Reflections from AEMED 2025 and a Path Forward for Agroecology Europe, Led by the Agroecology Europe Youth Network
“Agroecology is the answer to how to transform and repair our material reality in a food system and rural world that has been devastated by industrial food production and its so-called Green and Blue Revolutions. We see agroecology as a key form of resistance to an economic system that puts profit before life.” — Nyéléni Declaration, 2015
The Mediterranean is a region marked by stark contradictions: it is the frontline of ecological collapse, militarized migration policies, and extractive development models—while also being a place of resistance, renewal, and rooted agroecological practices. It is where borders are enforced not only by walls, but by sea, law, and silence.
Those who cross the sea fleeing war, poverty, and climate disaster often do not survive. Their deaths are not accidents, but the product of political choices. These realities make it undeniable: a Mediterranean agroecology movement cannot be serious if it does not center justice, decolonization, and political responsibility.
But more than that, agroecology in Europe must reckon with the continent’s ongoing role in global systems of domination. As Europeans—many of us working in institutions, research, and policy—we must confront how colonial histories continue to shape who controls land, seeds, water, and knowledge. The wealth that sustains European food systems has long been built on extraction, dispossession, and externalization of harm. Decolonialism is not only a solidarity gesture—it is an internal imperative. It means questioning power relations within agroecology itself: who speaks, who is funded, whose practices are validated, and whose are made invisible.
An agroecology that does not interrogate its own complicity risks reproducing the very systems it seeks to dismantle.
As Agroecology Europe Youth Network, we hold a representative role at the European level—participating in high-level spaces such as the CAP Network, dialogues with DG AGRI, and meetings with Commissioner Christophe Hansen and his team. From this position, we felt it essential to use our visibility not to perform consensus, but to open space for critical reflection. Our activities at AEMED 2025 were born from this commitment.
The first International Congress of Mediterranean Agroecology (AEMED) was held in Agrigento, Sicily, from 9 to 12 June 2025. It was promoted by the Agroecology Sicily Coordination, in collaboration with AIDA (Italian Association of Agroecology) and AIAF (Italian Association of Agroforestry), and supported by Agroecology Europe to build dialogue with the upcoming European Forum in Malmö.
Given that AEMED explicitly aimed to create a Mediterranean agroecology network, we believed it was our moral and political duty to ensure that themes of decolonization, social justice, and political responsibility were not marginal—but central.
Two Assemblies and a Democratic Process: Reclaiming Agroecology as a Political Space
In the months leading up to the AEMED 2025 conference, the Agroecology Europe Youth Network worked collectively to co-create spaces for dialogue, reflection, and political engagement. This preparatory work included the development of visual materials as well as a shared digital library titled Knowledge for Liberation: An Agroecological Toolkit for the Mediterranean. These efforts laid the groundwork for meaningful encounters during the conference and helped shape a common political horizon.
On June 9, together with sicilian activists and practitioners, we convened a political assembly titled “For an Agroecological Movement in the Mediterranean Rooted in Solidarity.” This was not a panel, nor a lecture—it was a horizontal, participatory space to reflect together on the role of the conference, and of agroecology more broadly, in confronting the political and humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Gaza and the broader colonial landscape of the Mediterranean.
The assembly was widely attended. Participants listened to powerful testimonies from a Palestinian delegation, who spoke of the meaning of doing agroecology under occupation: how access to land, water, and seeds are systematically denied, and how growing food becomes an act of survival and resistance.
In this space, we did not ask whether agroecology should be political—we asked what kind of politics it must carry. This framing shaped the tone and depth of the conversation.
Due to the strength and urgency of this first session, a second assembly was organized the following day. Moderated again by the Youth Network, this session focused on co-writing a collective political statement to be proposed to the conference plenary. It was a moment of remarkable democratic participation, with farmers, organizers, youth, members of the AEMED organizing committee and the Agroecology Europe board all sitting in a shared circle. Each voice contributed to the drafting of the statement.
The result was brought to the final plenary on June 12, where it was approved by consensus and adopted as an official declaration of the AEMED 2025 conference.
READ THE STATEMENT (English)
READ THE STATEMENT (Italian)
From Statement to Strategy: Next Steps for the Youth Network and Agroecology Europe
The final statement reaffirms the political vision of the Nyéléni Declaration, affirming that a food system rooted in sovereignty and justice cannot coexist with occupation, apartheid, or systemic destruction of land and life. It draws from international legal instruments such as the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants (UNDROP) and the UN Resolution on the Right to Food—both of which are being systematically violated in Palestine.
Importantly, the term ecocide was essential to include in the statement. As an agroecological movement, we must also confront the long-term devastation inflicted by genocide—the destruction of ecosystems, fields, water sources, and resources that, even before, were often denied to communities, and are now being erased by bombs. Agroecology cannot remain silent in the face of such annihilation.
“Agroecology is not only a method of farming—it is a cosmovision. A path of resistance, repair, and return. For Palestine, and for all peoples struggling for freedom, it must remain a tool of collective liberation.”
This experience demonstrated that decolonial agroecology is not a side issue, nor an abstract concern—it is central to the Mediterranean context and to the credibility of the agroecology movement in Europe. It also revealed that it is possible to build a cohesive and political agroecological movement in Europe, one that does not shy away from naming injustice.
But youth cannot do this alone. They need backing from the broader movement—material, institutional, and intergenerational. This solidarity was clearly demonstrated during the General Assembly of Agroecology Europe held on the 23rd of June, where the contributions and engagement of board members in Agrigento were formally acknowledged. The assembly agreed to the development of a Position Paper on Decolonial Agroecology and committed to organizing a dedicated space at the upcoming Malmö Forum to co-create a long-term strategy for Agroecology Europe. This strategy will ensure that decolonial values are embedded in all our actions moving forward.
Ceasefire now. End the genocide. Food sovereignty for Palestine. And for all.
Agroecology Europe Youth Network
Rooted in justice. Growing through solidarity.
Author: Cristina Laurenti
