J Agric Environ Ethics

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-017-9702-7

ARTICLES

Biomimicry in Agriculture: Is the Ecological System-

Design Model the Future Agricultural Paradigm?

Milutin Stojanovic1

Accepted: 15 November 2017

 Springer Science+Business Media B.V., part of Springer Nature 2017

Abstract Comprising almost a third of greenhouse gas emissions and having an

equally prominent role in pollution of soils, fresh water, coastal ecosystems, and
food chains in general, agriculture is, alongside industry and electricity/heat pro-
duction, one of the three biggest anthropogenic causes of breaching the planetary
boundaries. Most of the problems in agriculture, like soil degradation and dimin-
ishing (necessary) biodiversity, are caused by unfit uses of existing technologies and
approaches mimicking the agriculturally-relevant functioning natural ecosystems
seem necessary for appropriate organization of our toxic and entropic agro-tech-
nologies. Our thesis is that eco-curative and sustainable uses of agro-technology
require a paradigm shift from the chemical model of agro-systems to the ecological
system-design model of agriculture. Particularly, following the new biomimetic
paradigm of ecological innovation, we question in what sense can we mimic natural
solutions in agriculture. We discern among Integrated agriculture and Permaculture,
analyze their biomimetic status from the perspective of the philosophy of biomi-
micry, and argue that the former nature-mentored approach (contrary to the latter
nature-modeled approach) is a more appropriate solution for sustainable broadscale
agriculture necessary for the growing world. However, it is not clear how this
agricultural bio-integration will interact with the predicted automatization of work,
urban demographic momentum, and the Earth system instability, and can the Per-
maculture alternative emerge as a social safety-net for the anticipated technologi-
cally-redundant or economically or environmentally endangered workers. We argue
both for the importance to understand Permaculture as a social safety-net and as
experimental testing ground for cutting edge biomimetic technologies.

& Milutin Stojanovic

stojanovic.m.milutin@gmail.com
1
Department of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Cika-Ljubina 18-20, Belgrade, Serbia

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Keywords Sustainable agriculture
Biomimicry
Anthropocene
Ecological

design
Integrated agriculture
Permaculture

Introduction: The Earth System, Its Crisis and the Role of Agriculture

Recent extreme changes in the Earth system are most notably manifested in the
crises of climate change and biosphere integrity (Steffen et al. 2015). Caused by
industrialization during the last two and a half centuries, mainly in the form of
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and chemical pollution of local ecosystems or
eco-hostile use of available resources, the crisis escalated in the post-World War II
period of economic expansion. Agriculture today comprise almost a third of GHG
emissions and have at least an equally prominent role in biodiversity-loss by land-
use change and pollution of soils, fresh water, coastal ecosystems, and food chains
in general (IPCC 2014). Alongside industry and production of electricity and heat, it
is one of the three biggest anthropogenic causes of breaching the planetary
boundaries (Rockstrom et al. 2009). Since, in humanly relevant terms, Anthro-
pocene is a crisis of the human-supporting biosphere, understanding our ecosystem-
dependent subsistence technology becomes of the prime importance. Occupying
about 38% of Earth’s landmass (the rest consisting mostly of mountains, deserts,
tundra, cities and ecological reserves) agricultural activities undermine the
biosphere not so much by its spatial extension but chiefly by unfit uses of existing
technologies (Foley et al. 2011), specifically biocides, fertilizers and agro-
machineries.
Agricultural approaches mimicking the natural ecosystems are emerging and
gaining scientific consensus rapidly, and seem necessary for appropriate reorgani-
zation of our toxic and exploitative agro-technologies. These bio-friendly solutions
are challenging our ideas of limits of technology in sustainable culture, as well as
the place of our subsistence technologies in the technosphere. Both are still awaiting
philosophical reflection. Having in mind that cheap food is at the basis of our
technological culture, we claim that ecological crisis necessitates a new focus of the
philosophy of technology on agriculture. We will build on the thesis that eco-
curative and sustainable uses of agro-technology require a paradigm shift from the
chemical model of agro-systems (driving industrial monocultures), to the ecological
system-design model of agriculture (cf. Scholes and Scholes 2013). The latter model
essentially consists of agro-systems design on the basis of functional dependencies
of its biological components (i.e. in using non-artificial means for specific tasks—
like incorporating natural species for pest bio-regulation). Its goal is to minimize
environmentally destructive impact by integrating agriculture with living and
ecosystem processes (Van der Ryn and Cowan 1996, 18). The key feature is that the
later paradigm incorporates agricultural practices in broader ecosystem functions
and fertility, in opposition to high-input system-manipulation of the ruling chemical
model. Desired results are biodiverse systems with rising soil fertility, in opposition
to monocultures dependent on artificial fertilizers and hazardous biocides and, the
most importantly, susceptible to shocks—a symptom of their low resilience (Folke
et al. 2011, 723).

