As part of the 2010 Groundswell International conference organized by Ekorural in Quito, Ecuador, Ekorural and other Groundswell members visited Pacho Gangotena’s farm in Puembo, Ecuador. We were just the latest of some 19,000 farmers that have come to learn from Pacho over the past two decades. Pacho is among the most influential actors in the organic agriculture / agroecology movement in the Andes.

In addition to inspiring thousands of farmers through these exchange visits, Pacho’s tireless work off the farm has helped create a network of thousands of small farmers as well as a number of influential farmer organizations, including the Coordinadora Ecuatoriana de Agroecología (CEA) and Corporación de Productores Biológicos del Ecuador (PROBIO). Pacho is also credited with inspiring Ecuador’s food soverighty movement, which recently won passage of the first Food Soverighty Law in the Americas.

Ekorural regularly collaborates with Pacho and his allies to grow and strengthen the country’s agroecological food movement.