Agroecology: a national and international challenge

At the national and international levels, agroecology is increasingly becoming a framework for addressing agricultural, environmental and socioeconomic challenges related to sustainable development. International bodies, as political decision-makers, are latching onto the subject and using it at different levels, according to what they see as the most urgent issues. This diversity of perspectives and needs explains the polysemous, multifaceted nature of agroecology.

Following the 2008 food crises, Olivier de Schutter, a special reporter on food rights, presented a report entitled “Agroecology and the right to food” in 2011 to the UN Human Rights Council. 

This report showed that in successful applications, agroecology could lead to a significant growth in food production while reducing poverty and providing concrete solutions to climate change. It emphasized the work to be done in order to guarantee that an expansion of agroecology would be a success. 

The FAO then implemented a series of activities focused on agroecology: the organisation of an international symposium on agroecology for food security and nutrition, regional conferences, the establishment of a collaborative platform for agroecology.  

As much for nations in the Global North as in the Global South, agroecology represents a path towards a transition to sustainable, flexible agriculture. In industrialised nations, types of agriculture based on synthetic and non-renewable fertilisers cause a loss of biodiversity, homogenisation, artificialization of soils and pollution of soils, air and water. The goal is to arrive at a complementary, synergistic balance between agriculture and environment, in the context of modernisation, homogenisation and specialisation.

France has written agroecology into its political and legislative agenda, more specifically in article 1 of the 2014 Future Act for agriculture, food and forests (“Loi d'avenir pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et la forêt de 2014”): “Public policies aim to promote and sustain agroecological systems of production, including organic farming, which combine economic, health and environmental performance and a high level of social protection”. This entry in the Act has notably been translated and expanded upon in the “Agroecological Plan for France”.