ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses how the differences in philosophical roots affect the methodologies, the organization, and the social and environmental consequences of both conventional agriculture and agroecology. Agroecology considers both the agroecological and social system in which farmers work, it puts relatively little emphasis on laboratory and experiment station research and gives considerably more emphasis to on-farm experiments, and it is more open to participation in the research process by farmers themselves. The chapter argues that a coevolutionary paradigm of development may be complementary with an agroecological approach. The non-governmental organizations (NGOs) follow an integrated approach combining technology development and dissemination with activities aimed at tackling factors that constrain the improvement of peasant livelihood. Agroecology recognizes the dependence of production goals from the specific socio-economic and cultural context. Although some NGOs work on developing improved farming systems for commercial production, most NGOs provide services to poor subsistence farmers, who live in very heterogeneous socioeconomic and ecological circumstances.
