What is agroecology?

Agroecology is “a social, cultural, and political process and a tool for the collective transformation of reality.” - La Via Campesina

“Agroecology creates the social and material infrastructure for food producers of all kinds to remain on the land (in rural, coastal, and urban spaces) and to ‘break free’ from white supremacy, colonialism, patriarchy and other forms of exploitation.” -The People’s Agroecology Process

What is Agroecology? Agroecology focuses on sustainable farming. It is an alternative to the industrial food system that heavily extracts from land and life. In other words, agroecology focuses on using what is readily available and reduces reliance on external farm inputs. Rather than pumping the soil with synthetic fertilizers, folx would find ways to naturally improve the soil by increasing biodiversity and soil fertility. However, Agroecology can be thought of as not just “sustainability,” but a movement for social change. Agroecology values the techniques and knowledge developed by farmers’ experiences, small-scale local practices, and social processes that value community involvement and economic self reliance. Agroecology is a whole systems approach that understands ecological change in agriculture and food systems cannot happen without political, social, and economic change.