What is Agroecology?
Author: Nuala Burnett
Agroecology is a revolutionary new approach to agricultural systems that stems from a holistic view of nature. Maintaining the existing balance of ecological systems is at the core of agroecology, with relationships between plants, animals, landscapes and people valued as hugely important in determining the scope of agricultural practices.
The OECD defines agroecology [1] as the interrelated study of agriculture and the environment, with more nuanced interpretations of the term detailing the importance of maintaining ecological balance (OECD). A landscape level application of limits, measures and balances, agroecology strives to ensure a representation of all aspects of ecosystems in the practice of agriculture, shifting from an anthropocentric to non-anthropocentric worldview. With proponents such as Vandana Shiva, the United Nations and La Vía Campesina [2], agroecology has garnered key academic and cultural supporters across the globe. (watch Vandana Shiva in conversation with Cara Delevingne on our food crisis here [link])
The impact of agroecology is potentially massive. Animal agriculture is known to be one of the most excessive greenhouse gas emitters, contributing over 14% of all anthropogenic emissions per year [3]. In the United Kingdom alone, food and agriculture are known to comprise 10% of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions [4], alongside contributing to localised environmental change and degradation.
With a shift in agricultural principles and policies towards a more ecosystems-oriented approach (see the FAO’s elements-based approach [5]), agroecology has the potential to revolutionise the current impact of the agricultural sector through improving resource use efficiencies. Through drawing on the existing resources of the natural landscape, an agroecological approach seeks to harness existing ecological synergies, minimising the amount of external inputs required whilst maximising sustainable outputs.
Agroecology has the potential not only to lessen the drivers of climate change (an act of mitigation), but to build resilience against future threats in country specific scarcity and blight through encouraging intercropping [6] and a permaculture style approach (FAO). By diversifying the crops and livestock in a certain location, an agroecological approach safeguards against the impacts of a changing climate and environment (adaptation), seeking to provide a reinforced web of production that can withstand both external and internal shocks to its system. Similarly, practices of agroforestry (planting trees to offset agricultural greenhouse gas emissions) offer further hope of the potential for this approach to lessen the impact of the agricultural sector, and to reinvent the contemporary narrative of monoculture crops into something much more diverse and community specific.
From Pesticide Action Network, click through for their blog explaining why agroecology is the future.
Through adopting such a holistic lens, agroecology also elevates concerns of environmental justice to the forefront of the ecological debate, placing localisation and co-production of agricultural knowledge at the heart of agricultural development. This focus on people within the environment (as opposed to outside; see Ingold’s conception of the situated lifeworld as opposed to the externalised globe[7]) offers a conception of the environment as one both used and inhabited by people, considering them a key part of the integrative ecosystem.
Offering a grassroots conception of agriculture, agroecology focuses on subsistence and community sustainability, as opposed to global production and trade (FAO). Shaping not only the local landscape, but the livelihoods of those who live within it, agroecology has the potential to transform contemporary notions of farming into something much more specialised and small-scale.
Agroecology is however not a novel concept; it is in fact a practice rooted in many cultures spanning the industrialised and industrialising worlds, and as such requires a redefinition and refocus as much as a total revolution. Whilst the foregrounding of the concept by entities such as the UN implies a newness to agroecology, revisiting existing communities and small-scale farms can reveal just as much about the success of this concept as major policy documents. Agroecology is an idea headlining academic papers and policy of the 21st century, but its roots remain in local scale ventures and traditional practices of sustainability. Much like its own implementation, agroecology is an idea firmly grounded in communities and ecosystems.
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References
Agroecology (OECD 2003)
La Via Campesina
Major cuts of greenhouse gas emissions from livestock within reach (FAO Sep 2013)
No Need to Cut Beef to Tackle Climate Crisis say Farmers. (The Guardian Sep 2019)
The Ten Elements of Agroecology (FAO)
The Perception of the Environment (Tim Ingold 2000)
