Review article
The Importance of the Peasant Agriculture for Ecological Agriculture
Ivan Cifrić
; Department of Sociology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The first part of the discourse on ecological agriculture and its prospect in the context of contemporary ecological crisis and challenges of globalization is dedicated to the history of the term
»ecological agriculture« and its synonyms - »organic«, »biological«,
»traditional«, and to the term »sustainable agriculture«. Every ecological agriculture is sustainable, but not each sustainable agriculture is ecological at the same time and it is only one of its possible variants. The author's starting point is the thesis that discussions on ecological agriculture should take into account historical experience of the peasant society and its economy. Since
the traditional peasant agriculture and economy had implicit ecological
character, their experience is valuable for the organization of the
household ecological agriculture. With the modernization of rural complex the peasant type of agricultural production is vanishing and
so is the traditional culture. The village and agriculture accept the
cultural pattern of industrial society and industrial culture so the original meaning of organic production has been forgotten. Even though he considers it important ecological agriculture to spread,
although it could hardly meet the needs of six billion people in the world, the author stresses that in the future three types of complementary agricultural production will be formed: ecological one,
conventional (according to ecological criteria) and, most probably,
controlled type of GM production. The world and the society stratification will have an impact on the social consumers of the products. The wealthiest will by the most expensive ecological products, and the poorest those products they can afford!
Keywords
biological production; ecological economy; ecological agriculture; GM-agriculture; industrial agriculture; sustainable agriculture; organic agriculture; peasant society; traditional production
Hrčak ID:
35485
URI
Publication date:
14.4.2009.
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