Talk:Agroecology

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Tried to add a few things that came to mind, and stay away from those old controversies.

It would be nice to hear from some agronomists, entomologists, other non-social sciences. Also, something representing the places in the world other than the Americas would be cool.

Will return soon, hope you build on what I started!

J ______________________________________________________________

I personally don't agree on the sentence:

"use of genetically modified organisms and artificially selected crops[1] meanwhile agroecology tends to minimize the human impact."

Simply because a "crop" is inherently artificially selected. Neither maize, or wheat, or rice, or tomato, and so on, exist naturally as such. An agro-ecosystem is artificial by definition, and its biodiversity is not natural. Therefore, I don't see how the use of new developed varieties as well as of genetically modified crops can be considered wrong. Agro-ecology, in fact, should be focused on minimizing the effect of human impact. Not the impact itself, since there is no "agro" at all without human activity. New artificially selected crop varieties as well as genetically improved plants, I believe, should be taken seriously into consideration as effective tools for improving agriculture sostainability, without any ideological prejudice. Agriculture has never been and never will be "natural".

Paolo Voltolina, Ph.D. Plant and Agriculture Biotechnologist

I don't think most agroecologists are opposed to artifically selected crops either. Rather, they'd like to make us of plant breeding. They don't agree with genetic engineering, as that's quite unnatural compared to the artifical selection of plant breeding. By the way, remember to try and sign your posts. OptimistBen (talk) 10:37, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Gonna try to spruce this up

I'm going to make some changes on this article and bring it up to presentable status. OptimistBen (talk) 10:39, 13 April 2008 (UTC)