Agroecology
The field of agroecology is not associated with any one particular method of farming, whether it be organic, regenerative, integrated, or industrial, intensive or extensive, although some use the name specifically for alternative agriculture.
"[2] Dalgaard et al. refer to agroecology as the study of the interactions between plants, animals, humans and the environment within agricultural systems.
[3] Agroecology uses different sciences to understand elements of ecosystems such as soil properties and plant-insect interactions, as well as using social sciences to understand the effects of farming practices on rural communities, economic constraints to developing new production methods, or cultural factors determining farming practices.
[citation needed] The system properties of agroecosystems studied may include: productivity, stability, sustainability and equitability.
[6] Agroecology is not limited to any one scale; it can range from an individual gene to an entire population, or from a single field in a given farm to global systems.
[3] Wojtkowski differentiates the ecology of natural ecosystems from agroecology inasmuch as in natural ecosystems there is no role for economics, whereas in agroecology, focusing as it does on organisms within planned and managed environments, it is human activities, and hence economics, that are the primary governing forces that ultimately control the field.
[9] Dalgaard et al. identify different points of view: what they call early "integrative" agroecology, such as the investigations of Henry Gleason or Frederic Clements.
The second version they cite Hecht (1995) as coining "hard" agroecology which they identify as more reactive to environmental politics but rooted in measurable units and technology.
[17] The Mexica people that inhabited Tenochtitlan pre-colonization of the Americas used a process called chinampas that in many ways mirrors the use of composting in sustainable agriculture today.
[24] Gliessman describes that post-WWII ecologists gave more focus to experiments in the natural environment, while agronomists dedicated their attention to the cultivated systems in agriculture, but in the 1970s agronomists saw the value of ecology, and ecologists began to use the agricultural systems as study plots, studies in agroecology grew more rapidly.
[25] Agroecology is an applied science that involves the adaptation of ecological concepts to the structure, performance, and management of sustainable agroecosystems.
"[27] Garí wrote two papers for the FAO in the early 2000s about using an agroecological approach which he called "agrobiodiversity" to empower farmers to cope with the impacts of the AIDS on rural areas in Africa.
