Viewpoint: Despite its ‘social justice pretense’ agroecology promotes poverty in developing countries

 David Zaruk | November 30, 2020

The world is made up of sunshine and butterflies, roses and rainbows. If we can stop Father Profit from raping Mother Nature, we’ll have this world we’ve dreamt of … wonderful, toxic-free, full of love, peace, hope and happiness.

This is the dreamer’s disease that underpins the agroecology ideology. All we have to do is get rid of the bad, the human, and nature will provide us, in flowing abundance, with all the nourishment and sustenance needed. This reverie is built solely on the belief that nature is unquestionably good and man … well … man has done nothing but senselessly destroy nature.

But in its promise of social justice (cloaked as ecological science), agroecology hides a sinister, political weakness that the world hasn’t seen since Lysenko.

• Agroecology claims it is a science; it is not.
• Agroecology claims it will feed the world; it cannot.
• Agroecology claims it has the solutions conventional agriculture has failed to achieve; it does not.

What agroecology does have is political activism, funding and an audience wanting to believe its claims: three essential elements to allow zealots imbibed with fundamentalist dogma to thrive outside of reason and evidence.

What could possibly go wrong?.............

Social justice campaigners calling such conventional practices that develop soil and protect biodiversity “agroecology” while being unaware that farmers have been rotating crops, planting covers, avoiding tillage … 

for decades is indicative of a group of activists who have never farmed or even been in contact with farmers. That these urban activists are campaigning to ban crop protection tools like glyphosate that make these “agroecological” practices efficient and viable shows how ridiculous they have become. It is unbelievable that governments and foundations still give these activists any attention at all...........

.according to the UN agricultural arm, agroecology is about social justice (and apparently not at all about farming). But the FAO wants to promote agroecology as a transitional tool in effecting changes in agricultural systems..........

Agroecologists don’t talk much about improving infrastructure (roads, irrigation, markets …) because that is what colonizers do. Agroecology is a simplistic solution imposed on the poor by wealthy Western activists with ulterior motives. This is the real colonialism, and it will keep Africans poor...................

For now, two basic points: You cannot force a political ideology against scientific findings for a sustained period – the system will fail. When that failed system concerns food production, people will starve..............To Read More...