Celebrate Food Diversity

Solution: an eco-farming revolution

Food is taste and nourishment. Food is family and culture. Food is science, identity and religion. Food is connection. But do we know where our food comes from, how it is grown and by whom? The answer is a revolution in ecological farming. Unlike our current broken industrial ag model, eco-farming answers these questions as it is a food system, with people and farmers at its heart.

Eco-farming combines modern science and innovation with respect for nature and biodiversity. It ensures healthy farming and healthy food. It protects the soil, the water and the climate. It does not contaminate the environment with chemical inputs or use genetically engineered crops. And it places people and farmers – consumers and producers, rather than the corporations who control our food now – at its very heart.

It is a vision of sustainability and food sovereignty in which food is grown with health and safety first and where control over food and farming rests with local communities, rather than transnational corporations.

Ecological Farm in Brazil. 5 Dec, 2014 © Peter Caton / Greenpeace

Seven basic principles about eco-farming you should know

  • Food sovereignty – Producers and consumers, not corporations, should control the food chain and determine how food is produced.

  • Rewarding rural livelihoods – Eco-agriculture is instrumental in rural development, food security and fighting poverty.

  • Smarter food production and yields – Eco-agriculture can create higher yields to help feed the world.

  • Biodiversity – Promoting diversity in crops, instead of monocultures like corn and soy, is essential to protecting nature.

  • Sustainable soil – Soil fertility can improve using eco-farming methods and refraining from chemical fertilizers and inputs.

  • Ecological pest protection – Farmers can control pest damage and weeds effectively through natural means instead of chemical pesticides.

  • Food Resilience – Diverse and resilient agriculture, not monoculture crops, is the best way to protect communities from shocks from climate and food prices.

Jump-start an eco-food revolution by sharing this page. Then click to see What You Can Do now.

To read more on Greenpeace's 7 Principles on Ecological Farming, click here.

The latest updates

 

The Environmental Risks of Neonicotinoid Pesticides

Publication | 12 January, 2017 at 10:00

Neonicotinoid pesticides were first introduced in the mid-1990s and since then their use has grown rapidly so that they have become the most widely used class of insecticides in the world, with the majority being used as seed coatings.

Twenty Years of Failure

Publication | 5 November, 2015 at 9:00

Twenty years ago, the first genetically modified (GM) crops were planted in the USA, alongside dazzling promises about this new technology. Two decades on, the promises are getting bigger and bigger, but GM crops are not delivering any of them.

Europe's Pesticide Addiction

Publication | 13 October, 2015 at 10:00

Europe's dependency on chemical pesticides is nothing short of an addiction. Crops are routinely doused with a variety of chemicals, usually applied multiple times to single crops throughout the whole growing season. Industrial agriculture, with...

Food and Farming Vision

Publication | 18 May, 2015 at 11:00

We are living with a broken food system. It needs to be replaced urgently for the benefit of all people, and the planet. Greenpeace's Food and Farming Vision describes what Ecological Farming means, and how it can be summarised in seven...

Pesticides and our Health

Publication | 12 May, 2015 at 11:00

Since 1950 the human population has doubled, yet the area of arable land used to feed these people has increased by only 10%. There are huge pressures to provide food, at low cost, on land that is becoming more and more degraded as nutrients are...

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