Editorial: Why agroecology?

Abstract

During the past 10–15 years, agroecology has grown in prominence in global agricultural discourse based on a belief that it can dramatically transform agrifood systems (Anderson et al., 2021). The concern of proponents of agroecology – that modern agriculture, often referred to as conventional or industrial, has been principally responsible for agroecosystem degradation – has led to calls for agroecology to replace conventional agriculture. As Sumberg and Giller (2022) have observed, the term conventional agriculture has been weaponised. No doubt, overuse of agrochemicals and mono-cropping has led to environmental problems such as pollution, soil erosion and in some circumstances, loss of wild biodiversity. These problems need to be addressed. Yet, paradoxically, the main focus of agroecology promotion is smallholder farmers in less-developed countries where conventional or industrial agriculture is not a common form of farming. Furthermore, this discourse mainly pursues a questionable binary agenda: agroecology versus conventional agriculture. It ignores the fact that hundreds of millions of farmers already deploy a range of good agricultural practices considered to be agroecological. These include crop rotation, intercropping, mixed crop-livestock systems, manure recycling, and integrated pest management, among others, together with conventional technologies such as improved crop varieties, judicious use of agrochemicals and functional biodiversity. For example, mixed crop-livestock systems, considered agroecological even when many deploy conventional technologies, produce around 50% of the world’s food (Herrero et al., 2010). In the past 60 years, food production systems have realized impressive achievements based on sound science, technology and innovations (Evans, 1998; OECD, 2021). As world population more than doubled, global food production has almost quadrupled whilst using only 10%– 15% more agricultural land. This has been achieved through large production increases per unit area of land. Much of global farming responsible for adequately feeding over 7 billion people is based on improved crop varieties and appropriate use of agrochemicals integrated with agroecological approaches. Crucially, the promotion of agroecology should not only be based on environmental and equity issues but also on its ability to continue to ensure food and nutritional security and provide livelihoods for farmers. Although the term agroecology first appeared around a century ago, its meaning has evolved and broadened in the interim period. Wezel and Soldat (2009) provide a useful historical account of the evolution of the term. From the 1930s to the 1960s, agroecology was firmly anchored in the science of crop production and protection. However, from the 1960s onwards, environmental activists motivated agroecological movements and agroecology evolved into a broad mixture of science, practices and movements with different groups and nations placing varying emphases on the three main components. As a consequence, there are many different definitions of agroecology and no internationally approved terminology. The Biovision Agroecology Info Pool lists 23 different definitions of agroecology from the research community, United Nations (UN) agencies, public organizations and civil society. Generally, the research community gives more emphasis to agroecology as a scientific discipline and a practice while civil society and UN agencies tend to emphasize agroecology as a social movement. There are also additional definitions in books and peer-reviewed journal articles on the topic. I find the definition by Martin and Sauerborn (2013): ‘an interdisciplinary approach to the relevant aspects of agricultural production related to the interactions between natural processes, human activities and the environment’ most useful. It includes three core components: agriculture, the environment and people. In general, scientific research on agroecology is mainly carried out in developed regions, especially in Europe, while promotion through active social mobilization tends to be concentrated in less-developed countries, significantly in Latin America and, increasingly, in subSaharan Africa. Furthermore, as Wezel (2017) stated ‘there is no definitive set of practices that can be labelled as agroecological, nor clear, consensual boundaries between what is agroecological and what is not’. The lack of a defined threshold is a recipe for confusion. For example, is a smallholder farmer who grows improved, disease resistant and drought-tolerant varieties of a cereal and a legume in an intercropping system using both farmproduced compost as well as fertilizers considered agroecological or not? The statement by Altieri et al. (2017 that ‘A true agroecological technological conversion calls into question monoculture and the dependency on external inputs’ creates further doubt. In spite of agroecology beginning its life as a scientific discipline and being strongly based on the ecology of agroecosystems for 60 years, the science, and especially the ecology part of agroecology, appears to have been marginalized. Definitions can change over time but the significant broadening of the term agroecology and the surge in the number of different definitions are leading to growing questions around what agroecology actually is. When the common Editorial