Re-Rooting Agroecology

Fundamentally, agroecology is about sustaining human life in a way which is both socially just and ecologically balanced. It works towards a vision where everyone has access to the resources they need to live a secure, healthy and fulfilling life, produced through practices that regenerate the Earth’s living systems, rather than deplete them. 

 Agroecology is also a social movement and site of political struggle, working to dismantle systems of oppression and exploitation, and promote the autonomy of producers to have control over their land, water, seeds, labour and systems of knowledge.

Agroecology is often defined as the ‘application of ecological principles to agricultural systems’.

While this is true, agroecology is so much more than simply a set of farming techniques. 

Agroecology is at once a science, a practice, a social movement and a vision for radically transforming our relationship to the Earth and how we live from it. Fundamentally, agroecology is about sustaining human life in a way which is both socially just and ecologically balanced. It works towards a vision where everyone has access to the resources they need to live a secure, healthy and fulfilling life, produced through systems that regenerate the Earth’s living systems, rather than deplete them.

In practice, to sustain human life agroecology depends on diversity. Building diversity in our soil, crops and animals is essential to creating self-sustaining and resilient farming and land-use systems; particularly in the context of finite fossil fuels, a warming planet and novel pests and diseases. Agroecology therefore opposes all systems which strive to erode diversity, including the use of monocultures, genetic modification of crops and animals, and agrochemicals. 

In the same vein, nurturing diversity within our communities, our cultures and in our land-based practices is key for preserving and sharing the unique systems of knowledge we need for building these place-based and resilient agroecological systems. In agroecological systems this knowledge is held and exchanged between landworkers, with a grassroots approach to generating knowledge and learning rather than ‘receiving’ knowledge through top-down institutional structures. 

However, under global capitalism this diversity of life and ways of knowing has been suppressed in order to prioritise systems that maximise yield, efficiency and economic gain. These systems have turned the land, waters, crops and animals which are essential to life, into commodities to be bought and sold on global markets, and have followed a standardised industrial model of farming and land-use which prioritise profit over human and planetary health.

The movement for agroecology is therefore inherently anti-capitalist, and concerned with creating an economy which produces food, fuel, fibre, timber and medicine to sustain and enrich people’s lives and the Earth’s living systems, not to accumulate financial wealth. 

Agroecology is therefore concerned with reclaiming power over our food and land-use systems. Taking it out of the hands of large agribusiness corporations and putting it back into the hands of communities. To this end, agroecology is fundamental to achieving food sovereignty.

If we are to achieve this vision of an agroecological and food sovereign future, our social movement must be grassroots and ‘peasant-led’. Workers, farmers and those who produce food, fibre, timber, fuel and medicine with their own labour should have control over their means of production – their land, seeds, water, tools, labour. They should also have the agency to bring about change and shape structures which affect their livelihoods. 

The universalism of agroecology means that it is also a social justice issue, committed to producing culturally appropriate food, fibre and medicine which is accessible to everyone, regardless of income, class or identity. This means treating food first and foremost as a basic human right, and advocating for policies and legislation which uphold this right. 

Because agroecology is about sustaining life over profit, it is also concerned with dismantling the systems of capitalist accumulation which have shaped our food and farming systems globally, and which continue to exploit systems of oppression for financial gain.

Many of the injustices we see in our food and land systems have been created by the intersection of different systems of oppression; from racism, to patriarchy, classism and ableism. These injustices often manifest as the exploitation of migrant farmworkers and food system workers; unequal access to land and the natural world; unequal access to culturally appropriate food and nutrition; and in many cases even violence, displacement and dispossession of lands. 

From our UK context, we must act in solidarity with peasant communities who face intersecting forms of oppression, and acknowledge our own complicated class structures, which can profoundly impact who can work the land and how. Agroecology must therefore be grounded in wider anti-oppression, anti-racism, anti-fascists and working class movements which fight for the liberation of all peoples in the face of global capitalism, and which empower those most marginalised by the current food system; including BPOC, migrant workers, women, and people of diverse genders. 

Agroecology has its roots in thousands of years of communities producing food and working the land which combines Indigenous knowledge with deeply place-based practices. It is still practised widely across the globe in peasant and Indigenous communities, but for industrialised societies where exploitative relationships to the land and workers have become so deeply embedded, agroecology necessitates a radical transformation. 

It is about re-learning our relationship to the Earth’s living systems, and interrogating our understanding of dominant concepts like ‘productivity’, ‘development’ and ‘efficiency’. It is about enabling everyone to re-connect with the land and, should they wish, to engage in land-based production systems.

But operating both within and against a capitalist system which alienates and exploits life and denies producers their rights over food, land, water and seeds, agroecology is inevitably entwined with histories of struggle and resistance. There is therefore a need to recognise and respect both current and historical peasant-led struggles, and to understand agroecology as an ever-evolving movement for liberation and justice.