Seeds of the past, harvests of the future: quilombola ancestry and the political struggles of regenerative agriculture

The intersection between regenerative agriculture and quilombola ancestry reveals not merely a convergence of practices, but a profound epistemological reversal. This article argues that regenerative agriculture, often framed by conceptual models from the Global North, can be redefined through quilombola ancestral knowledge rooted in territorial cosmologies, collective memory, and ontologies of care. Adopting a critical interpretive synthesis approach, the study integrates theoretical reflection with diverse empirical materials to examine how quilombola practices challenge dominant sustainability paradigms and articulate regeneration as an insurgent, non-capitalist, and decolonial project. It also discusses structural obstacles such as the protracted land titling process, institutional racism, and the epistemic erasure of Black knowledge systems. The analysis suggests that quilombola territories are not marginal zones, but sites of epistemic production from which alternative futures may emerge. When regenerative agriculture is traversed by quilombola ancestry, it ceases to be a neutral technique and becomes a practice of re-existence, capable of dismantling colonial logic and cultivating dignity amid crisis.