ABSTRACT
To support the legal reforms urged in Chapter 2, institutional and conceptual reforms also must start now to facilitate a transition to agroecological husbandry. As a physical matter (that is, taking into account realities of geography and ecology) the world reveals natural categories – “biomes” – that would provide a basis for ecological governance. Indeed, such categories are already well-defined by environmental and geographic researchers, and they reflect land cover, climate, soil composition, and species distribution. They are relatively distinct from each other but appear in similar form in various parts of the world. A few of them relate directly (unlike the “nation-states” that we are familiar with) to agricultural and ecological realities, and in fact the great preponderance of grain and legume production occurs in just four of these biomes worldwide. Importantly, these biomes can serve as the territorial foundation for “eco-states.” Each eco-state would encompass those territories, wherever located in the world, that fall within a particular biome, thus “integrating nature and society” in a way that gives the highest possible priority to ecological factors in determining how humans will manage and reform agricultural production therein.
