Agro-ecology is the common sense approach to food security

“There is no agricultural challenge that we can’t solve
with an agro‐ecological approach.”

 “The industrial mindset is the underlying psychological state that drives the development of technologies – including GM ‐ in the absence of evidence on their efficacy”

In October 2012, Dr Julia Wright of the Centre for Agro-ecology and Food Security at Coventry University, delivered a presentation to the GM Freeze AGM on the role that agro-ecological approaches can play in achieving universal food security.

To view the presentation, courtesy of the GM Freeze website, click on the link below:

Dr Julia Wright – Agro-ecology

Some highlights:

– the world currently produces enough calories per capita to feed 14 billion people

– there is a fundamental contrast between the ‘industrial mindset’ and the ‘ecological mindset’

– the industrial mindset reveals:

– an obsessive focus on increasing yields
– a lack of faith in nature
– the dominance of masculine quali,es over feminine, and head (intellect) over heart
– misperceptions and lack of logic around the ability of ecological production to perform
– underlying fears around lack of food/starvation and loss of control over nature/farmers and subsequent chaos.

Ecological literacy is the ability to understand the natural systems that make life on earth possible. To be ecoliterate means understanding the principles of organisa,on of ecological communi,es (i.e. ecosystems) and using those principles for creating sustainable human communi,es. (David Orr, 1992)