A UK Agroecology Forum?

Introduction

This short paper arose out of a conversation I had with Zoe Wangler of the Ecological Land Coop, in which I mused that it would be good to have some kind of UK agroecology forum. Before I knew it I was somehow signed up to writing this briefing paper.No blame attached to Zoe – I just don’t learn.

So, below I offer – very briefly – some initial thoughts on what such a forum might be from my personal perspective as a sometime academic, independent researcher and micro-scale agroecological commercial grower. I don’t feel that I’m in an especially privileged position to comment on the shape of UK agroecology or that I’m hugely well connected to other people in the field, so please accept my apologies in advance if what I say omits anything or anybody important, or seems peculiarly skewed and biased. Almost certainly it does and is.

Defining the field

My starting point is a belief that we need a smaller-scale, more diverse, more labour intensive and less fossil energy intensive agriculture geared principally to local needs in the UK and other wealthy countries. We need more farmers, less international/middlemanexchanges of agricultural commodities and more exchange of knowledge.

There’s a need for farming of this sort to have a well grounded, scientific evidence base, so that farmers can learn from each other and from researchers better ways to do what they do. But the issues aren’t just technical. The case for small scale farming rests ultimately on political choices about the kind of world we want to inhabit and the kind of economy we wish to construct in order to realise it. There’s plenty of room to debate and refine those political choices, but no way of avoiding having to make them.

The concept of agroecology encapsulates much of the field I’ve outlined in the previous paragraphs but it’s been articulated mostly in developing country contexts, with less attention until recently to the possibilities of agroecology in the UK and similar countries. This is beginning to change, but therein lies a danger that it may be hijacked (as arguably have been similar conceptions such as sustainability and organics) to a large-scale, mainstream agenda in conformity to the political and economic status quo.

My interest is in helping to create a forum for debating, promoting and refining UK agroecology –a forum which excludes nobody, which welcomes debate and dissonant voices, and which challenges my own as well as mainstream assumptions about the way forward for farming. But my principal interest is in a forum grounded in the starting assumption that agroecology is not just a set of techniques that can be grafted onto extant farming practices in the UK, but something that involves an implicit or explicit critique of the politics and economics upon which those practices are based.

What kind of forum?

My brief and informal discussions with people about this to date seem to have thrown up three different kinds of activity:

  • information gathering: a research agenda (and actual research)
  • information sharing: a journal, a conference, a website, an e-discussion forum, a college
  • activism

Information gathering

Others have more expertise on this than me, and I know that there are various information gathering moves afoot at the moment, but it seems to me that research into UK agroecology is hampered firstly by the fact that there’s not very much agroecology going on here, and secondly by the fact that there’s not much funding available for studying it. No doubt both these views are debatable, but I’d argue that there’s not much agroecology in the UK yet because it’s not really possible to do it and survive commercially (albeit perhaps more so in some sub-sectors than others), and there’s not much funding for it because research funding is dominated by a large-scale, energy-intensive farming agenda. Both of these issues could profitably be discussed: how to fund agroecology and how to fund research into it? What, in an ideal world, would a UK agroecology research agenda look like? There are some interesting questions to be asked about what kinds of research are done by whom and for whom. Academic research is important, but so is producer-led research, and action (or activist?) research. These may all be structured in different ways, for different audiences – can they be brought together usefully?

There may be more interesting agroecological work going on in the domestic/non-commercial/community sector, which isn’t always so easy to access. That could be an important dimension of a research agenda. In the light of my preamble, the research that interests me most isn’t large-scale arable stuff like a rigorously controlled study of the effect of seed depth and density in organic wheat (I just made that up), which is already quite well catered for in existing publications. In fact, I’d argue that although organic farming might justifiably claim to be a form of agroecology, it’s already got enough muscle behind it – what needs more airing is small-scale mixed farming, market gardening, allotment/domestic/community growing etc, with a focus on sustainable farming methods, energy inputs/outputs and so on – for example things along the lines of the study on till/no till vegetables in the current issue of Permaculture Magazine, though perhaps with a bit more formal methodology attached. There’s also quite a lot of academic work on the social dimensions of domestic/community agroecology, which is important. But I’d like to see more on the agronomic aspects, and on charting the wider political and economic implications.

