Critiquing conventional and alternative agriculture in the environmental studies classroom with ecological diversity theory and Integral Ecology

Background/Question/Methods

Agricultural studies have emerged among the curricula of higher education environmental studies and sustainability programs. Much of this interest is driven by awareness of issues including environmental effects of food production, human health, and social justice. However, classroom discussion on agriculture can succumb to rhetoric and conventional wisdom surrounding these issues. To prevent the undue categorical demonization or glorification of specific agricultural practices and technologies, this poster presents a framework that uses ecological diversity theory to reduce topics of agricultural discussion to core elements of ecological sustainability: contribution to form and structure; functional diversity and redundancy; and the complexity of energy and matter flow. This framework uses Leopold’s biotic pyramid to characterize structure and flow of agro-ecosystems; a modified multivariate trait analysis to compare the ecological, social and economic elements of natural, agro-ecological, and intensive farming systems; and the concepts of novel ecosystems and countryside biogeography to envision ecological agriculture at a landscape scale. Finally, to approach agricultural issues from the perspectives of multiple – often opposing – stakeholders, students apply Integral Ecology concepts (e.g., AQAL multi-perspective model) to recognize the individual interior-subjective experiences of participants in the agricultural system. Integral Ecology helps students understand motivations and constraints facing stakeholders.  

Results/Conclusions

Students ranked several farming systems in terms of their contributions to ecological sustainability – defined by multiple variables such as product diversity and complexity of on-farm interactions – as well as social and financial measures, producing a multi-dimensional trait space that grouped farms with intensive agricultural practices further away from natural areas. Farms the students qualified as “sustainable" grouped between “natural” systems and farms ranked as “intensive.” A composite AQAL diagram in which several common student responses to I (individual-interior), We (collective-interior), and They (collective-exterior) perspectives is presented. Taken together, these exercises indicate that critiquing agricultural practices via ecological diversity theory and the integration of multiple perspectives allows students to broadly understand the complexity of agricultural issues and make critical, independent assessments of sustainability.