Summarize in Five paragraphs. Please!

Despite the many downsides laid out in the previous chapter, industrial agriculture and GMOs are essential. If all of us are to eat, we can and must learn how to make industrial agriculture more efficient and sustainable. If instead we were to attempt widespread food production without synthetic fertilizer and pesticidesorganic farmingwed be headed back to subsistence farming. Farmers wouldnt make a decent living, and there wouldnt be enough food for all of the worlds peoplemuch less the even larger population coming. Many would starve.

OUR RESPONSE: Its easy to absorb the notion that any alternative to industrial agriculture is romantic, a lovely vision that simply cant work. In truth, however, its the industrial model thats now proved not to work, failing both to end hunger and to be a feasible path forward. Fortunately, mounting evidence points to other paths that are not only productive but also realigning human actions with the Earths natural systemsas well as aligning human societies with human needs so that all of us can partake in the bounty. Before jumping into this rich universe, first note that some studies show industrial agriculture producing higher yields than these alternative paths.1 Taking a wider view, however, well see in this chapter and throughout our book that many small farmers in the Global South who reject industrial agriculture and adopt ecological practices have the opposite experience: They are enjoying yield increases, some quite dramatic. In the Global North differences in yields are often small and diminishing, while the benefits of shifting away from industrial farming are huge. Plus, in a world of abundant foodrife with the waste and inefficiencies tallied in previous chapterswouldnt it be a shame to let fear of the possibility that yields might be even modestly lower block us from seizing solutions at hand? It is precisely this shiftfrom a narrow focus to a wider viewthat defines the very different lens we invite you now to try on. If the downfall of industrial agriculture is its view of life as distinct, disconnected spheres, the key to the power of emergent, alternative approaches is a systemic viewseeing lifes multiple dimensions in relation to one another, all connected and interacting. This systems approach encompasses the quality of our relationships both with other human beings and with the Earth. It is called agroecology.Thus, agroecology is more than a different way of growing food. Unlike the industrial model, its not power-concentrating, but rather an evolving practice of growing food within communities that is power-dispersing and power-creatingenhancing the dignity, the knowledge, and thus the capacities of all involved. Agroecology thus helps to address the powerlessness at the root of hunger. Applying a systems view to farming, agroecology unites ecological science with time-tested traditional wisdom and farmers ongoing experience. It is also a social movement, growing from and rooted in distinct cultures worldwide, as we take up in Myth 10. As such, agroecology is not a formula. Rather it is a range of integrated practices, which well soon describe, adapted and developed in response to a farms specific ecological niche. Agroecology weaves together traditional knowledge

and ongoing scientific breakthroughs based on the integrative science of ecology.3 By progressively eliminating all or most chemical fertilizers and pesticides, agroecological farmers free themselvesand therefore all of usfrom reliance on climate-disrupting, finite fossil fuels, as well as on other purchased inputs posing environmental and health hazards. One dimension of agroecology is organic farming, commonly understood to be farming with no synthetic pesticides and fertilizers. Organic is also a legally defined certification standard for farming. Set by governments, it specifies what inputs can and cannot be used. Certified organic agriculture is one aspect of the much wider emergence of agroecological practices. While organic farming can lay claim to a very small shareabout 4 percentof U.S food sales, it is growing rapidly. With fruits and vegetables, its 10 percent. Even with minuscule public support compared with the billions in U.S. subsidies supporting industrial agriculture, organic farmland acreage in the United States has jumped 2.5-fold in a decade.4 Globally, organically farmed land more than doubled in the decade before 2011; in India, make that increase almost eightfold.5 Today at least 164 countries are home to organic

roduction that is certified under government-set standards and covers almost a hundred million acres.6 Two million farmersmost of them small farmers in the Global Southare now certified organic, while many more use organic practices.7 The broader practices of agroecology may be spreading even faster. Several Indian states, as we describe in Myth 10, are making significant investments in multiplying agroecological practices. In West Africa, a number of governments cooperated with the FAO to establish 3,500 Farmer Field Schools that train farmers in agroecological practices, already reaching 150,000 farmers.8 The agroecological innovation of interspersing crops and native trees, whose roots and leaves provide crops with nitrogen, is also taking hold rapidly in West Africa, as highlighted in Myth 2.

Moreover, producers of ricewhich provides a fifth of the worlds caloriesare beginning to shift to an ecological process called System of Rice Intensification (SRI), mentioned in Myth 2. Breaking with tradition, in SRI rice paddies are kept moist but not saturated, plants are spaced more widely so all leaves receive sunlight, and seedlings are transplanted sooner. The happy consequence is that fewer seeds and less water and chemicals are used, while yields often increase significantly. Though the system gained attention only in the 1990s, its principles are now being applied to other crops, and farmers are beginning to try the approach in more than fifty countries.9

SO HOW DOES AGROECOLOGY WORK? First, lets drop the idea that organic farming and agroecology are mainly about the absence of somethingchemical inputs. They are about the addition of a lot. Whats added are farmers continually expanding knowledge and scientifically validated practices, all supporting the generative power of nature.10 Agroecology is not about buying better products to coax more food out of your land; its about using better practices to enable your land to give morenot only today but into the future. On this path, farmers learn continuously about the specific potential of their farms own ecological niche.Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative was a catchy, if cheesy, 1940s song that even Paul McCartney latched on to. It pretty well sums up this model, one that takes advantage of the positive synergies within nature while cutting or eliminating the losses and the costs built into industrial farming. A striking difference between the industrial model and agroecology can be captured in one word: diversity. The oppositeuniform crop varieties and pesticides applied over vast acreage in the U.S. Midwesttypifies the industrial model. Agroecology thrives on the interactions not only among diverse crops but among insects, birds, animals, trees, and flowers, as well as among worms and soil microbes.

