Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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Agroecology: The Science of Sustainable Agriculture[1]
John Ikerd,  Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Economics
University of Missouri Columbia
College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources
http://web.missouri.edu/~ikerdj/papers/SFT-Agroecology.htm
http://web.missouri.edu/~ikerdj/

Agroecology, as the name suggests, is an integration of agriculture and 
ecology. Agroecosystems are farms, agricultural systems, viewed from an 
ecological perspective. Agroecology is the science of design and management 
of sustainable agroecosystems, or more simply, the science of sustainable 
agriculture. The explicit purpose of integrating agriculture with ecology is 
to enhance the sustainability of agriculture.

Agroecology is not a commonly used word, even among advocates of sustainable 
agriculture. It has been around for more than twenty years, but somehow the 
concept has just never caught on, even among agricultural scientists. I 
suspect this is mostly because the advocates of agroecology have never 
explained why it is necessary to integrate agriculture with ecology in order 
to achieve agricultural sustainability. Maybe they thought it was obvious to 
all that agriculture must be viewed from an ecological perspective, if it is 
to be sustainable. But it’s not obvious to all, apparently even not to many 
agricultural scientists.

To understand the importance of agroecology, we have to return to its roots – 
to its first principles. As I explained in my June-July ‘06 article, first 
principles are different from values. Different people may have different 
values but first principles are true for everyone at all times. In earlier 
times, first principles referred to natural law, the nature of being human, 
as when our Founding Fathers declared, “We hold these truths to be self 
evident.” First principles also refer to the laws of nature, meaning the 
principles that govern all natural physical phenomena. First principles 
cannot be proven, but they need no proof; they are “self evident.” In fact, 
all scientific principles are rooted in first principles, which were not and 
cannot be proven – they are accepted by science as self-evident.



The first principles of agroecology quite logically must be derived from the 
first principles of agriculture and ecology. Agriculture, by its basic 
nature, is a purposeful human activity. The basic purpose of agriculture is 
to shift the ecological balance of nature in favor of humans relative to 
other species. All species attempt to tip the balance in their favor; humans 
are no different in this regard. But, humans alone are a willful species. The 
rightness or legitimacy of agriculture is determined by its purpose, by why 
humans attempt to tip the ecological balance in their favor, and 
concurrently, how far they are willing to tip it.



The first principle of agriculture, and of agroecology, is life has purpose. 
If there is not purpose for life, there is no purpose for human life, and 
thus no purpose for agriculture – agriculture becomes a senseless activity. 
Most people probably never question whether life has purpose, but scientists 
do. Most scientists are philosophical materialists, at least in the practice 
of their professions. In his classic 1919 book, Modern Science and 
Materialism, Hugh Elliott, states, “The age of science is necessarily an age 
of materialism; ours is a scientific age, and it may be said with truth that 
we are all materialists now.”[i]



Elliott emphasized the primary assumptions of materialism. The first 
assumption asserts that when the conditions at any moment in time are 
precisely the same as those prevailing at some earlier moment, the results 
also will be identical to the earlier results. True causes and effects are 
always replicable. The second assumption of materialism is the denial of 
purpose. Elliott writes, “Scientific materialism… asserts that all events are 
due to the interaction of matter and motion, acting by blind necessity in 
accordance with those invariable sequences to which we have given the name 
laws.” Human life is nothing more than an interaction of motion and matter. 
The third assumption of materialism denies the existence of spirituality – 
anything that lacks tangible, material characteristics and qualities. Among 
those things, he includes not only gods and souls, but also such entities as 
intellect, will, and feelings, insofar as they are supposed to be different 
from material processes.



Perhaps this is why agricultural scientists are so reluctant to address 
issues of sustainable agriculture; agricultural sciences deal only with the 
processes of agriculture, without questioning its purpose, or even admitting 
that it has one. They don’t want to question the ethics of morality of 
today’s industrial agriculture because the answers to such questions require 
intellect, willfulness, feelings, and ultimately, spirituality.



Thankfully, most ordinary people reject the philosophy of scientific 
materialists. Most people do not believe their choices and actions are 
predetermined acts of blind necessity or the inevitable consequences of 
ongoing interaction of matter and motion. They know they can’t control their 
future but they believe they can affect their future, through their willful 
choices. Ordinary people act as if their actions have meaning, believing 
their choices can be right or wrong and good or bad. Lacking purpose, right 
or wrong and good or bad are indistinguishable. Purpose in life may be 
rejected by science, but it is expressed in the social norms and customs of 
every civilized society and in the constitutions and laws of every credible 
government in the world. If human life has purpose, then agriculture too has 
purpose.



