Agroecology and global ecology
Agroecology and global ecology
Agroecology is the discipline of governance of the agri-food systems of the future that connects Science, Movements and Practices.
Agroecology is, therefore, an approach to agriculture that integrates ecological principles and traditional knowledge, together with scientific innovations, to create more sustainable and resilient agricultural systems. It is a movement that, by embracing science and practice, leads to a new way of thinking. The goal is to reduce the environmental impact of agriculture, improving soil health, biodiversity and food production.
However, defining agroecology as an activity, even if complex, that integrates science, movement and practice is reductive since the same vision that distinguishes it, that of organizing agri-food models that are conducted in synchrony with ecological systems and models, involves a review of customs, lifestyles, management systems, and ultimately, the cultural and sociological models of the civilization of the future.
The very question of adapting the rhythms and structures of the civilization of the future to those of Nature necessarily involves a rethinking of the dynamics that have characterized the history and policies of Western civilization in recent centuries.
Coming into contact with nature is not just a question of nostalgic or sentimental order; it is essentially a restructuring of our way of being and behaving.
In nature everything is circular, every single organism, in a complex network and in continuous exchange, continuously receives, transmits and processes energy, information and matter. This continuous flow involves the “democratic” sharing and importance of all living beings in such a way that there are no useful or useless organisms (or worse harmful) but continuous correlations and co-evolution.
Modern civilization has made linearity its way of being, behaving and generating economy and finance. In it everything is the object of predation and exploitation and, in the end, when what has been consumed is no longer useful or usable, it is discarded, dumped, eliminated. In this way of behaving we do not only discard living organisms and raw materials but also people. In a linear system a person (or a population) that is not considered useful to this “economy” is marginalized, sidelined and often generates, even if only unconsciously, annoyance, discomfort, embarrassment.
An economy that we could define as one of aggression, of competition without rules, of war.
An economy where the great world wars were born and are still born, this third world war in pieces, and where emigration and genocide no longer find a human logic and any justification and where the international community, excessively tied to this socioeconomic model, struggles to find positions that put the rights and dignity of people at the center.
Agroecology (within the larger pie of the circular economy) instead triggers different dynamics. It dialogues with nature (ecology), draws paradigms, information and new energies from it that will shape the civilization of the future. The only possible one, outside of which, due to the exhaustion of non-renewable resources and the impossibility of creating an economy beyond the planet’s capacity to regenerate them, there can be no future history.
Agroecology is therefore that paradigm of existence that, falling within the great regenerative riverbed of nature, with its immense biodiversity and participation of all in global well-being, makes possible a historical path of true shared and democratic well-being.
That Fratelli Tutti and that principle of a global ecology that were the cornerstones of a great giant of History, who beyond personal positions on faith or not, can be defined as the man of the new History and, that is, Pope Francis.
Guido Bissanti