Ecologia

Béla Kuslits discusses intensive agriculture's environmental and ethical impacts and advocates for biodiversity conservation, less farming and efficient food production. It highlights plant-based diets, reducing food waste, and adjusting consumption patterns to achieve sustainability.

This article highlights how agroecology and participatory action research (PAR) can help combat food and water insecurity in Central America. Focusing on Nicaraguan farming communities, Christopher Bacon’s article showcases cooperatives that help mitigate climate crises and food shortages. His piece advocates for universities and institutions to partner with local communities to promote justice through ethical, community-driven solutions.

This article, “Betting on Agroecology as a Way of Agricultural Production and Establishing Social Relations” is a collaborative piece of three professors from the Universidad Pontificia Comillas’s School of Agricultural Engineering. They have been directly engaged in agricultural education and production for several decades then shifted from promoting the “technocratic or industrial paradigm” of agriculture to agroecology. Promotio Iustitiae asked how they have become so impassioned about agroecology. Their experience of fruitful collaboration between the University and Valladolid City residents was a turning point. Here is their reply: “The choice for agroecology in the whole of INEA (School of Agricultural Engineering) was intuitive at the beginning. At the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 21st century, the growing societal concern was on sustainable agriculture and the reduction of [negative] impacts on the environment. It was our school farm’s organic vegetable gardens developed with, and for, Valladolid City’s 430 elderly residents that launched us into concrete actions: we transformed the school’s curriculum and the way we cultivated our farm and we joined social and consumer initiatives (organic production cooperative, the Ana Leal House of Ecology and Welcome, etc.). All of this we did with the full collaboration of teachers and teams… Sometimes conversion is a process and in our case, we continue to move forward steadfastly.”

I protest against the questions being addressed to Jesuit "environmentalists/scientists." This implies that environmental issues might be the prerogative or sole interest of scientists. I say that environmental issues are everyone's responsibility, especially every Jesuit's. Scientists can help to perpetuate the problem or they can offer alternatives. But it seems to me that the basic issue of the environment resides in our theological vision.

This article offers an overview of various agricultural approaches including Sustainable Agriculture, Conservation Agriculture, Climate-smart Agriculture, and Agroecology, among others. By classifying these concepts, it sets the stage for understanding their role in promoting ecological resilience. The article also highlights key lessons from field experiences at the Jesuit-operated Kasisi Agriculture and Training Center in Zambia, in partnership with the Seed and Knowledge Initiative.

We publish this article written by Brother Paul Desmarais, founder of KASIS Agroecological Training Center (Zambia), for Promotio Iustitiae No 79 in 2003. Already in 2003, he was aware that social justice had to include environmental justice and, most especially, concern for the rights of rural women. Caring for the people of the countryside and the planet was the same thing. He embraced organic farming with determination; it was his life's mission. She anticipated what, years later, Pope Francis proclaimed in Laudato Si and the Society of Jesus accepted as the fourth Apostolic Preference. In this article, his words about the danger of GMOs and the threats to the environment and people are still relevant today.