Agroecology: transforming land and culture 

Farming is fundamentally about relationship – a confluence of the human hand with the botanical, zoological and microbial kingdoms. At every turn in agricultural history, the nature of these relationships has been transformative not only for local and global ecologies, but for culture and society too. 

The Agricultural Revolution some 12,000 years ago is most commonly defined as the point at which homo sapiens domesticated plant and animal life. We selectively bred the wild species that we favoured and consequently reordered the genetic makeup of flock, herd, feather and seed. Yet agriculture has shaped not only on the bodies of cattle and sheep, or the topography of the land, but the human body and psyche too. We are an echo of the places that grew the food we feed ourselves and the health of those lands will end up bearing on our own physical and mental wellbeing. 

Over the last seventy years, the so-called “Green Revolution” has seen the adoption of agricultural policies worldwide which incentivise the industrial production of monocultures destined for export, privileging economic growth over people’s ability to feed themselves. This has eroded small-scale and subsistence farming, making the small farmer yet another species under threat in this age of extinction. Countless plots of land, once characterised by crop diversity and multi-species flourishing, have been incorporated into monocultures. The farmers who tended them have been displaced and mechanisation and chemicals have outflanked natural processes in the fields, with biological limits usurped to maximise productivity. We’ve lost vital knowledge for sustaining ourselves; how to save seed, when to plant and how to preserve the harvest, and the organic tie between people and the land has been all but severed.

Industrial agriculture has wreaked havoc on all life, driving biodiversity loss and climate change, depleting soils and contaminating water. And like river and woodland, soil and scrub, our bodies bear the trademark of the industry’s transfigured ecologies. The poor quality of food and its unequal distribution, produced by a system that privileges profit over people, leaves certain bodies skeletal and drawn, bellies distended from famine and malnutrition, whilst other bodies bloat with excess.

And where food once connected us to the land, or at least to the person who grew or reared it, it has now gained the status of a commodity. Even for the farmers who have been absorbed into the new farming landscape, and continue to work the land, industrialisation has meant this is no longer a point of encounter with diverse ecologies, but more often the tread and trundle through beige and silent fields.

This impact ripples out beyond the farm-gate to everyone whose perception of the countryside is then informed by the expanse of monocultures that predominate in rural landscapes. It is an image that shapes our collective understanding of our place in the world, reinforcing the idea that nature is something separate from and subservient to society. In this way industrial farming plunges us into a state of ecological loneliness, diminishing our opportunities for meaningful engagement with diverse natural places, and the sense of belonging and wellbeing this can bring. 

As a counter to this experience, there are places where agroecology- small-scale, ecological farming- is taking root again, centred on an ethic of care that responds to these times of ecological unravelling. People are returning to regenerate the land, reviving traditional methods and stores of seed, planting trees and defying capitalist systems of provision with their own webs of trade and exchange. In doing so, they are creating refuge, not only for animals, plants and insects, but for the human spirit too. Caring for a place and its creatures brings with it a sense of belonging, not only to that place, but to all life – to every place. Because when you are working with agroecological methods that honour natural cycles, respect ecological limits and nourish the conditions for life to flourish, then you experience in the deepest sense that you are part of a wild and fecund ecology, the creative and unstoppable drive for life to go on. 

As we reckon with the impacts of industrial farming, the next revolution in agriculture is on the horizon. There is an opportunity, indeed an imperative to regenerate the land, and if we do so guided by the ethic of care that’s central to agroecology, that takes a stance of humility towards the non-human world, then we might hope to see the transformation not only of our landscapes, but of human societies too. More than just a method of farming, agroecology has the potential to inspire a broader cultural shift that restores our sense of belonging to the natural world. 

Author: Chloe Broadfield