Agroecology

Slow Food promotes agroecology as a keystone for preserving biodiversity and natural resources, for preserving traditional landscapes as a source of cultural identities, for dealing with climate change and for giving back agriculture and farmers their central role in the agrifood system and for ensuring access for all to a nutrient-rich diet that is respectful of cultures and environments

Through the application of the principles of agroecology, the aim is to produce food in adequate quantities, integrating ecosystem services as fundamental elements in the development of production without resorting to the attempt to replace nature with the application of synthetic chemical fertilizers and pesticides or technological solutions that do not take care of the complexity of the ecosystem and that, on the contrary, can lead to an alteration of its balance both from a social and environmental point of view (Altieri and Nicholls, 2020).

One of the most interesting aspects of agroecology is the awareness that an agroecosystem is not influenced and determined exclusively by biological or environmental factors but also by important social factors (the involvement of local communities, for example, and the cultural context or the producer-consumer relationship), which require that the production system must be interpreted not only from an agronomic point of view but also from a much broader perspective. Agroecology cannot be defined exclusively as a scientific discipline or as a social movement or even as an approach to agriculture. It is, rather, a concept that intersects with all three. Therefore, engaging with sustainable agriculture means addressing its socioecological nature and understanding that agriculture produces social, cultural and ecological landscapes.