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The philosophical crux is, to use a distinction from the philosophy of biology,
that in eco-system-design model the distinction between agro-valued organisms and
the environment becomes blurred. They are all part of the same ecosystem and
function in complex interconnected ways; therefore, the analysis and assessment
must be comprehensive, on the level of the ecosystem, and solutions conformed to
the environment, emulating natural processes (Scholes and Scholes 2013). In this
biomimetic context, we tackle the main challenge: how should we interpret main
ecological principles in sustainable non-polluting broadscale agriculture? Particu-
larly, following the new biomimetic paradigm of ecological innovation (Blok and
Gremmen 2016), we question in what sense can we mimic natural solutions in
agriculture, as well as to what extent is ‘‘doing it the natural way’’ desirable or even
compatible with the current cultural practices and urban demographic momentum of
the last fifty years. We discern among Integrated agriculture and Permaculture,
analyze their biomimetic status from the perspective of the philosophy of
biomimicry, and argue that the former nature-mentored approach (contrary to the
latter nature-modeled approach) is a more appropriate solution for sustainable
broadscale agriculture necessary for the growing world. At the end, we question
how this agricultural integration will interact with the predicted automatization of
work (following the ongoing digital revolution) (Stiegler 2015) and the Earth
system crisis (Winner 2013), and can the natural farming alternative emerge as a
social safety-net for the anticipated technologically-redundant or economically or
environmentally endangered workers. We argue both for the importance to
understand Permaculture as a social safety-net and as experimental testing ground
for cutting edge biomimetic technologies.

Two Forms of the Ecological System-Design Paradigm

Most pressing problems in agriculture, like soil degradation and diminishing

biodiversity, are caused by unsustainable models of food systems (Foley et al. 2005;
Montgomery 2007).1 For the last two centuries, and specifically since the
agricultural revolution of the 1950s, dominant is the chemical model where agro-
systems, specifically the soil, are viewed as a chemical mixture where we only need
to add certain chemical inputs to gain desired biological outputs. The new paradigm
which is emerging is that agro-systems are complex biological systems where every
specie, even, and especially, the myriad of microscopic ones, has it specific function
(Scholes and Scholes 2013) [and where even redundancy in functions is critical for
system’s resiliency (Folke et al. 2011)]. At the basis stand understanding of agro-
systems and soil as a living system, instead of an inert supportive matrix, to be
flooded with a soup of nutrients—understand through simplistic analogy with
chemical solution.

1
Montgomery’s thesis is that many ancient civilizations were in fact not sustainable, and collapsed due
to depletion of their economical basis—the fertility of their food producing soil. He sees in the recent rise
of organic and no-till farming the hope for a new agricultural revolution that might help us avoid the fate
of previous civilizations.

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By the chemical approach, agriculture significantly destabilized both of the core

