Agroecology to respond to agricultural challenges
Agriculture on a planetary scale must respond to increasingly complex challenges:
- “Making more with less”, while adapting to new economic, social and environmental constraints.
- “More”: taking into account a constantly-growing demand for food
- “With less”: taking into account the desire to reduce its footprint- while adapting to new constraints which take into account the changes which socio-ecosystems are undergoing.
The agroecology answer
Agroecology offers a path towards simultaneously addressing challenges of careful management of resources, adapting to climate change and food security faced by agriculture.
As a scientific discipline, agroecology is already presented as the intersection of ecology and agronomy, relying on the creation and management of sustainable agroecosystems. It also uses social and economic sciences to design multi-purpose systems and supports their use through public policies and a system of customised support programmes.
4 fundamental principles
At the intersection of education, research and innovation, these principles are fundamental to support this transition:
- using new fields of knowledge
- adopting a systematic vision
- innovating by relying on new approaches and understandings relying on a two-fold approach (bottom-up and top-down)
- adapting the systems and content of educational programmes.
5 areas of innovation within the agroecological system
These areas can allow us to complete agroecology research projects:
- promoting biodiversity and biological regulation for functional diversity and update the targets for genetic improvement of plants and animals;
- combine complementary agricultural practices to reduce losses during major biogeochemical cycles so as to also reduce soil erosion, promoting groundwater recharging and limiting nutrient loss;
- optimising the organisation of fields, ecological infrastructure and other production spaces in lands and managed lands and territories to improve the economy of resources and the individual and group control of pests;
- evaluate and redesign agroecosystems according to the diversity of ecosystemic services which they provide to society;
- rethink systems of innovation and support transitions to improve access to information, while rethinking the global evaluation criteria, reconstructing the points of reference, establishing new cooperations, some of which will involve all participants including citizens and consumers. Areas of Innovation within the agroecological transition
A dynamic of positive education and research
It is a matter of relying on local, contextualised approaches and on collaborative national systems, combining different pedagogical modalities and relying on a solid approach to agronomic technical and higher education and research. This transition, which has already begun, must be emphasized and improved upon, in order to reach all the participants in the global food system.