The first principle of ecology, and the second principle of agroecology, is 
that all of all life is interconnected. Deep ecologists go even farther in 
proclaiming the interconnectedness of not only biological communities, but 
also all local and global communities, biological, human, non-human – in the 
past as well as in the present. While some ecologists might disagree about 
the relevance of connections among living things over time, ecologists agree 
that all of life is interconnected. While ordinary people may disagree about 
the relative importance of specific connections, their general consensus 
seems to be in agreement with this second principle of agroecology.



The third principle of agroecology comes from both agriculture and ecology: 
all life is good. If all life is bad or evil, neither agriculture nor ecology 
makes sense. It would make no sense to be concerned with the health, 
vitality, or survival of living communities, species, or ecosystems if 
continuation of life on earth were not inherently good. Obviously, the death 
of individuals is an inevitable and natural aspect of life, but communities, 
species, and ecosystems are capable of renewal and regeneration, and thus are 
capable of sustaining and renewing themselves. While individuals, 
communities, and species may appear to pursue their self-interests, within 
their larger ecosystems, most individuals function naturally in ways that 
enhance the long run sustainability of life. Nature, including both laws of 
nature and natural law, is biased in favor of life. This natural bias is 
enough to convince many people that life is good.



Many other logical, reasonable, thoughtful people simply reject the 
assumptions of scientific materialism. They believe that people have free 
will, that life has purpose, and life is spiritual – that intellect, will, 
and feelings are more than material processes. They believe in an intangible, 
unknowable higher order of things, within which all aspects of reality, 
including all life, have purpose and meaning. And, they believe that life was 
meant to be good. Very few people believe that reality and life are 
inherently evil, and those who do are generally labeled as sociopaths. It 
doesn’t matter whether the principle of goodness arises from the natural bias 
or nature of the goodness of some higher order; both arise as matters of 
faith. Such is the nature of first principles; they cannot be proven, but 
require no proof. They exist because people know they exist. Without first 
principles, life simply makes no sense.



The question of the rightness or goodness of any particular kind of 
agriculture then can be derived from the first principles of agroecology. 
Since human life is interconnected with all other life, an agriculture that 
is good for all life, including life across all generations, is good. An 
agriculture that diminishes life, including the quality of human life, is 
bad. An agriculture that enhances life is right and an agriculture that 
diminishes life is wrong. Aldo Leopold expressed much the same conclusion in 
his classic essay, The Land Ethic, when he wrote, “A thing is right when it 
tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic 
community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.” [ii] His land ethic asked us 
to “examine each question in terms of what is ethically and esthetically 
right, as well as what is economically expedient.” Any science of sustainable 
agriculture must be rooted in such an ethic – in the first principles of 
agroecology.



I have been criticized by my academic colleagues over the years because I am 
obviously an advocate for sustainable agriculture and an opponent of 
industrial agriculture. They argue that science must be objective, meaning 
scientists should make no judgment regarding what kind of agriculture is good 
or bad or right or wrong. But all science is rooted in such judgments, 
regardless of whether they are admitted or even recognized by scientists. The 
current science supporting large-scale, industrial agriculture is rooted in 
the assumption that productivity and profits will serve the long run needs of 
humanity, regardless of the short run ecological and social consequences. I 
fail to find any logical or reasonable set of first principles that will 
support such an assumption.



My opposition to industrial agriculture is rooted in the fact that it 
diminishes life – life in the soil, life in fields and feedlots, life in 
rural communities, and life of consumers who eat industrial foods. My 
advocacy of sustainable, small farm agriculture is based on the first 
principles of agroecology, the science of sustainability: life has purpose, 
all life is connected, and life is good.



[1] Sustaining People through Agriculture series,” Small Farm Today Magazine, 
Missouri Farm Publications, Clark, MO. January-February 2007.

[i] Hugh Elliott, “Materialism,” in Readings in Philosophy, eds. John Herman 
Randall, Jr., Jestus Buchler, and Evelyn Shirk (New York Harper and Row, 
Publishers, Inc., 1972), 307.

[ii] Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac (New York: Ballantine Books, Random 
House Inc. 1966, first copyrighted in 1949), 262.