Agroecology a Relational Science
Agroecology: a Relational Science – Toward a New Epistemology of the Life Sciences
“The great challenge of 21st-century science may not be to increasingly understand the individual components of Nature, but to understand the relationships that allow Nature to exist as a living system”
Introduction
Contemporary agriculture faces one of the most complex challenges in its history. Climate change, biodiversity loss, soil degradation, increased economic instability, and the growing need to produce food sustainably require a reflection that goes beyond simple technological innovation.
The central question is not only which tools to use, but also how to observe and interpret agricultural systems.
To address the complexity of the living world, a more profound change may be necessary: an evolution in the very way scientific research formulates its questions.
In recent decades, agroecology has represented one of the most significant responses to this need. By applying ecological principles to the design of agroecosystems, it has demonstrated how biodiversity, biological cycles, and ecosystem services are not secondary elements, but fundamental components of agricultural productivity.
However, agroecology may today be called upon to take a further evolutionary step: not only to propose a different agricultural model, but to contribute to the construction of a new epistemology of the life sciences.
A perspective in which the fundamental object of research is no longer just the single organism, but the relationship that connects organisms to each other and to the environment.
From the Paradigm of the Part to the Paradigm of the Relationship
For over three centuries (especially under the impetus of Enlightenment thought), Western science built its extraordinary success through the analytical method.
Understanding a system meant breaking it down into its fundamental parts, studying its individual elements, and reconstructing its overall functioning.
This approach has produced extraordinary results in physics, chemistry, molecular biology, and modern agronomy.
However, the very development of the biological sciences has revealed a fundamental limitation: living organisms are not simply the sum of their components.
Fertile soil is not just a combination of clay, silt, sand, and organic matter.
A forest is not just the sum of its component trees.
An agroecosystem is not simply the sum of the crops present. Just as a farmer’s experience cannot be related solely to the cultivation or breeding of an organism.
In all these cases, new properties emerge that do not belong to the individual isolated elements, but arise from their interactions.
Soil fertility derives from the coordinated activity of microorganisms, roots, fungi, fauna, and mineral elements.
The stability of a forest depends on the relationships between plant species, animals, microorganisms, climate, and material cycles.
The productivity of an agroecosystem emerges from the interplay between organisms, solar energy, water, nutrients, and human management.
Complexity, therefore, lies not only in the parts but above all in the relationships.
Relationships as a new unit of scientific analysis
Systems theory, contemporary ecology, and complexity biology have progressively highlighted that many biological phenomena can only be understood by considering the networks of interactions that generate them.
From this perspective, there is a growing awareness that Agroecology is a Relational Science: considering relationships as one of the primary units of scientific analysis.
This does not mean abandoning the study of individual components. It is clear that knowledge of genes, microorganisms, plants, and physiological processes remains indispensable.
However, it is necessary to recognize that no component can be fully understood by separating it from the system of relationships in which it exists.
This shift in perspective profoundly changes the way we interpret fundamental agricultural concepts.
Fertility as an Emergent Property of the Agroecosystem
Traditionally, fertility has been considered a characteristic of the soil. From a relational perspective, it becomes an emergent property of the entire biological system.
Today, we know that fertility arises from the dynamic interaction between the soil microbiome, root systems, organic matter, mycorrhizal fungi, soil fauna, water, solar energy, and agricultural practices.
Soil is not fertile simply because it contains certain chemical elements; it is fertile because it hosts a biological network capable of transforming, conserving, and making those resources available. We can say that fertility is an accumulator of interrelationships that can be temporally assimilated into a truly complex energy power.
Similarly, biodiversity is not simply a list of species present in an environment. It constitutes the biological capital that supports the functioning of the entire ecosystem.
The diversity of organisms allows for greater capacity for adaptation, stability, and response to disturbances.
Agricultural productivity can therefore be interpreted as an emergent property of the quality of ecological relationships.
Beyond Gross Marketable Production: The Value of Biological Capital
This perspective inevitably leads to a reconsideration of traditional economic indicators.
Gross Marketable Production represents only the portion of the agroecosystem’s productivity that directly enters the market.
A much larger portion of the biomass produced, however, performs fundamental functions: it nourishes the soil, builds humus, supports food webs, increases organic carbon, and strengthens the system’s ability to respond to climate events.
This invisible component represents a form of natural capital.
If it constitutes a fundamental resource for the farm, then economic evaluation based exclusively on marketed production provides an incomplete description of the production process.
The goal of agricultural research should therefore not only be to increase the quantity of marketable product, but to understand how to enhance the agroecosystem’s capacity to continuously generate biological capital.
Agricultural income thus becomes the result of a dynamic balance between production, energy costs, fertility, biodiversity, resilience, and the system’s capacity for self-regeneration.
The Farmer as Ecosystem Designer
Within this vision, the role of the farmer also changes.
He is not simply a producer of food. He becomes, together with his team of agronomists, foresters, and technicians in the sector, an ecosystem designer.
