Western Anatolia: Agroecological Knowledge Systems in Practice

The world today faces the challenge of reconciling a global population nearing 10 billion by 2050, all clamouring for modern standards of living, with the ecological conditions on which living itself depends. This challenge is all-encompassing, affecting every corner of society and every facet of our day-to-day lives. Central to this, and most fundamentally, the question of how we feed ourselves – which is mostly about how we farm – looms large.

Different ways of knowing how to farm are central to answering this question. Knowledge about how to farm is never static – it shifts with changing social, economic, and technological realities. In the Anatolian village of Karagömlek, generations of farmers have adapted from pastoralism to settled agriculture, from ox-drawn ploughs to tractors, and from saved seeds to commercial hybrids. As rural depopulation and industrial inputs reshape local farming, this article explores how different ways of knowing about farming intersect, compete, and evolve – and why agroecology offers a critical perspective for the future.

Knowing how to farm in the modern world

Farming and agriculture have existed for some 10,000 years, but it is only in the last 300 years that ‘modern’ farming has arisen, deeply intertwined with capitalism, industrialisation, and fossil fuel use. Major technological developments (the combustion engine-driven tractor, synthetic fertilisers and pesticides, modern plant breeding) combined with sociological development (agrarian capitalism, urbanisation, globalisation) have radically changed food systems and farming practices. These changes have gone hand in hand with rapid increases in world population and standards of living, albeit highly unevenly, but at a massive ecological cost. Climate change, soil erosion and exhaustion, biodiversity loss, poisoned waterways, and depleted natural resources are all major warning signs that out current ways of living and farming are not sustainable.

It is in this context that knowing how to farm, and claims over who knows and who does not, are a major site of contestation. With the rise of modern farming, a paradigm emerged in which narrowly defined ‘scientific’ knowledge about farming came to be glorified over the more quotidian knowledge of peasant farmers the world over. Scientific knowledge was that produced through careful and controlled experimentation, which was primarily the domain of states and more recently corporations. This knowledge has aligned with a tightly controlled, industrial view of agricultural production (Samuel, 2016), in which knowing how to farm became a matter of knowing how to drive (and having access to) a tractor, and knowing what seeds, fertilisers, and pesticides to buy.

Today however, this ‘techno-scientific’ paradigm is rightly being questioned because of its inadequacy in the face of ecological disasters and social injustices. Agroecology, as a leading challenger to this paradigm argues that “the local knowledge and ingenuity of farmers must necessarily take a front seat” (Martínez-Torres & Rosset, 2014, p. 991). This does not mean that scientific knowledge is no longer relevant to farming – it is essential for improving our understanding of agroecosystems and developing better farming methods. But science should primarily support and enhance, not overwrite, farmers’ own knowledge. With this agroecological perspective, the role of so-called ‘traditional’ farming knowledges and practices are being re-visited and revalued.

The changing meaning of farming in a western Anatolian village

The village of Karagömlek is emblematic of how knowledge about how to farm changes constantly. A relatively new settlement, it was founded in the mid-19^th century by semi-nomadic pastoralists with origins in eastern Anatolia. Like other similar groups in Anatolia, the pastoralists adopted more settled agriculture, driven by factors such as population increases, taxation by the Ottoman state, new economic opportunities for agricultural produce, and individual matters such as the loss of herds (İnalcık, 2014). The adoption of settled agriculture of course changed what knowing how to farm meant. The village today remains connected to a heritage of pastoralism and nomadism, with most farming centred on hayvancılık, or animal husbandry. However, animals today are kept more-or-less permanently in kışla (barns) close to the village and are taken out to graze daily, rather than seasonally, when the weather suits. Most communal pasture has been enclosed for arable farming.

Through the 20th century, settled agriculture itself has been radically transformed, reflecting the global changes indicated above. Tractors have displaced ploughing by oxen and seeding and harvesting by hand. Artificial pesticides and fertilisers have become common place, while modern crop varieties have been adopted. Wheat and barley were originally domesticated in eastern Anatolia, and have been grown as landraces (i.e. from saved seed) until relatively recently, with the introduction of newer higher yielding, less diverse, and commodified varieties.

The transformations do not end there. Since 1990, the village population has more than halved, and very few young people remain in the village active in farming. This is partly driven by low returns to agricultural activity, high land prices (often driven by speculation) and better opportunities elsewhere, but it is unquestionably leading to a loss of knowledge in both past and contemporary farming practices. The tradition of making carpets from hand-woven wool of the village’s sheep – a once widespread and economically important activity in this and similar communities (Glassie, 1993) – has become only a memory. The introduction of irrigation water has led to adoption of new water-intensive crops including maize and alfalfa for animal feed, as well as field-scale fruit and vegetables. Intensive and monocultural production practices and fertiliser use has degraded soil and increased pest prevalence (the locals say the soil has ‘become used to fertiliser’), making farmers more dependent on inputs. Climate change is bringing about less certain rainfall patterns and more variable seasons, bringing farmers’ traditional crop choices and planting schedules into question. COVID-19, the 2023 earthquakes, and the country’s inflation crisis are also driving further changes.

Three years ago, my wife and I bought a small piece of land close to the village. While still a work in progress, we aim to establish a small farm that we can live on, manage sustainably and use to meet most of our food needs. As with a handful of other newcomers to the village, different ideas and knowledges about how to farm are being brought into the village. How these knowledges are applied and how they interact with the established knowledges in the village will drive further evolution of farming practice.

