Cultivating complexity

Towards a new agroecological paradigm

For over a century, we have measured agriculture with a seemingly neutral and objective indicator: tons per hectare. This unit of measurement has guided research, public policies, genetic selection, supply chain organization, and even the collective imagination of “agricultural progress.” Yet, if we observe nature, we discover that ecosystems are not evaluated based on the yield of a single species. In ecology, we speak of Primary Productivity, that is, the amount of solar energy transformed into biomass through photosynthesis. The reference point is not the commercial product, but the biophysical process.

This shift in perspective could become the foundation for a profound transformation of contemporary agriculture. Ilya Prigogine’s insights into the thermodynamics of systems far from equilibrium help us understand its scope. Prigogine showed that open systems, traversed by flows of energy and matter, can self-organize into ordered structures, so-called dissipative structures. Life itself is a dissipative structure: it maintains a high degree of internal order by dissipating energy externally.
An agroecosystem is, to all intents and purposes, such an open system. It captures solar energy, converts it into plant biomass, transfers it through complex food webs, and releases some of it back into the environment in the form of heat and degraded matter. When we drastically simplify it—reducing cultivated species, eliminating local varieties, replacing rustic breeds with hyperproductive lines—we make it neither more efficient nor more productive. We reduce its internal complexity and increase its dependence on external energy, especially fossil fuels.

Global agricultural specialization in recent decades has produced highly standardized systems: vast areas of monoculture, a few varieties selected for uniformity and transportability, and animal breeds optimized to maximize a single performance. This simplification has certainly increased the yield of some commodities, but it has also disrupted ecological cycles, depleted soils, increased the use of fertilizers and pesticides, and made systems more vulnerable to pests, diseases, and climate shocks. From a thermodynamic perspective, we have replaced biological complexity with high-quality energy. From a perspective similar to that of Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, we could say that we have produced immediate economic order by consuming ecological order and increasing the overall entropy of the system.
If we accept that agriculture is a dissipative structure, then biodiversity is neither an ornament nor an ethical luxury, but an energy infrastructure. Reintroducing abandoned or underutilized species, varieties, and breeds means multiplying the pathways through which solar energy can be captured and transformed. In a polycultural or agroforestry system, light is intercepted at different heights, roots explore different soil layers, crops alternate over time, and animals contribute to recycling nutrients. Production is not concentrated in a single linear flow, but distributed across a network of relationships.
This increased complexity can translate into higher systemic productivity. Not necessarily in the maximum yield of a single crop, but in a greater overall production of useful biomass, nutrients, and ecological stability. A diverse hectare can produce cereals, legumes, fruit, fodder, animal protein, soil biomass, and ecosystem services in the same space and throughout the year. If we measure only the grain, we might conclude that it produces less; if we measure the whole, we discover that it produces more and better.

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The key issue, then, is metric. As long as we continue to evaluate agriculture in tons per hectare of a single commodity, we will continue to reward simplification. If, instead, we adopted indicators inspired by Primary Productivity and energy balances, we could measure how much solar energy is transformed into stable biomass, how much fossil fuel is used, how many nutrients are actually produced per unit area, and how much organic matter is accumulated in the soil. Efficiency would no longer be the maximization of a linear output, but the system’s ability to transform energy flows into sustainable and nutritionally dense biological complexity.
A change of this kind cannot remain theoretical. It would require a revision of agricultural policies, subsidy criteria, insurance systems, and market logic. If public payments rewarded crop diversity, the integration of crops and livestock, the increase in stable soil carbon, and climate resilience, production choices would be oriented differently. Supply chains should enhance the diversity of local production, not just large, standardized commodities. Agronomic research should also shift its focus from maximizing individual yields to designing complex, integrated systems.
The implications are also social. A more diversified and territorialized agriculture can strengthen local economies, reduce dependence on external inputs, and offer a more varied diet rich in micronutrients. Food quality would no longer be a side effect, but a direct consequence of production complexity. Cultivating more species means offering more nutrients, more flavors, more food cultures.

Ultimately, the crucial shift is conceptual. Industrial agriculture was conceived as a linear machine: inputs in, outputs out. Agroecology, viewed through the lens of dissipative systems, appears instead as a dynamic network of relationships that transforms solar energy into a living organization. True innovation consists not only in introducing new technologies, but in changing the fundamental question: not “how much does a crop produce?”, but rather “how much stable and nutritionally useful complexity can this territory generate through its energy flows?”
Cultivating complexity means accepting that efficiency is not synonymous with simplification. It means recognizing that sustainability is not achieved by reducing nature to an assembly line, but by learning to design living systems capable of self-organization, adaptation, and sustainability. In this sense, the return to Primary Productivity is not a step backward, but a cultural advancement: a way to realign agriculture with the fundamental laws of ecology and thermodynamics.

Guido Bissanti

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