PARENT SESSION
Symposium #1: Ecology and agriculture.
Sponsored by ESA Agroecology section
Organized by: D. Andow, S. Gliessman, N. Jordan, M. Liebman, B. Maxwell, D. Neher, I. Perfecto, A. Power.
Monday, August 6, 2001. 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM. Lecture Hall
Aldo Leopold's vision for land health.
Leopold, Estella1, 1
ABSTRACT- Problems in agriculture today have arisen from issues in applied ecology that Aldo Leopold perceived and described in the 1930's. These land health issues are now so complex that survival of the natural landscape and the family farmer who lives on it are seriously at risk, economically and technologically. In Leopold's view of land, the small family farm should be an important working part of our cultural landscape having values that we need to protect. His respect for land became a philosophy that would treat land and its biota with educated stewardship. While we ecologists typically focus on system dynamics, Leopold did that and more--he was also a practical practitioner having been an innovator but also a restorer and an implementer. His concern was two pronged: 1) Yes, we need good ecological science, but 2) we need ecological spokesmen who will apply the knowledge and come up with sound management options for the decision maker. He worried about trends of these ecological/ agricultural problems for natural landscapes. He taught, wrote and worked to put these problems before the general public as well as to the farmer himself. His values had a societal component to them. Significantly, that is the slant that ESA's Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellows Program has taken.
KEY WORDS: agro-ecology, land ethic, Aldo Leopold