Information Sharing

Even a troglodyte like me is aware that there’s already quite a lot going on. The Oxford Real Farming Conference and the Campaign for Real Farming spring immediately to mind, then there’s the ORC and its producer’s conference (which I gather is themed around ‘producer-led innovation’ in 2013). There’s the All Party Parliamentary Group on Agroecology, the Organic Growers Association and its web forum, the UK Food Group, the Permaculture Association, the Food Climate Research Network, Via Campesina,various events sponsored by the likes of the Soil Association, and a whole host of publications such as The Land, OGA News, Permaculture Magazine, The Ecologist/Resurgence and Agroforestry News plus all the academic journals, although the latter aren’t always easy to obtain for those of us without access to university libraries. And of course there are loads of blogs and other web resources – is a real cracker that I’d particularly recommend. I know quite a lot about some of the above, and very little about others. Maybe there’s enough activity already?

Certainly in relation to conferences, my feeling is that we don’t need any more – it’s a big undertaking to organise such things and a big undertaking to go to them. For me the ORFC and the ORC producers’ conference plus perhaps the existing academic conferences pretty much fit the bill, although maybe there would be a case for developing more of an original research report function at the ORFC?

In relation to publications and other forums my personal view is that the existing ones are all fantastic resources, but most have their limitations. Obviously no individual person is ever going to find a single outlet to answer all their needs: my question is simply whether there’s scope for another vehicle for agroecology.

Maybe there is? I’d be interested to read a journal or web journal that acted as a forum for both policy and agronomic discussion about UK or ‘developed country’ agroecology, combining policy news, opinion pieces, research reports and original research. On the latter, I wonder if there’s a case for ‘peer review’ of a different kind. There’s a lot that’s relevant to agroecological practice in the academic literature, but the canons of scientific research and disciplinary boundaries make much of it a bit remote from the concerns of practitioners and activists.On the other hand, a bit more scientific rigour wouldn’t go amiss with some practitioner/activist analysis.

As a micro-scale commercial market gardener and would-be activist around agroecology and sustainability, I don’t feel especially at home in the world of agriculture, even organic agriculture, which seems pretty committed to high energy and high commodification farming. At the same time, I’d like to be part of a research community committed to practical and rigorous thinking.Perhaps the agroecological community could refine its collective analysis and knowledge base through a bit of critical peer support on this front? Could a politically engaged agroecological journal combining news reports, political and policy analysis, op ed, research reports and peer-reviewed original research add a useful dimension to the existing agroecology scene? And if it was electronically based, would an associated web forum serve a useful function?

On the educational front, I confess I’m even more ignorant about the lie of the land. There seems to me to be potentially some gaps in the market for sustainable agriculture and horticulture training (both for commercially-oriented learners and otherwise), but I have no idea about the size and shape of the market. As I understand it The Campaign For Real Farming is developing its plans for a College, and I’m sure there are other good things going on. Permaculture has its own distinctive educational ‘brand’ – how, if at all, could it link to a broader agroecology movement?

Activism

I’m not very good at lobbying policymakers (life’s too short) or civil disobedience (I’m scared of men with truncheons), but I think there has to be an activist dimension to any agroecological agenda, since it requires political and economic as much as agrarian reform. This involves high end stuff like EU trade policy, but from the perspective of many farmers also a lot of low level local wrangling with officialdom such as planners, the rural payments agency, animal health officers and the like, not to mention local residential objectors in some cases. Meanwhile, many would be agroecological farmers can’t get a foot in the door because of land prices and other obstacles. If my experiences are anything to go by, this can be quite a lonely and isolating road to tread – it’s difficult enough trying to operate an agroecological business as it is, without this additional load.

An agroecological publication/forum could, minimally, disseminate information about policy issues and specific activism, provide a supportive arena for individuals to learn from others’ experiences and hone their arts of struggle, and perhaps act as a wider lobbying force for policy change. Organisations/publications such as Chapter 7 and The Land already cover this sort of thing very well. Is there scope for another initiative in this area?

I spoke last weekend at the excellent Independence Day event in Frome, which brought together a lot of activists struggling to prevent large supermarket developments in their communities. It struck me that they were quite a separate crowd from the agroecology/alternative farming community and it might be good to find some ways of joining forces.

Moving forward

I’m interested to know if anybody finds any of the above useful. If you think that I’ve defined the field too narrowly according to my own particular vision, or that there are already plenty of outlets for the kinds of things I’ve discussed, that would be useful to hear. Likewise if you think I’ve missed something crucial that’s more important than what I’ve set out here. But if the above does resonate more collectively in any way, then perhaps it would be worth discussing how to move things forward. If so, how?

Depending somewhat on my presently uncertain personal circumstances, I’d be happy to run a discussion at the ORFC about the possibilities, or to work with others to do a little more detailed groundwork. To make real headway I think funding may be required, the usual stumbling block with this sort of thing. Anyway, at this stage I’d simply like to invite any responses.

Chris Smaje

19 Nov 2012

1