Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems

The Situated Politics of Agroecology

Over the past few decades, agroecology has gained significant visibility and traction as an ecologically sensitive, socially just and culturally appropriate alternative to industrial agriculture across contexts. Agroecology's multidimensional existence as a scientific discipline, an agricultural practice and a social movement has contributed to its appeal at a time of multiple crises in the global food system, given its potential to not only rework farm-based food production but also the social relations of production, the production of agricultural knowledge and the cultural significance of agrarian livelihoods. Recent literature on agroecology in the social sciences has dealt with a wide range of themes including: the dynamics of scaling up and scaling out agroecology, state-society interactions in agroecological initiatives, the labor and economic dynamics of agroecological systems, agroecological social movements, social justice and rural development, feminist and decolonial agroecology, agroecology in an era of climate change, and the place of cultural, social and human values in agroecology.

Across these themes, the embedding of agroecology in specific geographies has emerged as a salient consideration in understanding (a) the conditions, processes and social forces driving the uptake of agroecology; (b) the elements of agroecology that are emphasized in different local, regional and national contexts and (c) the challenges faced by practitioners and advocates of agroecology in ensuring its sustained viability. While there is no dearth of rich, empirically grounded research on agroecology, we invite scholars to think explicitly and purposefully about the relationship between the where, the why and the how of agroecology.

Anjana Ramkumar is a PhD candidate in the department of Global Development at Cornell University. She researches intersections of agroecology, rural development and cultural politics in South Asia. Her work draws from and contributes to scholarship on political ecology, agrarian studies and critical development studies.

Emily Baker is a Postdoctoral Associate at the Institute for Agroecology at the University of Vermont. She is a rural and environmental sociologist and applied ecologist. She does research on socioenvironmental transformation in conflict environments and co-creation of knowledge in agroecology networks.

Rachel Bezner Kerr is a Professor in Global Development, and the Director of the Institute for African Development at Cornell University. She does research in Africa on agroecology, gender, climate change adaptation, food security and nutrition. She was a Coordinating Lead Author for the ‘food chapter’ of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. She was also a contributing author to the UN High Level Panel of Experts 2019 report on Agroecology.

Disclosure Statement: Anjana Ramkumar, Emily Baker, and Rachel Bezner Kerr declare no conflict of interest regarding this work.