planetary boundaries—biosphere integrity and climate change, almost singlehand-
edly breaching the boundary for biogeochemical flows of phosphorus and nitrogen,
and significantly contributed to transgression of planetary boundaries for land-
system change, chemical pollution, freshwater use and ocean acidification
(Rockstrom et al. 2009; Steffen et al. 2015). The transgression of the latter
boundaries is effectively bringing down the core planetary boundaries—for
example, chemical pollution, deforestation, and over-irrigation are means by which
agriculture affect the population ecology of other species creating biodiversity loss.
Regarding the impact of agriculture, planetary boundaries framework as Steffen
et al. envision it is complementary to previous reports like UN’s Inter governmental
panel on climate change (IPCC 2014). Together they illustrate not only how
agriculture makes its ecological debt, but how this debt is making itself larger down
the eco-chain—how, for example, high nitrogen field-application damages river and
coastal ecosystems diversity. At the same time, and most importantly, these
assessments suggest the specific eco-position of agriculture—how in every instance
of reducing its ecological debt, agriculture can become an ecological benefactor (in
the sense that it could become a carbon and biodiversity sink, instead of a source).
Concretely, to meet the world’s future food security and sustainability needs—i.e. to
increase agricultural food production and at the same time reduce its ecological
debt, a transformation of agriculture must take place which, among other things,
includes:
(1) cut greenhouse gas emissions from land use and farming by at least 80%
(IPCC 2007); (2) reduce biodiversity and habitat losses; (3) reduce
unsustainable water withdrawals, especially where water has competing
demands; and (4) phase out water pollution from agricultural chemicals. Other
environmental issues must also be addressed, but these four undergird the
relationship between agriculture and the environment and should be addressed
as necessary first steps. (Foley et al. 2011, 339).
Exactly this kind of transformation is the aim of ecological system-design models of
agriculture.
In the last few decades, this ecological agricultural paradigm emerged in
numerous forms which can be summed up in two groups. On the one side, it was
originally spawned as the ‘natural farming’ by Masanobu Fukuoka in the 1960s, and
developed in the today widespread Permaculture movement. The key tenet of
Permaculture (PC) is that, in agro-system design, only eco-friendly solutions are
human-beneficial. The method for achieving this equilibrium of humane and
ecological goals is systemic design—functional assembly of species, and almost
complete eschewing of modern agricultural technologies, specifically the use of
biocides, artificial fertilizers, and tillage (Mollison 1988).2 PC’s direct consequences
2
A field full of grasshoppers (pests) is a field full of spiders (predators). Yet, as Fukuoka points out in his
1968 classic The One-Straw Revolution, after pesticides use (which kills both species of insect) pests
always return, and quickly multiply since there are no predators—hence we need stronger and stronger
biocides to eliminate the new population resistant to previous measures. An analogue pattern of one of the
most pressing medical-science problems regarding antibiotics and evolving resistance of bacteria.

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are exactly the transformations of agriculture suggested in the preceding passage.

Through its revolutionary techniques like incorporation of animals and vegetables in
multi-layered fruit forests, biological pest control, mixed cropping, adapting
species-selection to local biome, passive irrigation, and other techniques, GHG’s are
absorbed and biodiversity stimulated, there are fewer changes of land-systems, fresh
water-use and chemical pollution, and less interference with biogeochemical flows.3
The other group of system-design models—integrated farming—is a dynamic,
flexible (i.e. opportunistic decision making), low input farm management system
which aims to enhance contemporary methods by delivering more sustainable
agriculture (Hendrickson et al. 2008) It focuses on reducing production specializa-
tion, distancing itself from industrial monocultures, and integrates livestock and
cropping system and stimulates biological pest control, similarly to PC. However,
the crucial difference from PC is that it doesn’t hesitate to use advanced chemical
agro-technologies, nor intensive agro-mechanical measures, when it seems neces-
sary. Regarding the food security, its reliance on tested contemporary agro-technical
measures makes Integrated agriculture (IntAg) more secure than PC for broadscale
agro-systems, where contemporary chemical methods guard it against specific perils
of large systems (which have been, throughout the industrial revolution, essential
for global food production).
Both approaches involve attention to detail and continuous improvement in all
areas of a farming practices through informed, flexible management processes,
instead achievement of predetermined goals, and their characteristic difference from
industrial agriculture is knowledge-intensiveness. However, the PC group is
predominantly based in biological sciences, while the integrated approach includes
cutting-edge agricultural science. In practice, the difference is mainly in the
reactions on the problematic cases (e.g. pest or disease outbreaks), where PC
replicates wild systems scenarios and lets the system ‘take care of itself’ (or
stimulates it slightly or in the long run), while IntAg tends to act by relying on
contemporary4 agricultural techniques, that is, chemical or strictly technological
solutions. Also, the PC is envisioned essentially like a family way of living, with
accompanying ethical norms, while the integrated approach is primarily a business
strategy; although IntAg does include attentive and flexible land stewardship, at
odds with industrial monoculture. In these reasons we see the main philosophical
difference between these two approaches—PC includes a whole philosophy of
living where the environment is a value in itself, while IntAg incorporates the
environment into the calculation because it is economical (cf. Hendrickson et al.
2008, 265–6).

