Conway, Gordon R.

This book presents agroecosystem analysis as a methodology for dealing with the complex interactions of agriculture and environment. The first chapter discusses these linkages, and suggests that they should be understood as systems, whose analysis requires multidisciplinarity. In contrast to farming systems research and integrated rural development approaches, the agroecosystem analysis approach developed in the rest of this book can deal with all levels in the hierarchy of agroecosystems, and focuses on trade-offs between different measures of performance.

There is a brief review of Rapid Rural Appraisal (RRA) and Agroecosystem Analysis (AA). The concepts underpinning these methods, particularly the emphasis on locally attained data, are explained, and their application is expounded. The multidisciplinary aspect of these methods is focused upon. There is a detailed bibliography.

This paper defines agroecosystems and examines the variety of strategies used to create such a system such as productivity, stability, sustainability and equitability. It states that agricultural development involves a trade-off between these properties. It demonstrates this through selected examples from agricultual history, including the origins of agriculture, manorial and modern Western agriculture and the Green Revolution in Indonesia.