MarkCheck this out for for the benefits of agroecology.
We believe agroecology offers the way to support healthy diets and provide sustainable and just food systems to meet the needs of a growing planet — without sacrificing the planet
Doreen Robinson, Head of Biodiversity Land Management, UNEP
Feeding people for a long time with healthy food without pillaging the environment is nirvana, but also a fundamental requirement that would buy humanity the time and emotional space to fix our myriad of other problems.
When people don’t have access to good food, they panic. So keeping all 8 billion of us fed makes good sense to retain any semblance of a stable society.
Are the benefits of agroecology the answer?
Let’s see.
What is agroecology?
Here is a simple definition of agroecology from the Soils Association
Agroecology is sustainable farming that works with nature.
Recalling that ecology studies relationships between plants, animals, people, and their environment, alongside the balance between these relationships. This makes agroecology the application of ecological concepts and principles to farming.
And here is what the FAO says about it
Agroecology is an integrated approach that simultaneously applies ecological and social concepts and principles to the design and management of food and agricultural systems. It seeks to optimize the interactions between plants, animals, humans and the environment while taking into consideration the social aspects that need to be addressed for a sustainable and fair food system.
Pretty consistent.
Apply the principles of nature to growing food.
FAO also identify in The 10 Elements Of Agroecology Guiding The Transition To Sustainable Food And Agricultural Systems the aspects of agroecology that would get us to a food nirvana and to meet some of the SDG targets.
- Diversity
- Synergies
- Efficiency
- Resilience
- Recycling
- Co-creation and sharing of knowledge
- Human and social values
- Culture and food traditions
- Responsible governance
- Circular and solidarity economy
Well, there you have it.
A simple and easy route to food nirvana, technobabble style.
Back to the future
Marty McFly accidentally travels back to 1955 in a time-travelling DeLorean automobile built by his eccentric scientist “Doc” Brown where Marty inadvertently prevents his future parents’ meeting—threatening his existence—and is forced to reconcile the pair and somehow get back to the future.
Agroecology, with its unnecessary UN bells and whistles, is another in the time travelling sci-fi trope.
Working with nature to grow food is exactly what the first farmers did 12,000 years ago.
In the fertile crescent, for example, people harnessed the high diversity of plant species with small seeds that could self-pollinate and be cross-pollinated, which made them good candidates for early experiments in cultivation.
They combined annual and perennial crops, livestock and aquatic animals, trees, soils, and water on the land close to the rivers that became the new farms. Without knowing it, these early farmers created synergies of nutrient and water use that were efficient enough for them to stay put all year round.
Staying put was a highly successful outcome that allowed new ideas like ownership, trade and permanent structures to persist. We can safely assume that the new invention of agriculture was resilient, given there are still farms across the crescent today.
Archaeological researchers have used stable isotope analysis to establish that these early farmers intensified production through water management and used manure to enhance crop yields.
No doubt they recycled plant as well as animal waste too.
We don’t know if they cooperated. The initial assumption that these early farmers were a homogenous group that traded and intermingled was questioned by genetic research from 2016, suggesting that multiple groups of people in the Fertile Crescent started agriculture but were isolated from each other. What we know is that agriculture spread from a handful of origin sites to every continent both by the slow migration of farmers and by passing agricultural techniques to hunter-gatherers.
The early years of agriculture were also when human and social values and culture developed rapidly. The pyramids and the acropolis were only possible because the people had the time and energy to build them, along with the social system and governance to encourage or force them to work.
The only one of the 10 elements on the FAO list that we cannot be sure was happening 12,000 years ago among the first farmers was a circular and solidarity economy.
The economy was a form of barter over time and attention given that money came later. Accounting records date back more than 7,000 years in the region of the Fertile Crescent, and documents from ancient Mesopotamia show lists of expenditures and goods received and traded.
Modern agriculture
A trip in a time-travelling DeLorean automobile back to early agriculture is attractive because of what modern intensive agriculture has become.
In short, today’s intensive agriculture is a just-in-time production system, highly dependent on inputs (energy, nutrients, water) not wholly controlled by the farmer, along with a fickle market for produce.
Modern agriculture is productive with yields way over anything those early farmers could imagine but with low resilience and susceptibility to disruption from climate and markets alike.
More important is why the inputs are needed in the first place. Farming is supported less and less by the nutrient-sharing ability of soil.
Imagine what happens to soil when plants are grown year after year for thousands of years, and the highly nutritious parts of the plant are harvested, eaten and defecated into the ocean. Soils have had their nutrients and organic matter mined.
Obviously, human and social values have changed since the first farmers experimented with crops and livestock. Today we have corporations with capital and technology to intensively farm at scale. And this must happen to feed the majority of us that live in urban areas and can’t feed ourselves.
This system is precarious and lacks resilience, but it is successful in the conversion of ancient energy into food. And humanity cannot yet live without it.
The question asked is this…
Are the benefits of agroecology the answer?
Yes and no.
Sustainably FED has ecology as one of the three pillars for feeding everyone well, and we are huge fans of agroecology as a concept and a practical solution to sustainable food production.
Wherever possible, farms should revert to ecological principles to support production with simple measures such as retaining vegetation cover on the soil, reducing tillage and recycling as much organic matter as possible within the farm. The benefits of agroecology are the circularity of nutrients that allow food production to be less dependent on inputs. This is essential given that the inputs will be squeezed.
But if we do this everywhere and ignore intensive agriculture altogether, it will not feed the 5 billion people expected to be living in urban areas by 2050.
Agroecology offers a way for part of the food production system. The benefits of agroecology will appear when it becomes the dominant and most widespread mode of production because it is the only way to avoid running out of commercial fertilizers, and pesticides and reduce emissions from energy use.
Unfortunately, agroecology is not the way, at least not yet.
What sustainably FED suggests
Learn about the benefits of agroecology because they inform of how agriculture must be practised in the future.
We say must because the fossil fuel energy pulse will end, perhaps sooner than we would like. Modern intensive agriculture is a net energy sink, it absorbs more inputs than it produces in food energy outputs. Unless the energy transition provides more than just electricity, farming might need to stay as one of the long-term users of the reserves of oil and gas that remain.
Remember that most of the nitrogen that goes into grain and livestock production and about half of the nitrogen in human bodies comes from the Haber-Bosch process. This industrial fertiliser production system runs on natural gas.
8 billion people cannot live on bread alone. They will need nutrients to go with their calories.
Agroecology recognises the circularity and the nutrient story. Feeding everyone well will need it.
Hero image modified from a photo by Bee Naturalles on Unsplash
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