Agroecology is often presented as a holistic alternative to industrial agriculture, yet the organization, valuation, and lived meaning of labor within agroecological farms remain underexplored. This blog post draws on a qualitative study by master’s student Thomas Jongelings that addresses this gap by examining how labor organization shapes the expression of social agroecological principles and everyday experiences of work.

The central question guiding the research is: How is labor organized, valued, and made meaningful, and how do these labor experiences relate to the social principles of agroecology?

Levin Dalpiaz*

I’m writing this from the campus of the Agrarian University of Havana (UNAH), surrounded by students and researchers who move through their work with the practiced resilience of those for whom scarcity is part of daily life. Sitting in the dim light after a blackout, I reflect on these first weeks of fieldwork for my master’s thesis in international development studies. My research deals with the transformation of Cuba’s food system, focusing on urban agriculture in Havana, and how farmers’ experiences of belonging, dignity, and political agency influence their attachments to land.

Getting to campus yesterday morning wasn’t easy. I was confronted with suspended bus lines due to fuel shortages. Without the incredibly kind and creative support of my Cuban supervisors, I would not have made it—like many other students and researchers who had to stay home. The most striking thing is not the absence of electricity and other basic needs (water, gas, and fuel), but the presence of a stubborn, collective conviction that life continues, that work matters, and that another world is possible even in the grip of engineered crisis. Tomorrow, electricity will likely return for a few hours. People will charge their devices, fill up their water tanks, do their work, and prepare for the next blackout. It is a rhythm learned and adapted to.