The diseconomy of agroecology for small farmers and how to overcome it: Chinese experiences

Agroecology, as a sustainable alternative to industrial agriculture, has three core characteristics: 1) it is practiced by independent small farmers; 2) it uses traditional, local and ecological knowledge and resources, and adopts multi-cropping to create synergistic interactions and recycling of materials within the farming operation; 3) it is embedded in a local community that connects producers and consumers socially. I argue that there are tensions between the first and second characteristics, which makes agroecology economically challenging to small farmers; these difficulties, however, can be overcome by strengthening the third characteristic. Studies on agroecology have not taken the issue of “small scale” seriously. When the scale of small farmers is as small as those in China, agroecology both puts an overwhelming demand on family labor supply and reduces labor productivity and income, creating strong economic disincentives for smallholders to adopt agroecology. To become economically viable and compete with industrial agriculture, agroecological practices must scale up. This paper compares two local experiments of scaling up agroecology in China. One is pursued by a group of urban entrepreneurs using the community-supported agriculture (CSA) model and relying on external capital investment; the other by a group of rural women, through mobilizing the village community and rebuilding local culture. The contrasting outcomes of these two experiments (the first one failed, while the second succeeded) show that the scaling up of agroecology, as an alternative economy, requires social mobilization and moral reconstruction, which then creates an alternative community of both small farmers and consumers.