by Steven McFadden – January 1, 2024
For the sake of the Earth, the people, the animals, the plants, and for the sake of my own need to advocate, I raise my blog voice and declare 2024 to be The Year of Agroecology. Once again.

Twelve months ago I declared 2023 to be The Year of Agroecology, and before that the same in 2022. It’s something that needs to be declared again, and again, and again. Severe matters before us all. Opportunity, too.

While my blog voice may be slight in isolation, it is part of a wide and wise global chorus: millions of voices of people who touch the earth on behalf of all humanity, and who recognize the overwhelming need for transformation of our food systems with clean land, clean food, justice for all. They are acting for change. “The Year of Agroecology” is but one rhetorical frame, among 8 billion possibilities. But it’s a momentous frame.

Farm and food systems are the foundation of all the rest of our world with all its techno splendors and dangers. If we get our foundation right–clean, just, radiantly healthy–what is built upon that foundation has a far-improved likelihood of being wholesome, just, and sustainable.

The authentic, multifaceted global vision of agroecology is worthy of worldwide embrace: genuine, committed engagement to activate a main chance for us all as we pass through a turbulent era of transition characterized by profound social upheaval, wide-ranging environmental contamination, and an ongoing, in-your-face cascade of climate-change catastrophes.

For sober consideration, check out  The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World.  Each year for the last six years this report has highlighted the reality that intensification of wars, punishing climate extremes, and economic turbulence, combined with inflation and inequality, are knocking the nations and corporations of the world off track. In the report’s estimation we’ll not meet basic targets set by the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). That’s not an abstract academic concept. It has harsh real-world consequences.

For balance, check out Food Tank’s podcast highlighting food system wins in 2023, and also predictions for 2024 from ag and food experts.

Agroecology is a grace that needs to be welcomed widely in 2024 for it espouses a way of life in respectful relationship with nature, rather than a relentless profit-driven business model, and a tsunami of marketing angles.

Agroecology is a science, a practice, and a worldwide movement embraced for the sake of clean land, clean water, clean food, and justice for the human beings who touch the earth for all of us, or otherwise work to make our food supply possible.

For all these reasons and more, agroecology deserves acknowledgement and prominence as the year of, the decade of, the century of, and more. For 2024 and onward, I respectfully add my voice to the agroecological chorus. Let us make our Beauty Way visions real.