Agroecology May Enable Us To Feed The World

The Lempert Report
July 30, 2018

Agroecology represents a solution to the interconnected crises of our time

Not only in the agricultural sector, but also in the economic and social spheres according to Navdanya, the civil society organization that, for over thirty years,has been promoting a regenerating and ecologic circular approach to contrast the rising environmental degradation, poverty, sanitary emergencies and malnutrition. 

At the Second Symposium on Agroecology held in Rome this past Spring, the FAO highlighted how agroecology directly contributes to some of the most important Sustainable Development Goals, including poverty and hunger eradication, guaranteeing the quality of education, the achievement of gender equality, increased efficiency in water use, the promotion of decent work conditions, guaranteeing sustainable consumption and production, consolidation of climate resilience, sustainable use of marine resources and to stop the biodiversity loss.

What small producers and consumers must claim, according to the FAO, is a new agricultural and economic paradigm, a food culture based on health, in which ecological responsibility and economic justice take precedence over today’s extractive production systems based on consumption and profits. Agroecology is not only a set of techniques, but a whole vision of life, based on the concept of integration between human beings and nature, as underlined by the Declaration of small producers and civil society organizations.

The majority of the food we consume is, in fact according to the FAO, still produced by small and medium farmers, while the vast majority of crops coming from the industrial sector, such as corn and soy, is mainly used as animal feed or to produce biofuels. 

In 2016, 815 million people suffered from malnutrition, while over 1.9 billion adults worldwide were overweight, with more than 650 million being obese.

The problem they say isn’t productivity itself, but distribution, poverty and food quality.