This open access book brings together perspectives and experiences from countries of the Global South, focusing on actors and practices of sustainable agroecology. It offers a multidisciplinary analysis across political economy, sociology, agricultural science, political science, and biology. It discusses key terms and metaphors such as organic transition, production for wellbeing, seed guardians, and preservation of local knowledge, agroecology as an anti-capitalist alternative, a green revolution, a (feminist) utopia, and social struggles for land rights, justice, dignity, and environmental intersectional justice.

It highlights how agroecology addresses the challenge of overcoming “imperial ways of life” and explores pathways toward a socially and ecologically just and less violent world. This book contributes to multiple SDGs, including poverty and hunger eradication (SDGs 1 & 2), gender equality (SDG 5), water-use efficiency (SDG 6), decent work (SDG 8), and sustainable consumption and production (SDG 12).

Javier Becerril is a professor of Economics in the Autonomous University of Yucatán (UADY), Mexico. He got his Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from Kiel University, Germany (2008), and since 2010, he has been a member of Mexico’s National System of Researchers (SNII), attaining Level II.His professional trajectory includes research appointments at El Colegio de México (1996–2001) and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) (2001–2003). He has served on the Scientific Advisory Board of CIBIOGEM (2012–2018).He has extensive international collaboration experience, including research stays at the University of Kassel, where he serves as Wangari Maathai Visiting Professor (2025–2026).

Paulina Martínez Isidro is a professor at the UADY, Mexico. She holds a Ph.D. in Social Sciences. Her work integrates industrial engineering, agroecology, and social philosophy to examine Mayan productive systems as socioecological and epistemic spaces where biodiversity, family organization, reciprocity, and cosmovision converge. From a critical perspective, she positions the Mayan solar as an alternative to extractive agro-industrial models, contributing to debates on resilience, food sovereignty, and territorial justice in the Global South. Internationally, she collaborates with the Global Partnership Network at the University of Kassel, undertaking multiple research stays (2022–2025). Her work fosters academic dialogue between Latin America and Europe on agroecology, traditional knowledge, and socio-environmental governance.

Praveen Jha superannuated in January 2026 as a Sukhamoy Chakravarty chair professor of Economics from the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. He has been a visiting fellow at several universities, including the University of Bremen; Tianjin University of Finance and Economics; Rhodes University; Sam Moyo African Institute of Agrarian Studies; the University of Leipzig; and the University of Kassel. He has also been associated with research studies with UN institutions such as the ILO, UNICEF, UNDP, and FAO.

Elisabeth Tuider is a professor for Sociology of Diversity with special consideration of the dimension of gender at the Department of Social Sciences, University of Kassel, Germany. Her areas of interest are gender studies, feminist, and queer theory; postcolonial theories; migration and border regime research; cultural and postcolonial studies; qualitative research methods; social movements, women’s and feminist movements, indigenous movements; third gender space; Latin American studies, especially Mexico; sexualities and diversity of lifestyles.

Andreas Thiel holds the chair of International Agricultural Policy and Environmental Governance and heads the corresponding section at the Faculty of Ecological Agricultural Sciences at the University of Kassel in Germany. He was a post-doc in resource economics and visiting professor in environmental governance at Humboldt-Universitätzu Berlin. He is an affiliate member of the Vincent and Elinor Ostrom Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis. Thiel’s research interests concern polycentric governance in social-ecological systems, its performance and change. He develops this conceptual perspective in the context of research on agroecology, water, biodiversity, climate change adaptation, and agro-environmental governance at different spatial and jurisdictional scales in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.