Restoring internal control in agroecosystems: Building a foundation for sustainable communities

Agricultural activities have resided at the core of human communities for millennia.  However, current extractive methods of modern, industrial agriculture and associated deleterious effects of food globalization, profoundly disturb historic agricultural communities.  Internal control processes and practices of traditional, biologically diverse agroecosystems, which sustain and enrich human communities, are abandoned in a questionable effort to produce marketable commodities.  Within the United States such classical, agriculturally-based communities have all but disappeared, as fewer than one percent of the US population actively engage in industrial farming.  However, interest in small-scale, suburban gardening and horticulture has been simultaneously and steadily growing, a promising trend for community renewal as well as offering opportunity to revive internal ecosystem control.  In this presentation potential pathways and innovations focused on restoring and recreating local agricultural communities, including retro-fitting suburban landscapes, will be discussed within United States conditions.