The more fodder that is produced on farmland, the more independence farms can maintain from external economic and technological stakeholders and, thus, are not badly affected by the type of problems that currently exist due to the complete dependence of intensive livestock farming on imported fodder:

•    speculation with the prices of raw materials used in livestock fodder
•    complete control of the production and market of raw materials such as soy by big transnational companies
•    control of  genetic engineering technologies by big transnational companies  that is having a huge impact on imports of, for example, soy
•    the loss of any choice as to whether to use transgenes or not
•    etc

Agroecology is not a synonym of autarchy, although the most coherent stance is to maximise livestock fodder supplied by the resources on each farm. When importation of supplements is inevitable, agroecology promotes direct relations between organic arable, farms and livestock farms, at the shortest distance possible.

Index