Now lets jump from this big picture to the ground levelin fact, right into the dirt. Support the Invisible Helpers And here, the first question is, What is dirt? In industrial farming, soil is thought of largely as an inert substrate on which to work. In agroecology, soil is experienced as a living community whose health determines almost everything about what grows and how it grows. Suspending the big debates of the previous chapter, we aim here to convey to our readers a feel for the Earth. So we begin with this question: Who are the members of this largely invisible soil society beneath our feet? Microbes. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) explains that microbes are yeasts, algae, protozoa, bacteria, nematodes,

and fungi that process soil into dark brown, spongy stuff called humus, known for its pleasant, earthy smell.11 Microbes decompose the tough plant and animal residues in and on the soil and bring nitrogen from the air into the soil to feed plants.12 These hearty soil microorganisms do all this work, even though they make up only one-half of one percent of the total soil mass.13 For healthy soil, an ecologically attuned farmer fosters conditions that enable soil organisms to transform organic matterdefined as anything . . . that once livedinto forms that nourish plants.14 Organic matterin weight only 2 to 10 percent of soilis the secret ingredient enabling soil to support healthy plants.15 Its carbon is the main source of energy for the all-important soil microbes, explains the USDA, and also the key for making nutrients available to plants.16 Soil organic matter is a key source of minerals that plants need to grow; and as some of it decomposes very slowly, organic matter provides the substrate on which nutrients are transported to plant roots.

Beyond seeing soil as a living community, some ecological scientists and farmers are experiencing another mind shift as well. They are now learning that aboveground synergies also matter in plant growth. Practitioners of SRI thats revolutionizing rice cultivation in dozens of countries in Asia and Africaand now extending to crops beyond ricestress that its success depends not only on microorganisms within the soil but on plants aboveground, too. Bacteria and fungi . . . in, on, and around plants (and animals) provide the substrate for vast and intricate soil-plant food webs, write SRI specialists. These critters range from invisible microbes to creatures we can see, all feeding on one another and improving the environment for all.17 Beyond this food webi.e., who eats whom to keep a system goingare many wider, beneficial interactions that scientists call the interaction web: behavioral, chemical, and other interactions, such as when species produce resources for each other.18

Since broad-spectrum chemical applications can disrupt these interactive webs essential to life, its easy to see how their use can be harmful to growing plants. Going Plowless Organic matter is key to this rich life within and above the soil; yet it has dropped by half in what the USDA calls modern cultivated soils.19 So today, a primary task of farmers is to reverse this loss. And that means refraining

from both plowing and leaving soil barren. Why? Both turn raindrops into soil catastrophes as devastating to soil microbes as a combination of an earthquake, hurricane, tornado, and forest fire would be to humans, reports the USDA.20 Perhaps counterintuitively, plowing reduces water infiltration, increases runoff . . . damages the structure of the soil, and makes soil more susceptible to erosion.21 Some might assume that because it breaks up the soil, plowing allows rain to penetrate, which is good. But it turns out that water infiltration doesnt depend on our machines. Earthworms do a great job: Their burrowing creates continuous pores linking surface to subsurface soil layers, the USDA emphasizes.

Common plowing practices in industrial agriculture also stir oxygen into the soil, stimulating too-rapid decomposition of essential organic matter.23 Plus, such plowing can bury the organic matter too deeply for the aerobic (air-breathing) microbes to work on it, and also seals off those wonderful worm tunnels so air and water cant penetrate as easily, notes coauthor of The Soul of Soil Grace Gershuny.24 In industrial agriculture, after plowing and harvesting, soils are often left uncoveredas mentioned above, exposed to harm from wind and rain, sometimes for months.

But there are other ways to work the land. One approach, called no-till farminga tool among a suite of practices collectively known as conservation tillagewas popularized by American agronomist Edward Faulkners Plowmans Folly, published in the 1940s in America following the Dust Bowls devastation. With no-till, farmers leave crop residues and weeds on their fields after harvest, rather than turning them into the soil. To place seeds in the ground, farmers use specially designed planters that guide seeds into the soil beneath the plant residues on the surface.25 No-till practices help the soil to retain organic matter and water and to sequester carbon. Taken up in earnest in the 1970s, primarily in North and South America, no-till acreage has spread threefold globally since 1999 to roughly three hundred million acres, an area almost the size of Venezuela.26