Why Agroecology is the new Agriculture

The present preoccupation of the Industrial West with getting the last drop out of the production process in Agriculture is wrong. 

Who said this ?
A group of professional scientists with a wide range of experience .  Sure  we may not always agree on much ( eg The how for example or all of the points below of mine  ) but we agree on one thing ; (We had a 50 yr reunion of Melbourne University degree graduates a few weeks ago. 

The thing that still IS  but not OUGHT to be is :

We agree  THAT :
The present preoccupation of the Industrial West with getting the last drop out of the production process in Agriculture is wrong. 

I won't give you all the reasons why because it would take far too long. 
All YOU need to know is that  for a much more sustainable world 
 
There should be no more talk of 

1. --How we need more kilograms per hectare to feed the world 
2. --How we need to produce more kilograms per hectare for farmers to make a living. We can and should often pay them a little more to produce a little less. That's a matter of fine-tuning; something neither government's wannabes or the press are good at. 
3. --Technical cures to the hunger problem when distribution, planning and proper pressure and payment is the issue for the modern era  
4. --The need to just pay only the lowest price for food. ( a big ask ?) Pay a bit more and people get properly paid and when you can't afford it - you can't afford it. Eat something else ..that is cheaper. 
5. --Trees are the ideal landscape when we live in the Savannah where there are sparse trees, a season for everything and most life is supported to live and die each year.   
6. --Subsistence farming when natural recycling in ecosystems can be greatly assisted by engineering and transport and the suffering of living on the margins can be largely avoided.
7. --Careless use of the word toxic  when every chemical has a lethal dose   
8. --Widespread scarcity when there is widespread abundance. 
9. --Widespread threats when there are usually only localized threats and agroecologists are good at anticipating and dealing with them. 
10. --The growing need for government money when all farmers want is a fair price for their work. Just a little more than what the pure market might give them 
11. --The inherent badness of profits and assets. Profit is, with land, the rare  cash bit after costs are deducted and it's not much anywhere in Agriculture ( historically, the return to capital on farms all around the world is less than 5%) 
12. --The growing need for government intervention when governments are known, unlike industry, for wasting money on missed targets. 
13. --City-based fears about the risk of some environmental threat when farmers  with that threat closely every day, and acroecologist's over a lifetime.
14. --No need for professional ecologists - thoroughly trained and experienced agroecologists when most people recognize the need for them to be on the ground;  to protect and enhance the ecosystems of our sensitive world. 
15. --"The ideal of only natural systems agriculture" when, in Australia those natural systems ( like ants, droughts, leaching and burning ) have degraded soils in ways that can often be reversed and by acceptable risk methods.
16. --Resilience by those who never test or allow testing and pressure on living systems
17. --How wonderful celebrations about new ways to make the paddock more productive in the short term ,when the long term sustainable use is what should be celebrated 
18. --How Landcare and volunteering can substitute for the long-term training in physics and chemistry that our forefathers paid dearly for and which is really NECESSARY if  young people are really to help quell the city's fears about risk taking  with the NECESSARY environmental pressures 
19. --Resilience and risk taking ..without accepting the agro-ecologists view of how it's done  and who is to author it ( via for example the planning scheme)
20. --Just letting farmers do what they like, when they do take high risks, The city audience does need to be convinced that landowners and big businesses are accountable in a world which is risk-averse and fearful.  Farmers need people who understand and can defend their actions when they are dealing with risk to vulnerable ecosystems that are owned by everybody.

That is --the world needs more Agroecologists 
That's another thing we agree upon,
There should be more of us ( including your children) and we should be out there to ensure that proper risk and resilience actions are taken with our earth, its biodiversity and its protection and wilding when necessary.   

Always a new way to change the world --

 "That I invented"  ,.How sad is this constant  imposition of our own vanity on the unsolved problems of others . 

And that will fail , like all before , because the science is incomplete 
I am here quoting myself in response to yet another confused contribution to CO2 reduction and its shaky focus today in"soil regenerative  agriculture", let alone management of human understanding and behavior . 

This strange mismatch, if  anything is an example of the many unprofitable new attempts to match science and philosophy and reflects the deeper truth that questions of world view are actually more critical in restoring balance on the ground than many people managers every realize. 
Polys don't know what they are doing , but they will never admit it .  Their daily torrents  are products of a technological worship society  who search the screen. They join with the popular but drug induced dose of being wasteful;  just collector's of ingredients and authors of the resulting technicolor yawns ( aussie expression ) .

Each tried and tested recipe of faith has  its own way of making life work easier,  but

The no faith no value no patience  try before properly tested values  of our day just leads to the values / technique mess we are now in where governments change values and techniques daily. 

AND we and our children pay for it . Lets get serious--- this is wrong . SKIING  spending the kids inheritance ; giving them jobs  in cleaning up the mess ( reactive ) not precision  careers in Science . 

Dumb post Christian politicians eager to straighten up what cannot be easily untwisted do not recognize that the human condition is the stumbling block to progress-- not science. "

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