Every management choice simultaneously modifies the soil microbiome, plant biodiversity, food webs, the water cycle, the energy balance, and the overall ability of the system to maintain its organization.
Agricultural production therefore represents the visible result of an invisible network of biological processes.
GMOs and Assisted Evolutionary Techniques (AET): A New Scientific Question
The debate on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and assisted evolution techniques (AET) has often been characterized by a clash between pro- and con-oppositions, sometimes taking on a predominantly ideological dimension.
A relational perspective, however, proposes to reframe the scientific question.
The fundamental question should not be whether a genetic technology is, in absolute terms, positive or negative.
The more interesting question is: how does that technology modify the living system into which it is introduced?
A plant obtained through genetic modification may possess advantageous agronomic characteristics: greater resistance to disease, improved drought tolerance, greater efficiency in the use of resources.
However, that plant does not exist in isolation. It is inserted into a complex network of relationships that includes soil microorganisms, fungi, insects, pollinators, antagonistic organisms, wild species, nutrient cycles, and agricultural practices.
The overall effect of a genetic innovation cannot therefore be assessed solely by observing the introduced trait.
The way this characteristic influences the organization of the entire agroecosystem must be analyzed.
This perspective does not represent a rejection of biotechnology.
On the contrary, it proposes an expansion of the scientific method.
Traditional assessments of food security, genetic stability, and production performance remain fundamental, but could be integrated with new indicators:
– effects on functional biodiversity;
– modifications of ecological networks;
– influence on soil biological fertility;
– effects on system resilience;
– dependence on external inputs;
– the agroecosystem’s ability to maintain its organization over time.
The question therefore changes.
No longer simply: “How much does this plant produce?” but: “How does it change the living system in which this plant is inserted?”
This represents one of the most original potential contributions of Agroecology, as a Relational Science: shifting the focus of evaluation from the individual innovation to the ecological context in which it operates.
A New Epistemology of the Life Sciences
This reflection finds interesting points of contact with some contemporary perspectives in the philosophy of science.
Federico Faggin, through his philosophical reflections, also inspired by the implications of quantum physics, has proposed a vision of reality as a network of relationships and information rather than a simple set of isolated objects.
These interpretations belong to the philosophical realm and do not represent a shared conclusion of contemporary physics.
However, the parallel with ecology is stimulating. Modern biology shows that the functionality of ecosystems emerges from the relationships between organisms.
Agroecology can represent the field in which this intuition is transformed into a rigorous scientific program.
Relationship is not an abstract concept.
It is a phenomenon measurable through ecological networks, energy flows, trophic interactions, microbiomes, evolutionary dynamics, and emergent properties.
Philosophy can suggest new questions.
Science builds the tools to test them.
Conclusion: From Yield to Resilience
Agroecology, with its trilogy of Science, Movement, and Practice, is, in fact, a Relational Science; this does not replace analytical science, but complements it.
Reductionism remains essential to understanding the functioning of individual components, but must be complemented by a science capable of describing how those components interact and generate new properties.
The challenge for agricultural research in the future may therefore not be simply to increase production, but to understand how to build systems capable of maintaining their vitality over time.
Nature is not a collection of separate elements. It is a dynamic system in which every organism continuously participates in the construction of collective equilibrium.
Understanding Nature, therefore, means understanding the relationships that allow life to organize itself.
From this perspective, Agroecology represents not only a proposal for more sustainable agriculture, but a potential laboratory for a new epistemology of the life sciences:
– a science that does not renounce rigor, but recognizes complexity;
– a science that does not replace experiments with ideas, but expands the scope of questions;
– a science that moves from the description of parts to the understanding of the relationships that make the whole possible.
All this will allow, once and for all, the maturation of scientific and philosophical thought to reach a new horizon for the research model. The history that awaits us needs it.
Guido Bissanti
Essential bibliographical references –
Altieri, M.A. (1995; 2018). Agroecology: The Science of Sustainable Agriculture. CRC Press.
Bissanti, G. (2022). Ecologia tra Cielo e Terra. Medinova. Favara (AG).
Bissanti, G. et Al. (2025). Principi e Fondamenti di Agroecologia. Medinova. Favara (AG).
Capra, F., & Luisi, P.L. (2014). The Systems View of Life. Cambridge University Press.
Faggin, F. (2022). Irriducibile. La coscienza, la vita, i computer e la nostra natura. Mondadori.
Gliessman, S.R. (2015). Agroecology: The Ecology of Sustainable Food Systems. CRC Press.
Holling, C.S. (1973). “Resilience and Stability of Ecological Systems”. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 4, 1–23.
Margulis, L., & Sagan, D. (1995). What Is Life? University of California Press.
Morin, E. (2007). Il Metodo. Raffaello Cortina.
Odum, E.P. (1971). Fundamentals of Ecology. W.B. Saunders.
Prigogine, I., & Stengers, I. (1984). Order Out of Chaos. Bantam Books.