What is agroecology?

Agroecology represents farming systems that are linked to ecological processes. In short, agroecological farming attempts to harness the relationship between agricultural crops and the natural environment to help sustainably produce food. Interactions between plants, crops, animals, humans, fungi, and soils are viewed through a holistic lens to help maximize efficiency and minimize degradation within the food production system

There is no one type of agroecological farming, best practices change depending on context and environment. Thorny brush may be planted around a farm to help protect it from livestock. Native tree species may be introduced to increase the presence of wildlife for hunting and pest control. Cover crops may be planted to help reduce erosion. Pigs and chicken might be used to fertilize and till soils before planting. There are numerous ways in which agroecological techniques can help farmers produce food sustainably while increasing production and resilience.

Agroecology stands in direct opposition to input-driven agriculture. Pesticides, fertilizers, and hybridized seeds have left farmers beholden to large scale agribusiness in order to function. Through the expansion of agroecological farming systems, rural smallholders (and farmers everywhere) may be able to free themselves from expensive input costs while creating the localized food systems of tomorrow.

Review: The Maya Forest Garden by Anabel Ford and Ronald Nigh

I recently had an opportunity to do some research on agroecology in Southern Mexico for my Political Ecologies of Food and Agriculture course and came across The Maya Forest Garden: Eight Millennia of Sustainable Cultivation of the Tropical Woodlands by Anabel Ford and Ronald Nigh. The book was published in 2015 and I was disappointed it wasn’t on my radar sooner. Ford and Nigh provide an extensively research foundation for the book. In my opinion, it could easily be considered one of the seminal works on indigenous Mayan agricultural systems. The book examines the milpa system, an agricultural framework that has been used in Central America for (as the title states) millennia. The co-authors of the book have spent nearly the entirety of their careers studying the milpa system alongside the descendants of the ancient Maya. Ronald and Nigh dive deep into written and oral histories to catalog the evolution of the milpa and the its various contexts throughout time. From its heyd...

Narratives of the New Green Revolution

The following story appears in AGRA’s “Transformed Livelihoods– AGRA’s impact in Africa” : Savaio found herself closing the business periodically, due to the ebb and flow of the agricultural cycle. Her busiest time came during the planting season, when farmers were looking for inputs. “I was serving just a handful of farmers, not even close to a hundred,” she says. “I can’t be exact, but it was a small venture with dim prospects.” Back then, an inventory valued at US$ 1,000 would last her into the new season, before having to restock. Her profit never reached US$ 200, and occasionally she would incur losses as some chemical inputs expired on her shelves. Being a resourceful woman, however, when the shop was not active she turned to producing crops of her own. In 2010, Concern Universal, an international organization working with smallholder farmers in Chimoio, approached Savaio with a training invitation. Concern Universal had been funded by AGRA to help i...

Timeline of Modern Agroecology

Here's a brief summary timeline of the movement towards agroecology. Agroecological farming is probably as old as farming itself, Western science has only recently begun to examine it. This timeline covers early agronomic and ethnographic studies on what would become agroecology to its scholarship, social movements, and institutional acceptance of today.

Agrobiosis

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