Farming with nature

The trajectory of so-called ‘conventional’ agriculture is pushing us away from a viable and ecologically coherent system of food production. Big agribusiness and its ecological preferences for monocultural monotony are driving today’s extinction crisis. We need a new agriculture that recombines us with nature.

Agroecology reunites food production with nature, biodiversity, ecology and human communities by combining good science with cultural knowledge and natural systems. Farms are not islands; they should be treated as ecosystems and their methods contextualised within their broader communities and landscapes.

Agroecology goes beyond merely tinkering with fractured ecology through piecemeal or ad hoc regenerative approaches. It is the recombination of food production with ecology. It offers a renewed and convivial interrelationship with biodiversity. Agroecology represents meaningful ‘rewilding’ from the soil upwards – a new land ethic to inform our exit from today’s climate and nature crises.

Crucially, agroecology is not just a technical approach towards food production. It embodies a social movement that aims to push-back against big agribusiness and the powerful corporations that dominate our food chain. It is an approach that requires both solidarity and humility – defending and learning from small farmers and the global peasantry – as well as rigorous and democratised agrarian science.

Photos

Top: Agroforestry in action – cows browsing trees. Thanks to Nikki Yoxall at Grampian Graziers