A global grassroots agroecology movement is shifting policies, practices, and investments toward climate-friendly food systems. With industrial agriculture responsible for more than a third of greenhouse gas emissions, the need is urgent. Led by women, Indigenous people, youth, and smallholder farmers, powerful decentralized networks are giving rise to climate-resilient and equitable food systems. A wide range of donors, including governments, are now supporting agroecological solutions — and who gets these funds and how is key to consider.
Agroecology, recognized in most parts of the world as a climate and hunger solution, is gaining traction worldwide. Perhaps a new term to some, it helps to encourage people to dissect it — agro (soil, crops) and ecology (natural systems). Farming with nature.
When you remind people that modern, or industrialized, farming is just a blip in the over 10,000-year history of agriculture, the inevitability of our fossil fuel-heavy food system becomes less certain. Questions follow: How did we box ourselves into a food system that is estimated to be responsible for more than a third of all global anthropogenic GHG emissions? And more urgently: How do we rebuild food systems that put people and the planet first?
About the author
Daniel Moss
Daniel Moss is a co-director of the Agroecology Fund. Trained as a community organizer, he strengthened tenant organizations in public housing in Boston, U.S., and then lived in El Salvador and Mexico for five years, working in support of social movements defending rights to land and water.