3
Whether PC approach actually work, that is produce the same amount of food as modern agriculture, is
still a scientifically disputed question. We will return to this point later on.
4
It is, perhaps, important to have a sense of timescale of agro-technologies. We used in this place
‘contemporary’ with reference to the 20th (or parts of 19th) century, since earlier agriculture, due to the
lack of technology, functioned without biocides, artificial fertilizers and almost all of modern machinery,
excluding shallow plough. In a sense, both PC and IntAg are partially reverberating to pre-1900s
techniques, especially regarding produced commodities diversification (Hendrickson et al. 2008, 266),
what makes their knowledge-intensiveness even prominent.

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The natural farming alternative is obviously radical, but although it eschews

much of contemporary agricultural technology, it is a knowledge intensive approach
which includes various sciences. Nonetheless, it seems philosophically dubious
whether we really need anything more than an economical approach to the
environment—approach that precludes undesirable consequences for the Earth
system as long as they are costly for us. However, the philosophical crux is can we
assess what consequences are costly for us—obviously, it depends on exactly how
long runs are we contemplating. Disturbing nitrogen biogeochemical flows, for
example, is a process with a rebound effect, lagging often many generation and
through many indirect stages. Even those who seriously considered two centuries
ago that industrial revolution can have such dramatic consequences for the planet, or
those who are currently deciding whether to use underwater aquifers, could be
reasonably swayed by shorter term benefits. After all, much of the consequences and
their repercussions are unknown or unclear, and the crux is precisely there—how
should we position our agricultural actions in the face of unclear technological
consequences. One may say that although many pesticides had no known
detrimental effects on the environment initially, the sheer number of discovered
hazardous chemicals and the mere fact that we do not know how new ones affect the
environment until after several decades of use, make a case for general caution
(prolonged testing) or even prohibition of pesticides. This form of pessimistic meta-
induction argument regarding biocides is the common argument in the organic
debate on the impact of agro-technologies and food safety. On the other hand, many
of these technologies work (produce generally relatively safe food) and the question
is ‘‘Do we have enough scientific information on alternative agro-methods and,
crucially, do we have a technology to implement them broadscale?’’. These are
general questions of philosophy of technology, but gain specific spearhead in
agriculture, because here we simply must extensively interact with (and, thereby,
impact) the natural environment in order to survive, no matter what are our cultural
goals. In the age of Anthropocene, this proves to be the most problematic
connection—perhaps the only unassailable case of external dependence of human
technosphere.
The former problem regarding pesticide use essentially comes down to the
question ‘‘How precisely should we recreate natural systems in agriculture?’’.
Should we try to copy natural systems in all possible detail, or is incorporating
certain organisms or natural substances for their agro-systemic function enough to
have ecologically and humanly safe agriculture? This difference between copying
and incorporating can be quite indistinguishable in many cases, especially when we
have in mind that complete copying is out of the question (Bensaude-Vincent 2011,
10); even in PC, every time grafted fruit trees or, perhaps, even the artificially
selected grain is used, natural systems are augmented (domesticated species
function similarly as the wild ones, but not exactly the same). However, because
IntAg regresses in certain instances to the chemical approach (i.e. includes biocides
and artificial fertilizers), a fairly clear distinction can be made between the PC’s
mimicking of natural ecosystems as full as possible, including even its disturbances
(e.g. tolerating pest or weed outbreaks), and the IntAg’s looking upon structural

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relations in natural systems, learning from them, and implementing their general
structure into our conventional planet-feeding agricultural techniques.
It is interesting to assess these eco-system design approaches from the recently
emerging biomimicry perspective, in which researchers draw on natural solutions to
engineering problems, in order to devise sustainable technologies (Benyus 1997;
Harman 2013). Since both PC and IntAg look upon natural ecosystems for their
designs and have sustainability as the main goal, both can be accurately described as
biomimetic approaches. However, due to above discrepancy in their methods
(regarding the persistence in nature-copying), we observe that their biomimetic
status is not equal. In order to explain this point, let us first critically dwell on the
concept of biomimicry itself.

