Agroecology in action: lessons from field research in the Tropical Andes

Agroecology in theory and in practice

How did your real-life experience of working in the Topical Andes line up with your academic understanding of agroecology? Did anything come as a surprise?

In our first course on agroecology, it took us a week to even define what it is. It’s not like you enter the room and the teacher puts up a definition. We all work it out together and take a full week to do so. What we learned about agroecology from that is that it can emerge in really different ways, but it is centred around practice, science, and research.

One surprise from being in the Tropical Andes and driving around to these different farms was that many of them don’t use the word “agroecology”; it’s just traditional farming. The people I was working with used the term in their project, so they knew what agroecology was; but to local people and other Colombians I was talking to, I just explained that I was working with agriculture that mimics natural patterns to create sustainability.

The way one director of business put it, it’s “remembrance” rather than “agroecology”. Sometimes the word “agroecology” is used to connect to agroecology the movement and agroecology the science, but the practice is just the act of remembrance of how we have related to nature in the past and how we can find techniques to build on that now.

Agroecology is not only sustainable, it’s profitable

How has this experience in the field enriched what you have learned in your course? What did you bring back from it?

I think it was this market driven approach that really struck me the most; that Biosuroeste did not see growth, development, and environmental sustainability as contradictory. Rather, they saw growth and development as the core characteristics of life, so how can we make them regenerative? Because regeneration is at the core of life as well. Their goal was to pollinate regeneration in the market as it looks now and meet the market where it’s at.

Creating a realistic link between regeneration and the market is proving profitable, and that’s the premise with which they approach the farmers that they work with. The first thing the farmers ask is: “Is this profitable?”. If they can answer yes to that question, then there’s no discussion to be had.

Most of what we learned about economy on the course was that it’s very hard for agricultural initiatives to be financially sustainable – because policy is skewed towards industrial agriculture and many other factors. So it was a positive surprise to see a big difference from what we have been taught: it was clear that agroecological businesses or soil health businesses were more profitable. That was really interesting.

One big thing that I brought back was this flip in thinking about growth and development from being connected to environmental destruction, to be offered as a solution and as one of the core characteristics of life. And that the way we implement that solution is through regeneration and agroecology – that realization felt like a big relief!

The best way to promote agroecology is to demonstrate its success

Did you see any strategies that could bridge the gap between practice and research?

Biosuroeste – with their productive systems, agroforestry, and their regenerative cattle operation – are meant to show farmers in the region: “this is how it could be done”. And it’s meant to show researchers that this way of farming has a higher yield and better soil. For instance, a whole cattle ranching operation was managed by just rotating the cattle grazing areas – no machinery necessary. At the same time, they could plant native trees – lignified grasses that are really woody and would normally be bad for grazing – and the cattle still ended up gaining more weight than the average.

They take these measurements to show both researchers and farmers that this is a better alternative than what we’re doing now. I really enjoy the simplicity of bridging research and practice, or, rather, bridging practice and research this way: they implement rotational grazing, they get the figures, and then they show them to researchers. Of course, scientists are also the ones collecting this data, so there’s a lot of collaboration.

This interview was conducted by former SIANI intern Lovisa Hast.