Using agroecology to stimulate the greening of agriculture in China: a reflection on 15 years of teaching and curriculum development

ABSTRACT

Even though worldwide research and teaching in Agroecology blossomed in the 1980s, until recently, the development of Agroecology in China has been constrained by technical, cultural and economic considerations. The delay in the assimilation of Agroecology, as a science, a practice and a movement, has resulted in the discipline of Agroecology in China lacking the holistic, interdisciplinary approaches needed to respond to current global and regional agricultural challenges. There is a need to redefine Agroecology both as a critical discipline and as a pedagogical approach. By using an ecology-oriented systematic approach to integrate education and research, a reframed Agroecology is proposed; this is based on a re-imagined, holistic consideration of the hierarchy of agroecosystems. The practical experience of a 15-year international team-taught Agroecology education programme among participants from Canada and China has helped refine disciplinary classifications, both from horizontal and vertical hierarchies. There are evolving impacts of this experiment in Sino-Canadian cooperation in Agroecological research and education; they include a new generation of highly trained agroecologists prepared to act across inter-related disciplines; the alignment of Chinese universities to international agricultural curricula and a better- informed policy-making process towards greening agriculture in China.

KEYWORDS:

• Agroecology
• China
• Canada
• ecologically transformative agriculture
• agricultural sustainability

Acknowledgments

This research work was conceived at the former Nova Scotia Agricultural College (NSAC) of Canada during Dr Songliang Wang’s one-year’s visit since the autumn of 2005; his visit was supported by China-Canada Scholar Exchange Program (CCSEP). The main body of this research was carried out at Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University (FAFU), where the NSAC-FAFU 2 + 2 Educational Programs were hosted while Agroecology was team-taught by FAFU-NSAC members. The current manuscript was amended at the Faculty of Land and Food System of UBC under Dr Sean Smukler’s mentoring when Dr Songliang Wang visited this university since the spring of 2018; his visit was financed by the Provincial Education Department of Fujian province, China. The authors are greatly grateful to Prof Jules Pretty’s constructive comments and advice on our rough draft, and we thank Dr Elena Mihailescu for her text correction job.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

S. L. Wang http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9481-7270

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the grant of Internationalizing Agroecology Teaching Project [grant number FBJG20170230], funded by Fujian Provincial Department of Education; And the grant of Internationalizing Agroecosystem Science Research Project [grant number KXb16017A], funded by Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University (FAFU).