Philosophy of Nature-Based Technology

Biomimicry (BM) is a concept recently popularized by Janine Benyus (1997) and

hailed as a new science (ibid.), a design concept (Mathews 2011), or a paradigm of
technological research (Dicks 2016), or ecological innovation (Blok and Gremmen
2016). It is an informal movement which unites scientist from many different
disciplines around a common problem of sustainable design understood as nature-
based technology. The central theme is borrowing patterns and products from the
biosphere, recreating and adapting them for industrial production. In spite of
philosophical development of its meaning in recent years, its domain of application
remains somewhat unclear and it is used as an umbrella term for a variety of
research fields ranging from the chemistry of natural products to sustainable
architecture, via nanocomposites and biomaterials (Bensaude-Vincent et al. 2002).
Although cases of successful copying of nature are rare, the lesson propagated is
that we should ‘tap’ into four billion years worth of research and development
represented by the natural world to solve our technological adaptability-problems
(Benyus 1997). The question which underlies all these disciplines, and which is of
the most relevance for agriculture, is how we should understand life. Should we
understand life only as one technology among others, or consider it as genuinely
different from human artifacts?
This ambivalence in understanding life’s relation to technology comes way back
from Aristotle’s distinction between artificial and natural. The understanding of
technology as ‘unnatural’ is based on Aristotle’s view of technology (technê) as
only imitation of Nature (physis). The view that artefacts are necessarily deprived of
inner movement or ‘substantial form’ marks a tradition reaching to the medieval
times, and long constituted an obstacle to technological advances (Bensaude-
Vincent 2011, 2). From the 19th century onwards, especially after the synthesis of
urea—incidentally an artificial fertilizer and animal feed, significant for modern
intensive agriculture, competing technological mythology emerged, associated with
the culture of chemistry, which promoted artificial over natural (ibid.). In the course
of the 20th century, due to achievements of synthetic chemistry and materials
science, and then through molecular biology and information technology, and then
by cybernetics and nanotechnology, our representation of nature and life has been

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reconfigured again and again and shaped the era of technomimetism—understand-

ing of nature modeled after machines (Bensaude-Vincent 2007). Living systems are
viewed as collections of devices that can be abstracted from their environment and
reassembled for artificial purposes—just the way the traditional technologies have
been doing for centuries with wood, bone, or skin by processing them to make a
variety of artefacts. The modern twist came with the development of ‘bionics’ and
‘biomimetics’ in the post WW2 era. These engineering approaches propagated study
of life-resembling systems and mechanics, respectively. Their aim, specifically of
bionics, was primarily to increase our control of nature, and today it came to run
parallel to an equally strong biomimicry movement whose primary aim is
sustainable participation in Nature (Wahl 2006).
Revival of biomimetism at the turn of the twenty-first century is a delicate
balance between the modern chemists’ conviction that technology can indeed copy
and even improve nature, and the medieval belief that technologies do not have the
‘inner movement’ of the living things—only sustainable technologies do. These
technologies, purportedly, emulate natural processes and structures and fit into
nature in an eco-friendly way, consequently blurring the boundaries between natural
and artificial. Technologies labeled unsustainable do not achieve this ‘harmonious
fitting’ and are starkly disassociated from nature and natural solutions. This way
biomimicry re-postulates the difference between natural and artificial (challenged
by the technomimetic approach), but at the same time equates the subset labeled
sustainable technologies as essentially natural.5 Partially restored polarity between
nature and technology is the main philosophical merit of biomimicry. In the BM
approach, the values attached to the cultural boundary between nature and artefacts
are at the same time preserved, and the delicate boundary space associated with
sustainability is reserved for scientific exploration and technological improvement.
Also, nature preserving ethics is propagated (Benyus 1997; Dicks 2017). Partition-
ing technologies the way BM does is in fact saying that sustainable nature-based
technologies are ethically right, and unsustainable ecosphere-damaging technolo-
gies are wrong.
Developing the concept of biomimicry, however, is not without its difficulties. It
has been argued, for example, that BM presupposes strict distinctions between
intervention in nature of the industrial revolution and receptivity of nature
characteristic of the biomimetic revolution (Blok and Gremmen 2016, 209), and
also between reproduction of what is given in nature and invention of novel artefacts
(ibid., 208). However, literal copying, associated with the naı̈ve BM concept, is not
included in the one developed on the basis on sustainability (Bensaude-Vincent
et al. 2002, 4; Mathews 2011, 366–7) where the functional definition focuses on
composition of artefacts inside an ecosystem, not on their materiality. Definition of
biomimetic technologies through their function in the biosphere enables inclusion of
any artefacts constructed on ecological principles, regardless of the occurrence of
their counterparts in nature (cf. Blok 2017, ch. 2—‘natural-technological hybrids’).

