Giving Compass' Take:

• Agroecology refers to a method of farming that understands each part as belonging to a greater ecosystem that must be cared for in order to achieve sustainable success. 

• Agroecology was the only form of agriculture that existed originally, why was this model largely abandoned? How can farms move to this model to increase their sustainability? 

• Learn how farmers can fight climate change through soil care. 

Agroecology has—and is—being taken up by researchers, civil society, and governments as one of the vital development pathways to improve the sustainability and equity of agri-food systems. Unfortunately, many promising agroecology innovations are invisible or marginalized by mainstream policies and funders, according to a new, international research project.  SHIFFT: Supporting Holistic Innovation and the diFFusion of innovaTion, focuses on the ways that grassroots agroecology innovations can be better supported and scaled up.

The biggest obstacle to agroecological development is the dominant agricultural paradigm itself—sometimes referred to as the ‘corporate food regime’. In this regime, soil is treated as a substrate, not a living system, people as laborers or consumers, rather than active citizens) and learning as a means to transmit information, rather than an infinite process of collective development. Agroecology has emerged in opposition to this way of thinking, demanding a food system that can operate within the limits of our planet, which can nourish rather than poison the people it feeds, and use food production as a way to (re)engage its citizens in political processes of all kinds.

Read the full article on agroecology by Chris Maughan at Food Tank.