Agroecology as the Holistic Ecology Of People And Planet

Resources were wrongly defined by the past several generations of our leaders and institutions.

It is time to broaden our view and to integrate with the world we are unquestionably harming. Naturally speaking, ecosystems are complex, dynamic, diverse, and very productive systems of life interacting with the planet, the sun, and the atmosphere. Life, to be frank, is precisely what makes this rockish hurling sphere of the earth something to care about and inhabitable. Life, ecosystems, the earth, the sun, and the atmosphere exist in an irreducible complexity which can create free abundance and turn deserts to oasis, vitality, and green. Holistic management then, is the only functional strategy to change how we affect the whole for the better. Simplified but intrusive..., we are shooting into the dark and inevitably causing harm.

What we have been led to see as resources for our prosperity are pieces of an ecosystem, geological support for ecosystems, or the temporary non-renewable excess created by ecosystems. The engine of renewable and the keystone resource is clearly the complete ecosystem itself. Ecosystems are THE resource that sustainably produces millions of useful deliverables from the most intricate of natural chemicals to the most robust of building materials, food, fiber, and everything in between that pertains to our prosperity. It is through our contribution to the ecosystem that we, like other creatures can drive specific deliverables to excess for our use and for the creation of sustaining prosperity. In fact, that is exactly what all wild creatures do everyday of their lives.

To achieve prosperity are we to slave as minions in the land rather than minions in the rat-race of the conventional? Actually, our needed part in natural systems is not at all as grunt laborers producing the amount of product equivalent to the amount of energy we put forth. Instead, we are to find a relevant place in an already powerfully efficient energy-multiplicative system of diverse life leveraging the free-form power of our ever shining sun. We add intelligent smarter-not-harder or soft intelligent labor that integrates and adds to the ebb and flow of an energetically powerful system called ecology or, specific to the human involvement we must relearn in re-indigenization, agroecology. When we design production, we design in biomimicry style, not for our standard acceptable 20% to 40% efficiency, but instead for an adjusted-net of 250-1000% efficiency as sunshine cooks the earth 24-7 whether used or not.

Ecosystems are always local, though undeniably globally linked. Rain, snow, wind, fire, cloud cover, ocean-currents, waves, mineral-collections, growing plants and the link to food for most species, sea level rise-and-fall, water traveling back to mountain tops and then flowing down again in rivers and streams is all solar effect/energetics with an occasional or locally understood geothermal input. Ecosystems function on the global circulation of solar energy effects, but they function as autonomous and unique local units that fit local specifics. Without them, solar simply cooks the earth; with them, resources are produced instead of excess heat.

People belong in all ecosystems to which they can find a productive contributory place that allows for their own prosperity to benefit the prosperity of the whole. The higher the diversity of species in balance finding a productive niche in the ecosystem, the more productive, elegant, and durable the system. Contrary to popular belief, this absolutely includes peeps! People, though exceptional, are not an exception! We do not need disconnection from nature with lives and societies oriented to live outside looking in. We need thinkers and bold functional re-entry systems to reverse-engineer re-indigenous society that will effect local regeneration of landscapes and the deep prosperity. Part and integral within 'the trillions tribe' of the diversity of creatures that create ecosystems is you and me! Indigenous is not tribal, ethnic, racial, or skin-tone. It is to 'grow-up from within'. It is not to look all knowingly from above and outside. It is cultural and mechanistic. Re-indigenization is to restart a very natural process. Indigenous human inclusive regenerative ecology (called agroecology) puts us in a place to regenerate and to heal our society, natural landscapes, and atmospheric-climatic reality.