Covid-19 pandemic, sustainability and conditions for a new agronomy

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed an unexpected fragility in human systems sustainability. However, the problem is not the virus but rather the vulnerability of the structures that underpin our globalized reality. We drag around with us an understanding of the world we build which is no longer useful, for incomplete, ineffective and dangerous, although at the same time we have known for a long time that we must overcome this epistemological limitation. It is worth asking, then: what is lacking for us to react? Agriculture shapes the main interconnecting point between humanity and nature, but the agricultural models currently dominant are in crisis due to the negative impacts they generate on multidimensional sustainability. We have been, repeatedly, unable to find a solution to this crisis and the underlying problem is not technological, but epistemological: we need to change our paradigm, expand our worldview, and this implies to develop a New Agronomy. Agroecology offers today the conceptual and methodological framework for this.