Agroecology, scaling and interdisciplinarity

Abstract

Based on a review of its history, its present structure and its objective in the future, agroecology is defined as an integrative discipline that includes elements from agronomy, ecology, sociology and economics. Agroecology’s credentials as a separate scientific discipline were measured against the norms of science, defined by Robert King Merton (1973): communalism, universality, disinterestedness, originality and doubt. It is concluded that agroecology meets many of these norms and where it differs, it does so in a way that perhaps anticipates the manner and the direction in which the social position of science is changing. Accepting agroecology as a separate scientific discipline, the two main issues with which it must contend were considered to be those of scaling and interdisciplinarity. Scaling is a problem because results of agroecological research are typically generated at small spatial scales whereas applications are frequently implemented in larger, administrative units. A framework to convey information from science to decision-makers was proposed and tested in a case study of farm energy use. Interdisciplinarity is a problem because researchers from different disciplines see the world from different viewpoints, use different language, work at different locations and use different criteria to evaluate one another's work. Progress in this area is likely to be slow and driven by the need to justify the value of science to society.