ABSTRACT

Applied to the science of ecology, complexity science provides us with a new paradigm for viewing ecological systems. Their patterns in space, their chaotic characteristics, their basic trophic oscillations, their multidimensionality, their non-linearities, their fundamental stochasticity and their tendency toward critical transitions are the issues that make up that new paradigm. Science, traditional knowledge, political resistance and the natural world, are the four pillars supporting the emerging platform of agroecology. Consequently, traditional agricultural practices have been dramatically marginalized as the industrial agricultural system has taken hold worldwide. La Via Campesina emerged as a movement opposing neoliberal globalization that affected peasant farmers all over world and has had a major impact on rural political activity throughout the world. Many agricultural experiment stations repeat the mantra that their fundamental goal is to solve the problems that farmers face. The tendency that remains in most applied research is to solve problems, but searching for solutions is frequently taken to mean developing a recipe.