Agroecology is an increasingly important solution for climate change and unsustainable food systems. It draws upon Indigenous and traditional knowledge, working with nature rather than exploiting it. In 2021, Mongabay hosted a webinar for journalists and writers on how to cover agroecology for publications like ours.
What is agroecology?
Agroecology is a climate solution that can also feed the world, sustainably. Learning from traditional and Indigenous knowledge of agriculture and food systems, agroecology practitioners are increasingly innovating to work with nature in shifting agriculture away from extractive and unsustainable practices toward regenerative models that also cool the climate.
Mongabay is hiring freelancers to cover stories about agroecology for an ongoing series and has assembled a group of experts and practitioners to share what they know about it with reporters interested to start covering this field, for Mongabay or other outlets.
Event details
When: October 21, 2021
Recording: YouTube
Registration: Closed
The Experts
Anna Lappé
National bestselling author, an internationally recognized expert on food systems, and a funder supporting food system transformation. A James Beard Leadership Award winner, she is the author or co-author of three books about food, farming, and sustainability and a contributing author for 14 others. The author of the award-winning Diet for a Hot Planet and a contributor to the 50th anniversary edition of Diet for a Small Planet, Anna is the founder or co-founder of three national organizations, including Real Food Media. As a funder, she has led the grantmaking arm of the Small Planet Fund for two decades and created and directs the Food Sovereignty Fund of the Panta Rhea Foundation (hear more via Mongabay’s podcast where she recently discussed how agroecology can feed the world).
Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquín
Owner-founder of Regeneration Farms LLC, and Founder/President of the Regenerative Agriculture Alliance. He has served as a consultant for the United Nations Development Program’s Bureau for Latin America, as an advisor to the World Council of Indigenous Peoples, and was a founding member of the Fair-Trade Federation in 1994. Regi currently lives and farms at Salvatierra Farms, a 75-acre farm raising “tree-range” chicken and eggs in an agroecological system in Northfield, MN.
Thomas Cherico Wanger
Associate Professor at Westlake University in China and Principal Investigator of the ‘Sustainability, Agriculture, and Technology’ laboratory, where he works with his team on agroecology, agricultural technology, and large scale research platforms including the Global Agroforestry Network. He received his PhD in Environmental Sciences from the University of Adelaide, Australia in 2011 and did his postdoc at Stanford University, the Swedish Agricultural University, and the University of Göttingen in Germany. Tom has received multiple awards for scientific excellence, his work has been cited nearly 7,000 times, and he has published more than 50 papers in leading journals including Science and Nature.
Danielle Nierenberg
President and Co-founder of Food Tank, which partners with over 70 organizations such as FAO and UNEP to share information about sustainable food systems and techniques like agroecology. She has met with thousands of farmers, government leaders and scientists across the globe and has documented practices and policies that eliminate hunger while protecting the environment. Her work and words have appeared in more than 20,000 major news outlets worldwide.
About Mongabay
Mongabay is a nonprofit environmental science and conservation news platform focused on providing cutting-edge independent journalism from nature’s frontline. We pride ourselves on producing reporting that has substantial, tangible impacts around the world.
Banner image: A smallholder vegetable farmer watering plants in Boung Phao Village, Lao PDR. Photo: Asian Development Bank, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.