Agroecology against climate change
Agroecology against climate change
In an era where slogans dominate knowledge and where social networks seem like a battlefield furrowed by arrows and darts of pseudo information, the exercise of truthful news becomes increasingly difficult.
We claim truth in slogans but the Truth is a slow conquest, made up of sacrifices, personal experiences and deepening of the very meaning of life.
Quid est veritas? One would say, borrowing the phrase uttered by Pontius Pilate during his interrogation of Jesus.
The Truth, to be reached and affirmed, cannot be witnessed by those who are interested in it and, above all, it cannot be sold on the free market or packaged in tablets on social networks.
In order to reach this great human right, that is the Truth, it is then necessary to get rid of that enormous ballast which is represented by pseudo economic and financial reasoning which, from time to time, are placed, in an artificial and devious way, against anyone who would like to attest to contrary theses.
This long premise is necessary to understand that if we do not reconvert our way of seeing the world, humanity and life in general, we could hardly reach a higher level of knowledge and therefore of conscience.
This is what happens today in the field of ecology.
Ecology (from the Greek: οἶκος, oikos, “house” or also “environment”; and λόγος, logos, “discourse” or “study”) is the scientific analysis of the interactions between organisms and their environment; in a nutshell it is the real economic discourse that unites all interests, not least, obviously human ones.
If today the entire planet is suffering from a great ecological crisis (loss of biodiversity, global warming, human injustices, etc.) it is due to a wrong economic “culture” obviously conducted not by holders of truth but by partisan interests, and it is for this reason that, at this rate, solutions to the ecological question will never be found. We need a great movement of free Consciences.
Specifically, this is what happens in the more restricted (but inextricably interconnected) field of agroecology.
Beyond that this new frontier of agricultural sciences, connected with ecology, is almost completely unknown and not yet studied (if not with timid hints) even in universities, we often hear, among the many affirmations, that it can go back to the past, as if agroecology were known to our ancestors farmers.
This is the first big mistake as our talented and very expert farmers based their practical knowledge on that great unwritten book that was tradition. But the tradition, although based on the experience that “when you make a mistake, nature punishes” was not agroecological science.
Agroecology is a much more complex discipline, practically unknown; where the disciplines that compose it range from the thermodynamics of complex systems, to agricultural techniques applied to ecology, to the relationship between natural ecosystems and human ecosystems, up to the evaluation of process returns, which completely replace the productive yields of agro systems -silvo-pastoral, so dear to the old agronomy.
In agroecology, productive systems change, their interactions, relationships with ecology and with human and therefore market organizations, etc .: the same logics of the ecosystem are replicated in them.
Agroecology is a complex model (but simple in its principles) that is interested in achieving and therefore creating an economy in line with ecology.
I point out, if ever there were any need, that economy and ecology have the word οἶκος in common, so they base their principles on a common axiom: they have the same house in common.
Since it is demonstrated (see Ilya Prigogine’s studies on complex thermodynamic models of ecological systems) that the best achievable energy efficiency is that of ecological systems in conditions of stability, in the same way the best efficiency of agricultural systems can only be achieved by applying them. principles on which ecology is based: diversity, mutuality, reciprocity, sharing, etc.
We also remind you that the best energy yield corresponds to the best economic (and therefore monetary and financial) yield. Therefore an agricultural system that is based on agroecology is the one that ensures greater well-being.
Here, of course, the great divide is created between the detractors of agroecology and its supporters.
The former affirm that the highest yields, and therefore the best earnings, are obtained with specialized, intensive production systems, with a large contribution of production factors (fertilizers, machines, etc.). They neglect that the yield of a system must be calculated on all the factors that insist on the system (fertility and structure of the soil, biodiversity… .. entropy produced). Not for nothing only in the last fifty years have we lost large shares of soil fertility, biodiversity, exodus from the countryside (with loss of knowledge), desertification, etc.
Now in specialized production systems the value of the entropy produced is often tens of times higher than that produced by a system kept in balance (agroecological).
It should be emphasized that the efficiency of a process is not the sum of the returns but the product of the same (this is thermodynamics, whether we like it or not) so the more external factors we introduce into a system, the lower its performance will be. and with gradually increasing values,
Why did we introduce the concept of entropy? Because it is precisely this magnitude that is responsible for global warming and therefore, indirectly, for the factors that underlie climate change.
So if we continue to tell the tale that intensive agriculture gives the farmer greater wealth, we continue to make fun of him by making fun of us. Among other things, the laws of the market (another factor that is not divorced from ecology) show just the opposite: the more we specialize the more we are subjected to the dominance of those macrosystems whose stakeholders are multinationals, large retailers and deviated political systems.
At this point the question is: how do you get out of this misunderstanding, so subtle as not to be seen and understood ?!
The answer is: to inform, to make known, to bring ecological sciences and therefore also agroecology to schools, universities, among the technicians of the sector.
That’s enough?
Surely not. New laws are needed to encourage agroecological transition on the one hand and the transition of knowledge on the other. It is of little use to build a Formula One if you do not train drivers capable of driving it.
Science and knowledge must walk together and climate change is fought with a renewed awareness. Awareness that cannot be born under the aegis of a worn out and wrong way of dealing with an economy outside of ecology.
When the economy returns to the same house as ecology, humanity will regain its common home which is the Planet. The only one we have.
Guido Bissanti