Animal-tillage and no-tillage farming: possibilities and impossibilities

One important practice that is absent from the village today is animal traction and no-tillage farming, both of which have roots in traditional agriculture. From an agroecological perspective, no-tillage farming practices are advantageous because they reduce soil disturbance, favouring the accumulation of organic matter and biological activity (Wezel et al., 2014). Animal traction also reduces soil compaction and fossil fuel use, while being a logical component of integrated farming systems. While no-tillage farming has become popular globally both at field and garden scales, including being incorporated into conventional farming practices, animal traction remains marginalised (Miara et al., 2023; Triplett & Dick, 2008).

Within Karagömlek, a common refrain is “sürmeden olmaz” – meaning that crops will not grow well without some form of tillage. Both arable fields and kitchen gardens are ploughed regularly. While villagers still recall ploughing with oxen, the practice today is constrained to more hilly parts of Turkey where tractors are impractical. With diesel subsidies for farming and the normalisation of tractor usage, it seems almost impossible to revert to animal traction. In our case, we have favoured establishing our kitchen garden by hand digging beds that, once established and managed well, will need no further tillage. We have resorted to mechanised tillage for field-scale planting, but are experimenting with ways to displace this, e.g. through crop choices and rotations. While villagers are sceptical about what we are doing, we hope that, with time, we can show that such alternatives are real possibilities.

From seed or not from seed

Another practice that illustrates different farming knowledges is seed saving. Agroecological approaches emphasise the value of varieties adapted to local conditions, maintaining genetic diversity for resilience, as well as treating seed as a common resource (Nishikawa & Pimbert, 2022). In opposition to the techno-scientific paradigm’s introduction of modern varieties and commercial seed, many small farmers around the world continue to save and select seed, and traditional varieties are increasingly valued by consumers. In Turkey, for example, landrace varieties of wheat have received much more attention in recent years (Yildiz & Özkaya, 2024).

In Karagömlek, farmers have extensively adopted modern commercial varieties and seed, both for grain and vegetable production. Villagers also frequently buy vegetable seedlings, which often come from southern Turkey, particularly for commercial growing. While not strictly enforced, legal frameworks restrict the use of saved or exchanged seed in commercial agriculture. As a result, many varieties that have been grown traditionally in the village have been abandoned and lost. Some villagers, however, continue to maintain that some of their own seeds outperform those promoted by traders and state agencies. They maintain that when planted at the right time – e.g. in accordance with lunar cycles – these local varieties better resist pests. So far our own practices are not dissimilar, and we combine saving our own seed and buying seeds and seedlings. We have also introduced plants and varieties not previously grown in the village. As we become more established, we hope to save more of our own seed, and increasingly share plant matter with others in the village and nearby.

Agroecology: contests and dialogues in knowing how to farm

Just as knowing how to farm has changed throughout the village’s history, it continues to evolve today. Agroecology celebrates this dynamism of farming knowledge, particularly as the ‘co-creation’ of knowledge or dialogues among different ways of knowing. The knowledges of existing villagers, the knowledges that we and other newcomers bring, and the knowledges advocated by other state, commercial, and research institutions are continuously in dialogue. At the same time, while economic, social and technological conditions shape the practicality of different knowledges, different ways of knowing have important economic, ecological and social implications. On a global scale, agricultural industry and corporations benefit tremendously from the techno-scientific paradigm of farming, and actively lobby governments to maintain it. On a more local level, farmers whose ways of life have come to depend on fossils fuels and synthetic inputs struggle to escape its logic. This means that these dialogues are also sites of political contestation.

Today’s farmers in Karagömlek, who mainly produce for conventional supply chains and have limited access to alternative food networks, struggle to see the feasibility of readopting more agroecological approaches. Rural depopulation is accelerating the loss of knowledge associated with traditional practices, while reducing the hands available to undertake agroecological practices (which are often labour-intensive). For now, however, villagers remember how farming used to be and continue to maintain some more traditional practices, such as saving some of their own seed. We can read this particular combination of traditional and modern practices as villagers’ adaptability and resilience, their determination to survive under changing conditions, as well as a sign that they are best placed to know how to farm given the specific conditions they face here. However, it also indicates that expanding and adopting agroecological practices entails struggling against a way of knowing how to farm that is deeply entrenched in economic and state institutions, as well as in the minds of many small farmers.

In today’s context of high input costs, renewed consumer interest in sustainable and healthy foods, and more people turning towards alternative farming, there is an opportunity to challenge the techno-scientific paradigm in a meaningful way. Transitioning to agroecological food systems involves using resources more efficiently, substituting harmful inputs for more sustainable and beneficial ones, and redesigning systems as a whole (Wezel et al., 2014). In Karagömlek, this begins with conversations about practical steps we can take to save more seed and employ less harmful methods of tillage. But as long as wider institutions continue to encourage and incentivise the techno-scientific paradigm, such practical changes can only take us so far. Without systemic changes in how producers and consumers, cities and countrysides, states and citizens, people, plants and animals relate, radically different ways of knowing how to farm will not be able to flourish. Such changes, of course, demand complex dialogues between all those involved in our food systems. Ultimately, we must draw on all the knowledge available to us to overcome the challenge of farming and eating sustainably.

This article was prepared with the support of the BAYETAV foundation.