Agroecology Theory, Controversy and Governance

Abstract

Industrial agriculture has clearly reached its limits. Industrial agriculture is not able anymore to satisfy the basic needs of the growing worldwide population while ensuring the conditions of reproduction of natural assets. New production models have to be designed to protect and reclame polluted and degraded agricultural areas. Agroecology is considered as a promising way to achieve ecologically-intensive agrosystems, since the seminal contribution of Altieri in 1995. Nevertheless agroecology has not fully emerged as a scientific discipline yet. Agroecology is more that a traditional scientific discipline because agroecology breaks the frontiers between biophysical sciences and social sciences. This chapter reviews the roots and evolution of agroecology in the first section. Here we propose a mathematical theory of viability to handle uncertainty and complexity within agrosystems. This theory allows to define a kern of viability in which the agrosystem stay viable in the long term (section “Scientific stakes: New frontiers”). However, agroecological innovations create new uncertainties and controversies that must be solved. Some solutions can be found individually while other solutions must by co-constructed using innovative collective actions and hydrid forums (Callon et al. 2001, section “Scientific controversy and uncertainty”). Such collective knowledge makes agroecology as the starting point of a representative democracy by setting up adaptive governance on territories (section “How to manage agrosystems in the context of global changes?”).