of soft agroecology.2.2. "Soft agroecologyThere has been a debate whether hard system optimisation of agriculture alone could solve the problem of feeding an expanding world population. It is increasingly felt that this is not the case and that a much broader view of the Structure, function and role of agroecosystems is called for (Conway, 1987). Such a vision addresses hard issues such as the follows of energy and matter through agroecosystems but also includes the role of human and society, and the empowerment of citizens for developing their own food systems, and thereby feeding themselves. The exploration of the interaction between these human activity system and the hard agroecosystem is here defined as soft agroecology. According to this soft system thinking (Checkland, 1999), the capital entering and leaving agricultura1 systems is not only measured in physical units but also includes cultural knowledge, human experiences, potentials for technological development, etc. In contrast to hard capital, this soft capital is flexible (Pearce, 1996) and can even to some degree substitute hard capital. For example, knowledge of traditional farming systems inherited from their forefathers may help future farmers to save physical inputs (Gliessman, 1990a). However, a major problem is that the disciplines of rural sociology and economics, which deal with this area of soft agroecology, tend to operate at higher hierarchical levels than the hard disciplines of agronomy and ecology. This means that the soft disciplines often work at the farm or the regional level, while the hard disciplines often work at the plot or the field level. Furthermore, some soft systems researchers work as accomplices to the farmer, both giving and receiving knowledge, unlike their hard systems colleagues who work as external observers to the system under study. This is a consequence of the inclusion of interactions between humans within the window of agroecology (Fig. 1). They argue that all people dealing with agricultural production systems, including scientists, are intimately and subjectively involved in the activities of the growing of food and that to study this process is to become a part of it (Longino, 1990).2.3. Where is agroecology now?Recognising that agroecology is still developing, a survey of the published literature was conducted to establish its current status. The survey was conducted by interrogating electronic databases (CAB, 2001; AGRICOLA. 2001; ISIS-SCI, 2001; SSCI. 2001; ECONLIT, 2001), reading literature reviews (Carls, 1988, 1989, 1990) and visiting The Agroecology Library, University of California, Santa Cruz. In agreement with Carroll et at (1990), most references were related to natural sciences within the fields of agronomy and ecology (e.g. the work in Gliessman. 1990b). However, references were also found within the social sciences (e.g. Francis and King. 1997; Thomas and Kevan, 1993), economics (e.g. Allen, 1999; Rosset, 1996), or in combination of two or more areas (e.g. Edwards et al., 1993; Van Latesteijn, 1997). To quantify this distribution, the number of references to "agroecology" or "agro-ecology" (with a hyphen) in literature databases of natural sciences (ISIS-SCl, 2001), resulting in 94 references, social sciences (SSCI. 2001) and economics (ECONLIT. 2001) were compared. The majority (66%) of the references were