“Suma Sarnaqaña” is also a communication initiative promoted by young agronomists in Uruguay. The journal questions the predominant production model in the Uruguayan rural areas.

The first issue of the publication was launched last Tuesday, 20 December by the editorial council together with nearly a hundred friends and contributors of this new publication, at the School of Science of the University of the Republic in Montevideo.

Besides a print version of its four annual issues, there will be an Internet site and a social backup group to organize fora of debate on issues related with agronomy, rural development and socio-economic impact of agribusiness.

The publication aims to be a “critique and to promote a commitment for rural social change”.

One of its editors, Ignacio Paparamborda, says the idea came up from a group of students that used to be part of the Agronomy Students’ Association, who after graduating continued to be in contact and participating in different areas of their activity. “As students we learned to do things collectively and this is an attempt to continue doing so”, he said.

Ramon Guitierrez is another editor who said that Uruguay’s rural agenda is marked by the media linked with agribusiness and the dominant extractivist model, so the agronomists have to question and present alternatives to these views. “This journal, this project, is a space for activism and participation”, he said. He emphasized how important rural workers and family farmers are in Uruguay’s process of change.

In the editorial of its first issue, Suma Sarnaqaña clarified that the publication does not represent any official organization, although it also says “it is not a ’neutral’ space for contemporary debate for rural development and agrarian social transformation, but it assumes the need for a deep transformation of the agrarian structures and to contribute to the construction of more sovereign rural development models”.

Some of the thematic blocs exposed in the first issue include rural popular education, Agrarian Reform and Food Sovereignty, Agroecology, Agribusiness, a History of the Agrarian Conflict, rural popular sectors in Latin America, said co-editor Mariana Scarlatto.

Photo: Radio Mundo Real