Agroecology Europe

As a practice, agroecology is an agricultural system based on biodiversity. The ecosystem services provided by biodiversity through a science-based and holistic management of the ecosystem consists notably in:
- managing crop diseases through the regeneration of a living soil ;
- managing crop pests by a well-designed ecological infrastructure that allows the development of the populations of natural enemies;
- managing weeds by the use of legume-based temporary grasslands, complex mixtures of green manures, aggressive crop cultivars and species, long and diverse crop rotations,…;
- fixing important amounts of nitrogen by legume-based temporary and permanent grasslands, green manures, and pulses. This nitrogen is partly available for the non-legume annual crops of the crop rotation.
Farmers’ income is increased in agroecology by production cost reduction and revenue maximisation through the production of quality products, their processing and marketing in short and local chains.