Using agroecology to stimulate the greening of agriculture in China: a reflection on 15 years of teaching and curriculum development

Even though worldwide research and teaching in Agroecology blossomed in the 1980s, until recently, the development of Agroecology in China has been constrained by technical, cultural and economic considerations. The delay in the assimilation of Agroecology, as a science, a practice and a movement, has resulted in the discipline of Agroecology in China lacking the holistic, interdisciplinary approaches needed to respond to current global and regional agricultural challenges. There is a need to redefine Agroecology both as a critical discipline and as a pedagogical approach. By using an ecology-oriented systematic approach to integrate education and research, a reframed Agroecology is proposed; this is based on a re-imagined, holistic consideration of the hierarchy of agroecosystems. The practical experience of a 15-year international team-taught Agroecology education programme among participants from Canada and China has helped refine disciplinary classifications, both from horizontal and vertical hierarchies. There are evolving impacts of this experiment in Sino-Canadian cooperation in Agroecological research and education; they include a new generation of highly trained agroecologists prepared to act across inter-related disciplines; the alignment of Chinese universities to international agricultural curricula and a better- informed policy-making process towards greening agriculture in China.