“We Need a Diverse Agriculture That Can Adapt to These Climatic Impacts.”
Talking to Dr. Luis Alexis, Interdisciplinary Social Scientist, About Puerto Rican Agriculture
Dr. Luis Alexis is a food systems scientist and writer based in Juana Díaz, Puerto Rico. He earned his PhD in Food Systems from the University of Vermont, and he writes the weekly newsletter La Fiambrera. We discussed the difficulties many small farmers or would-be farmers face when trying to access land and resources in Puerto Rico. Part two will come out next week.
Me: I wanted to ask about the agricultural laws we have in Puerto Rico, including the federal ones—since Puerto Rico is still a colony, which disadvantages the farmer.
Luis Alexis: When you say that they are disadvantaged, do you mean that the colonial situation makes work more difficult for the farmer or in terms of access to land?
Me: Both.
Luis Alexis: I am going to mention two laws that have come out of the research I have done and particularly from that study I did with 405 farmers after Hurricane María, to understand how to manage the emergency and the process to put their farms back to work.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Crítica to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.