3). This would mean the removal of gendered discrimination in the process of farm inheritance within the family, and particularly the discrimination of aspiring farmers who do not have the prospect of inheritance. After all, the UNDROP does not just cover current peasants, but also people aspiring to work the land by including them in the definition of peasants (Art 1.1). A second article of the UNDROP relevant to the Swiss case points to the state’s responsibility to remove lack of access to economic resources (Art 17.2).

To increase sensibilisation on succession of farms outside of the family, especially if there is no successor within the family, is one way to lower the discrimination in access to land. This solution on the social level is pursued by the Association for Small Peasants and their programme on extra-familial farm succession, which is supported by the federal government. The association encourages and helps farmers to start planning their retirement and the farm succession early. That way, they are more likely to pass on the farm successfully instead of being in a hurry and seeing no alternative to closing the farm and selling or leasing the land. In October 2021, the association had 130 profiles of people searching for a farm and 16 profiles of farms for take-over (Kleinbauern-Vereinigung 2021). Further engagement by the federal government on the topic of succession and retirement is already under way (FOAG 2021). However, even when there is a willingness to give the farm to someone outside the family, several barriers remain. Some of the main ones, according to Bettina Erne working for the extra-familial farm succession programme, are the ability to sustainably finance the business from the side of the successors, and the ability and willingness to either co-live or leave the farm building from the side of the retiring farmers. Actions to lower the barriers to access to land for youth on a social and awareness level therefore need to be supported by actions on other levels.

Valentina Hemmeler Maïga, as well as Laurent Vu from the collective farm Jardins de Cocagne believe that there needs to be an opening in the law for more collective juridical forms to run farms, outside of the dominant family model. Furthermore, the current set of laws favour family agriculture and discriminate against people outside of agricultural families. However, according to Johanna Huber, also progressive actors such as the leftist peasant union Uniterre – member of La Vía Campesina – are not convinced that changing the laws on land will be fruitful. To a large extent, the current laws protect agricultural land from urbanisation, speculation and corporate grab, and thus help preserve family, peasant agriculture and access to land more broadly. Hemmeler Maïga, on the other hand, believes that lawyers are smart enough to formulate articles that can facilitate access by young farmers, especially either farmers without the prospect of inheriting a farm, or wanting to work in a collective, or both, without risking land appropriation by corporate or financial actors.

Another approach for improving access to the farming profession is improving the economic situation of farming, linking to the UNDROP article on access to economic resources (Art 17.2). Laurent Vu wishes for more financial support for young farmers. Such financial support is partially already in place, as the Swiss federal government provides loan-free credits for farm-takeover. However, aspiring farmers still depend also on capital from other sources, including the bank. Overall, the farming activity needs to be profitable in the medium-term for initial investments and mortgages to be paid off, and for farmers to finance their retirement. Structural changes around the prices farmers can obtain for their produce, not least through reconsidering international economic agreements, rather than one-time financial injections are required, particularly to counteract the current trends of agriculture increasingly becoming an economy of scale, leading to further farm disappearance.

Conclusion

There are interlinked social, legal and, most of all, economic barriers to access to land for youth in Geneva and Switzerland more broadly, particularly for aspiring farmers from non-agricultural families. What first seems to be a paradox – a large number of farmers discontinuing their activities while some young people struggle to find a farm to take over – is actually logically interrelated. Farms disappear and young people struggle to take over farms because farming is not a sustainably profitable activity anymore in Switzerland. Although in the administration of Geneva canton there exists an awareness of the issue and a willingness to improve access to land for youth, the underlying problem of the economic unprofitability of small and medium-scale farming needs to be tackled on a national level. The question of access to land for youth is only a subquestion of a larger one: Does Switzerland want to continue on the path of the ‘natural’ disappearance of farms, or does it want a diversified, vibrant, resilient agriculture for generations to come? The second path is the path of food sovereignty, for which the UNDROP can function as a guiding document.

Bibliography

National and Cantonal Laws

• Bundesgesetz über das bäuerliche Bodenrecht (Agricultural/peasant land law), 4. Oktober 1991 (Stand am 1. Januar 2014).
• Bundesgesetz über die landwirtschaftliche Pacht (Law on agricultural lease), 4. Oktober 1985 (Stand am 1. Januar 2014).
• Loi modifiant la loi sur la promotion de l’agriculture (Modified law on the promotion of agriculture), du 1er juillet 2021.
• Raumplanungsgesetz (Spatial planning act), 22. Juni 1979.

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1 Cover picture: Land, machinery and farm buildings, together making up the infrastructure necessary for an officially recognised agricultural enterprise in Switzerland. Photo taken by the author at La Touvière in Meinier, Geneva (2021)

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