ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on new mechanisms that peasants employ to extend the autonomy of their farms to higher levels, to the territorial level, in order to defend, strengthen and develop their agriculture. The self-organizing territories can adapt a dual strategy: accepting, and if needs be negotiating the support and implied institutionalization, and simultaneously create new, as yet unexplored, voids. The chapter discusses the Northern Frisian Woodlands in the north of the Netherlands, Zonas de Reserva Campesina in Colombia, the Polo Sindical e das Organizacoes da Agricultura Familiar da Borborema in Brazil and the Bauerliche Erzeugergemeinschaft Schwabisch Hall in Germany. Self-regulation plays a key role in the construction of territorial autonomy and when successful can help to change the balances of power between peasantries, the state and capital. The resources used in the new forms of endogenous development are described locally as 'hidden treasures'.
