During the past 10–15 years, agroecology has grown in prominence in global agricultural discourse based on a belief that it can dramatically transform agrifood systems (Anderson et al., 2021). The concern of proponents of agroecology – that modern agriculture, often referred to as conventional or industrial, has been principally responsible for agroecosystem degradation – has led to calls for agroecology to replace conventional agriculture. As Sumberg and Giller (2022) have observed, the term conventional agriculture has been weaponised. No doubt, overuse of agrochemicals and mono-cropping has led to environmental problems such as pollution, soil erosion and in some circumstances, loss of wild biodiversity. These problems need to be addressed. Yet, paradoxically, the main focus of agroecology promotion is smallholder farmers in less-developed countries where conventional or industrial agriculture is not a common form of farming.

Furthermore, this discourse mainly pursues a questionable binary agenda: agroecology versus conventional agriculture. It ignores the fact that hundreds of millions of farmers already deploy a range of good agricultural practices considered to be agroecological. These include crop rotation, intercropping, mixed crop-livestock systems, manure recycling, and integrated pest management, among others, together with conventional technologies such as improved crop varieties, judicious use of agrochemicals and functional biodiversity. For example, mixed crop-livestock systems, considered agroecological even when many deploy conventional technologies, produce around 50% of the world's food (Herrero et al., 2010).

In the past 60 years, food production systems have realized impressive achievements based on sound science, technology and innovations (Evans, 1998; OECD, 2021). As world population more than doubled, global food production has almost quadrupled whilst using only 10%–15% more agricultural land. This has been achieved through large production increases per unit area of land. Much of global farming responsible for adequately feeding over 7 billion people is based on improved crop varieties and appropriate use of agrochemicals integrated with agroecological approaches. Crucially, the promotion of agroecology should not only be based on environmental and equity issues but also on its ability to continue to ensure food and nutritional security and provide livelihoods for farmers.