Agronomy and Horticulture, Department of

 

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

2022

Citation

Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems (2023) 47(1): 1–2

doi: 10.1080/21683565.2023.2135244

Comments

Copyright © 2022, Taylor and Francis. Used by permission

Abstract

In writing about the history of agroecology we too often ignore the valuable contributions of British scientist James Lovelock who recently died on his 103rd birthday. A prolific inventor and influential theorist, Lovelock is best known for the Gaia hypothesis first proposed during his innovative work in the 1960s with the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration. He suggested that ‘the biosphere has a regulatory effect on the Earth’s environment that acts to sustain life’ as written in Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (Lovelock 1979). Lovelock further proposed that humans have strongly impacted the planet’s capacity to maintain this vast, living, self-regulating system.

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