Developed countries have moved from traditional agriculture developed over centuries by our ancestors to a system of industrial agriculture in a few decades, leaving aside much of that ancestral knowledge that ultimately had grown learning from the environment around us.
In these few decades of industrial agriculture we are discovering the problems that involve disconnecting from our nature and now we try to return to that traditional agriculture in what we call Agroecology and that we could consider the traditional agriculture of the 21st century. An agriculture that differs from the traditional precedent thanks to the accumulated knowledge in the understanding of both agriculture and ecology and of course, thanks to technology.
Developing countries are in full swing of industrial agriculture trying to achieve an economic return that allows them to achieve the welfare state that we have in developed countries, although they begin to suffer the problems that the abuse of this industrial agriculture entails.
The most underdeveloped countries or areas are, on the contrary, trying to achieve a small agricultural development by whatever means they have at hand, most of them traditional, with very little success.
We learn from our mistakes and the developed countries want to avoid now that we continue in the line of destruction of our natural environment and aggression on our health.
Our knowledge of agricultural systems and the natural environment as well as food security, and the verification of the problems and risks associated with industrial agriculture in these environmental and health aspects, leads us to take a step forward and move towards an agricultural system similar to the old system but with current technology and knowledge.
Part of the problem is that we want to achieve this goal from the underdeveloped or developing countries themselves. We want these countries do not pass through the industrial phase to preserve an environment that we all need, and ensuring quality and food safety.
In our hand is to avoid it but it has to be with our help and support, material and personnel. Eradicating poverty must be the main objective in this implantation of agroecology as a vital model. To ask or fight for this more natural and healthy system implies that we must develop alternatives that satisfy their demand for wealth.
There is a lot of accumulated knowledge that allows us to move towards the Agroecology of the XXI century but we have to transfer it adapted to the deepest rural world and for this, we have to establish protocols adapted to the different agrarian systems divided in the different agrosystems of the different rural areas.
In these protocols, it is necessary to consider:
-the different challenges of each agrosystem, production challenges and profitability
-production risks: phytosanitary risks, risks to public health and environmental risks
-control protocols of good agricultural practices
-guidance protocols addressed to government, technicians, farmers, traders
We are in a global world with many similarities but the peoples, their ecosystems and their governments are particular. So you have to look for personalized standards that do not ask to apply and develop useless protocols in areas where they are not necessary or impossible, forgetting or overlooking those actions that are valid
We must establish global major basic standards for different achievable farming systems worldwide. Then we must go making local regulations adapted to the different existing agroecological systems. The latter must be done considering as main elements of them the social and governmental environment in which this system is developed, apart from the natural environment itself.
For this, it is necessary to connect not only with great experts in large areas, but also with local actors that can identify and detect the needs and possibilities of development and action in each area and town.
I live and work in a semi-desert European area where, just over 50 years ago, it was an area with hardly any development possibilities. Agriculture was a very poor subsistence system. There was a progressive and continuous depopulation caused by the poverty of the area, illiteracy and the lack of resources, communications and possibilities for the future.
However, currently in this area is one of the most advanced agricultural systems in the world, which started from small family-run greenhouses and currently provides shelter and work to thousands of people including people from more than 150 countries in Africa and Africa.
This development results from an initiative and initial governmental support to which the farmers were added as they saw the success of the proposed model. From practically unoccupied land has been developed what is now considered the garden of Europe.
After more than 30 years of this intensive agriculture the problems have become evident and it has become clear that this is a model of finite agriculture, because it involves all the known problems of all (monoculture, lack of rotation, overexploitation of the soil, adaptation of pests and diseases to phytosanitary products, etc.)
Therefore, the region is becoming a model of sustainable agriculture, where good agricultural practices and biological control have been the first steps towards a conversion to organic farming, looking for that agroecological model, in which we want to take care of the environment, its flora and its fauna, soil, water, and its people. And as a success of this desirable evolution, we are watching what seemed impossible in an intensive agriculture like ours. We observe how each year the area of land with organic farming increases, with high profitability and always under the maximum food safety standards, both from the point of view of the absence of the use of phytosanitary products and of the total food security from the point of view of microbiological view.
This model change is being achieved thanks to the involvement of all the actors and the functioning of all of them with a network, where the vertical and horizontal knowledge transfer is continuous. Agroecology is possible. Healthy, safe and productive agroecology is possible
Best regards,
Mª Antonia Elorrieta
Head of Plant Pathology Department
LABCOLOR, COEXPHAL
Almería, Spain
Mª Antonia Elorrieta