The first week of winter in the southern hemisphere I found myself in two experiences that few Americans have encountered: working in the sugarcane and listening to Almeida Guevara speak.

I spent my last day in Assentamento Contestado helping Adriano, a MST member who works part time in Curitiba, cut sugarcane on his family plot. We spent the first half of the day hacking the bases of the bamboo-like trunks and tossing the cana into piles. The leaves of the cana are long, thin and sharp and gnash at the arms, hands and face, inflicting little itchy cuts. In Northeast Brazil, home of the historical sugarcane plantations, thousands of Nordestinos work in the cana in piecemeal labor, paid by the amount of kilos of sugarcane cut per day, which sometimes amounts to abysmal income and encourages workers into 10 and 12 hour days. The poor health conditions include cuts and infections, dehydration, fatigue, and harmful particles from chopped sugarcane that damage the lungs, in addition to serious injuries incurred by weary workers swinging razor sharp machetes.

At midday we stopped to rest and eat lunch. Outside of their house is a small hand-powered mill that crushes the sugarcane and extracts a trickle of liquid from the sugarcane ´caldo de cana.´ This liquid is boiled and refined to make brown sugar, and by a chemical process, white sugar. The crude liquid is the sweetest and most delicious drink I´ve ever tasted. The essence of ´sugar water,´ it is light brown and milky, and glides over the lips and down the throat in a sweet chorus. I had to restrain myself from a 4th glass before lunch. In the afternoon we chopped up the sugarcane trunks and replanted the pieces along the edge of a field, to serve as a wind buffer and natural fence to keep animals out, and also a source of caldo and sugar. Sugarcane is a fast-growing and durable plant, and planted sectios of only one trunk can produce over 10 sugarcane stalks the following year.

That night 80 community members from Assentamento Contestado, and the students at the Escola LatinoAmericano de Agroecologia bussed 7 hours north to Londrina for the 10th annual Congress of Agroecologia. Over three and a half days, more than 3,500 attendees from all over the Americas came together to learn about, debate, and share experiences of Agroecologia.

The Jornada is organized through La Via Campesina with a large contribution from the MST. Other social movments such as the MPA- Movimentos dos Pequenos Agricultores, MMC-Movimento das Mulheres Camponesas, peasant and agriculture movements throughout Latin America, and professores, students, government officials, and anyone else interested in Agroecology is welcome.

The Jornada began with thousands of participants bussing to Londrina´s downtown area, and marching some 5 kilometers through town, stopping traffic and demanding the attention of the local population and media to make it known that the Jornada against agro-toxicos, trans-genicos, and large-scale latifundios was taking place in Londrina. In the center plaza the thousands of marchers gathered to listen to the keynote speeches before returning to the University of Londrina where the Jornada was held.

The Jornada hosted 16 seminarios given by professors and agriculutural, environmental and political experts, as well as 54 different small class on experiences of Agroecologia, mostly in Brazil, from beekeeping and composting to government policy and small scale cooperatives. By coincidence I ran into professor Maria-Josee Massicotte, who gave a presentation about the MST agroecology schools at UNC last fall, where I first learned about the movement. She helped me with my research proposal and also helped me get in contact with the ELAA. She is in Brazil for two weeks and is researching assentamento cooperativos in the north of Parana and comparing them with peasant organizations in Oaxaca, Mexico. It was great to touch base with her, converse about our research project and the different obstacles, and also share experiences from Chapel Hill to Brazil.