Agroecology as necessary knowledge to transform the mutual determination nature-society

Abstract

At first glance, agroecosystems are a specific kind of ecosystems organized towards the production from the land of useful goods for human beings. The study of agroecosystems is far from being simple. Just consider that even outside from the study of agroecosystems, the study of natural ecosystems has been challenging for ecology. As an answer to the task of studying the different levels of organization of biotic communities and their interaction with abiotic factors, Richard Levins (1966) stressed the need for a new research programme, later called population biology (Levins 2004; Lewontin 2004). Such a research programme should be able to simultaneously address the different levels of heterogeneity (physiological, genetic, and related to age structure) of systems in which many species interact with each other. In these systems demographic changes occur that affect the very structure of the communities and alter the pattern of environmental heterogeneity.