Alejandra Andrea

Fuentes Hinojosa

Agronomic Engineer (Universidad de Concepción, Chile) and Master in Agroecology (Universidad Internacional de Andalucía, Universidad de Córdoba and Universidad Pablo de Olavide)

I've been working in interdisciplinary teams solving problems that are affecting agroecosystems and society, having experience in qualitative and quantitative researches focused on phenomena related to agriculture, biological soil management, agroecology, local food policies, food safety, environmental education and sustainability.

In agroecology, I've worked with ANAMURI (National Association of Rural and Indigenous Women), INIA Quilamapu, and with SIPAM zones (FAO) in Chiloé, learning firsthand about peasant-agroecological family farming in different regions of Chile.

Now I'm working for the WHEP - ERC project to trace the evolution of farming areas and their production over time, as well as to map historical livestock populations and their production.

To achieve these tasks, I am first using old documents, either digitised or to be digitised, such as national agricultural yearbooks or censuses, which provide information at the provincial scale.

To make sense of all this historical data, we are harmonising and standardising the information through joint decisions with the team and experts collaborators. I then analyse the data using the R programming language, with the ultimate goal of spatialising it and visualising it in maps.

What I find particularly fascinating is that we are trying to understand how global agriculture has evolved over the last 170 years. It's not just about collecting numbers, but about understanding the history of how our farming systems have evolved worldwide to become what they are today.

While it's challenging to piece together and make sense of all this historical data, ultimately it's about uncovering the history of world agriculture in a way that can inform our understanding of present and future farming systems, from a critical perspective around ecology, economics and society.