Agroecology: A Review from a Global-Change Perspective

Abstract

This review by a multidisciplinary team maps key components and emerging connections within the intellectual landscape of agroecology. We attempt to extend and preview agroecology as a discipline in which agriculture can be conceptualized within the context of global change and studied as a coupled system involving a wide range of social and natural processes. This intrinsic coupling, combined with powerful emerging drivers of change, presents challenges for the practice of agroecology and agriculture itself, as well as providing the framework for some of the most innovative research areas and the greatest potential for innovation for a sustainable future in agriculture. The objective of this review is to identify forward-looking scientific questions to enhance the relevance of agroecology for the key challenges of mitigating environmental impacts of agriculture while dramatically increasing global food production, improving livelihoods, and thereby reducing chronic hunger and malnutrition over the coming decades.

Ecosystem Services in Biologically Diversified versus Conventional Farming Systems: Benefits, Externalities, and Trade-Offs

“…Given the multiple interactions between weeds, other pests or diseases, and ecosystem service providers, it is clear that the study of weed management cannot occur in isolation from other components of the farming system. Whole-system, integrative studies of diversified agriculture are needed in order to effectively support multifunctional agriculture (e.g., Box 1; Norris and Kogan 2005, Shennan 2008, Tomich et al 2011). Box 1.…”

“…Furthermore, given that mixed cropping and crop rotation practices influence many ecosystem processes and services (Table 1), it is clear that in order to develop cost-effective diversification strategies, wholesystem agroecological studies that consider multiple interactions simultaneously are needed (Shennan 2008, Tomich et al 2011.…”

“…We define a diversified farming system as a system of agricultural production that, through a range of practices, incorporates agrobiodiversity across multiple spatial and/or temporal scales (Altieri 2004, Pearson 2007, Jackson et al 2009, Tomich et al 2011, Kremen et al 2012). …”

Technological Approaches to Sustainable Agriculture at a Crossroads: An Agroecological Perspective

“…), a lukewarm definition of agroecology has emerged, regarding it essentially as a set of additional tools to fix the problems of industrial food production. In other words, many researchers see agroecology as a way to make conventional agriculture a little bit more sustainable, without challenging underlying relations of power, nor the structure of large-scale monocultures [4]. No doubt, agroecology is now at a crossroads, facing a major struggle over its possible cooptation by the mainstream and to be further subordinated to conventional agriculture by revisionist academic projects that erase its history, stripping it of its political content and goals [5].…”

Landscape scale study of diversity and interaction in cereal aphids - parasitoids system (Homoptera; Hymenoptera)

“…Francais et al (2003) daju znatno širu perspektivu agroekologije definišući je kao "integrativnu studiju ekologije čitavog sistema za proizvodnju hrane, uključujući tu ekološke, ekonomske i sociološke aspekte". Iz ovoga se može videti da se na jednom kraju spektra agroekologija dodiruje i preklapa sa ekologijom i zaštitom životne sredine dobijajući na taj način mogućnost da objasni ne samo agroekološke procese koji se dešavaju na malim prostornim skalama (u okviru i između poljoprivrednih polja) kao što su biološka kontrola štetočina, oprašivanje ili kruženje nutrijenata, već i procese koji se događaju na znatno većim prostornim skalama, poput fragmentacije i gubitka staništa, eutorfikacije i klimatskih promena (Tomich et al, 2011). Na drugom kraju spektra agroekologija se dodiruje sa društvenim naukama koje se bave sociološkim i kulturološkim problemima.…”