Eric Holt Giménez

Eric Holt Giménez is an agroecologist, political economist, lecturer and author. From 1975-2002 he worked in Mexico, Central America, and South Africa in sustainable agricultural development. During this time he helped to start the Campesino a Campesino (Farmer to Farmer) Movement. He returned to the U.S. twice during this period: once for his M.Sc. In International Agricultural Development (UC Davis, 1981) and then for his Ph.D. in Environmental Studies (UC Santa Cruz, 2002). His dissertation research was the basis for his first book "Campesino a Campesino: Voices from the farmer-to-farmer movement for sustainable agriculture in Latin America." After getting his Ph.D. with an emphasis in agroecology and political economy, he taught as a university lecturer at UC Santa Cruz and Boston University in the International Honors Program in Global Ecology. He gives yearly courses of food systems transformation and social movements in Italy in the Masters Program of the University of Gastronomic Sciences, Pollenzo (Slow Food) and in the doctoral program at the Universidad de Antioquia in Medellin, Colombia. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Herald Tribune, Le Monde Diplomatique, La Jornada, and The Des Moines Register. He has a blog on the Huffington Post.

In 2004-2006 he became the Latin America Program Coordinator for the Bank Information Center in Washington, D.C. His seminal work "Land-Gold-Reform: The Territorial Restructuring of the Guatemalan Highlands" links the struggle against extractive industries with the struggle for land in Latin America (published in English, Spanish and Portuguese), is a product of this experience. In June, 2006 he was hired as the executive director of Food First the Institute for Food and Development Policy, a people's think tank started by Francis Moore Lappe over thirty years ago. He specializes in environmental studies, area studies, development studies, agroecology and the political economy of hunger. He works closely with social movements in the U.S. and internationally and asserts that, “Successful social movements are formed by integrating activism with livelihoods. These integrated movements create the deep sustained social pressure that produces political will—the key to changing the financial, governmental, and market structures that presently work against sustainability.”[1] Walden Bello is a particular advocate of the importance of Gimenez’s work, referring to him as one of the world’s most “prominent critics of the global food system.”[2]

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References

  1. ↑ Quote from Gimenez http://www.foodfirst.org/en/about/who/staff/eholtgim
  2. ↑ Quote from Bello http://fahamubooks.org/book/?GCOI=90638100405800