Abstract
Today’s society faces many challenges when it comes to food production: producing food sustainably, producing enough of it, distributing food, consuming enough calories, consuming too many calories, consuming culturally-appropriate foods, and reducing the amount of food wasted. The distribution of power within the current mainstream agri-food system is dominated by multinational agri-businesses that control the flow of goods and wealth through the system. This hegemony has implemented a regime whose structures reinforce its control. A growing response to the current agri-food regime is the rise of agroecology, in both developed and developing country contexts. This is not a new phenomenon, but it has evolved over time from its Latin American origins. However, agroecology is not a monolithic block and represents many different perceptions of what it means to advance agroecology and ways in which it can help today’s society tackle the crisis of the agri-food system. This paper addresses these sometimes discordant view points, as well as the gaps in our knowledge regarding agroecology in an effort to lay out some guiding principles for how we can move forward in transforming the current agri-food system to achieve sustainability and a more equitable distribution of power and resources.
Highlights
Today’s agri-food system is in a state of crisis
Political agroecology is concerned with broader food systems, especially the conventional agri-food system dominated by large corporations, market ideologies and governments
Latin American agroecologists in particular have focused on questions of democratisation and transformation of food production and consumption, advocating sustainable farm practices based on the farm’s own ecology rather than external inputs, alongside participatory, farmer-led knowledge, and the ways in which food production can be made more local and in tune with traditional, sustainable livelihoods
Summary
Today’s agri-food system is in a state of crisis. The problems evolve in different scales and unfold in multiple directions. While the cultural and historical circumstances differ widely, economic exclusion associated with the current conventional agri-food system, coupled with the need to increase food production and maintain consumption, has created a socio-ecological crisis, which can potentially catalyse a new movement aimed at reforming agri-food along agroecology lines. Agroecology can be described as a set of technological and practical adjustments, but it is a transnational social movement in which a simultaneous coherent and diversified body of collective action evolves in the global geographical setting through complex interactions between grassroots activity and centers of coordination This movement must be navigated carefully, if it is not to be subsumed by the current agri-food hegemony due to the relatively easy appropriation of agroecological techniques (at the expense of the more critical and political dimensions). We present a critical analysis of what is needed in agroecological research in order to transform conventional agri-food systems to achieve sustainability
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