[Micro] Revolution
By: Thiago Rossi
Tags: Ecology, Microorganisms, Insects, Research And Development

Read in portuguese here

Agronomy is a very broad field of study. We are stimulated to understand variables and characteristics of the soil, the water, microbiology, plants, meteorology, bugs, animals, etc. This broadness always enchanted me. However, the way these variables are dealt with is a theme for debate. The industrial/production paradigm advanced over the agricultural field and transformed the soil and the plants into “machines” and insects, microorganisms and wild plants into enemies to be eliminated at any cost. These costs, as we know today, are plenty.

Agriculture has evolved a lot, technologically and in productivity. Precision agriculture and phytosanitary alert system, remote sensing and monitoring, are just a few examples. Nonetheless, there is a gap that I consider fundamental for the future of agriculture: ecosystem conservation.

Natural resources conservation is not only a matter of conscience or environmentalism, it’s a must. Unfortunatelly, we are not there yet. There is no point in following rich countries models and reproduce, economically, their principles. In Brazil, aproximatelly 80% of the food that we eat comes from family farming, it’s mandatory to find and define our own model, based on novel principles backed by conservation and regeneration.

Science today is a tool to understand and characterize several variable that can influence ecosystems, be that for production or conservation. However, we still lack researches that are broad, varied and with volume, to have a glimpse about how we can impact positively, processes that occur within ecosystems, both natural and agroecosystems.

Nature’s article about the next agriculture revolution

4.0 Technologies, like sensors, analytics, modelling, etc are present in many business today. And yet, their use for other purposes like conservation are still in their early days. We know little about what and how to do it.

At the same time, we have developed researches about the role microorganisms and insects have, regarding landscape ecology. Biological control is one of the major promises for the future and, if we understand ecosystems as networks of micro and macro organisms, potentialize their role in the environment is, perhaps, a way to transform agriculture, ecology and resource maintenance for posterity.

The fight for resources inside research has intensified during the COVID19 pandemics, but it’s my belief that the trend for ESG is making a way in which we can elevate conservation research to a new level. It might be a long shot but I’d vote for the future of agriculture not in new techniques, methods, cultivars or products, but in stewarding and preserving what we have, potentializing positive impacts and empowering ecology as a whole.

Lastly, I can’t fail to mention the social perspective of an evolution in this sense. For long, product based agriculture is considered “traditional.” Yet, in the agriculture history, observation has been the source for wisdom in human interference in the landscape. Not depending on products may sound as a regression, but that really mean an increase in autonomy, potentially for an ecological agriculture where productivity matches the same levels of the traditional agriculture but with less costs.