5
However, the equation is not by Aristotelian standard of both being rooted in poesis (Blok and
Gremmen 2016, 207], but on the basis that both life and technologies are sustainably participating in the
biosphere. They are identified by their homeostatic function.

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Hence the strict distinctions between technological reproduction and invention, or

between receptivity and intervention, are not necessary for the sustainability-based
concept of BM. The way these distinctions are present is in a more sensible
epistemological scheme—through the degrees of sustainability (cf. Mathews 2011,
374). Sustainability is not applied by pre-ordinated abstract philosophical distinc-
tions, but checked and rechecked again and again by our best science.6 Above
distinctions re-emerge again on a more sophisticated level, as the endpoints on the
sustainability scale, where BM concept has two interpretations—bio-imitation and
bio-inspiration. Namely, Benyus and other proponents of biomimicry (e.g. Harman
2013; Dicks 2016) regularly talk of biomimicry as relationship towards Nature
based on both imitation and inspiration. This is sometimes referred to as taking
natural systems as model or as ‘mentor’ (Benyus 1997; cf. Dicks 2016) and it can
also be conceptualized as a strong versus weak concept of biomimicry (cf. Blok and
Gremmen 2016). Having in mind that strict copying is out of the question
(Bensaude-Vincent 2011), the imitation/inspiration distinction in the biomimetic
approach should be understood as manifesting the relative degree of deviation from
natural systems (i.e. technological import at odds with natural systems dynamics),
specifically determined in each technological discipline (with sustainability as a
common threshold, which, of course, as any scientific concept, is not a boundary
exact in detail).7
The two interpretations of BM can be traced to discussion in environmental
philosophy regarding biocentric versus anthropocentric approach to nature (valuing
nature for its own sake or only as a resource to service mankind) (Norton 1992), and
also in the underlying ambiguity in the concept of nature (artificial as a part or as in
opposition of nature) (cf. Blok and Gremmen 2016). Although the two environ-
mental perspectives are united in the BM movement through the sustainability
notion, methodological predilections summed up in imitation versus inspiration
interpretations of BM are reflecting certain core preferences of the earlier
environmental positions. What is aimed (and required) in the philosophy of
biomicry is inclusive conception of nature, one that incorporates both ‘culture’ and
‘nature’ without collapsing distinction between them—a ‘‘culture of nature’’ so to
speak, a set of cultural practices designed specifically to enable flourishing of
natural processes, and vice versa, a cultivation of humanly enhancing environment.
Importantly, both interpretations of BM represent essentially ecological, as opposed
to exploitative avenues of technological development. The ambiguity in BM
approach regarding the optimal measure on sustainability scale (and the question
should we imitate or emulate life), however, remains, and is nicely manifested,
maybe more than anyplace else, precisely in agriculture.

6
This naturalistic approach is constitutive of modern philosophy of science.
7
As Nancy Cartwright, Margaret Morrison and John Norton forcefully demonstrated at the end of the
last century (and made it the mainstream of present-day philosophy of science), all our scientific
representations (except, perhaps, a marginal minority from theoretical physics) are based on
approximations and idealizations and don’t constitute descriptions of reality exact in detail.

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Biomimicry in the System-Design Model of Agriculture

Returning to agriculture, biomimetic nuances in the versions of ecological model of

agriculture emerge as important in the application of BM concept. We can describe
Permaculture in a nutshell as an attempt to structurally copy real ecosystem
relations, usually with partial replacement of wild by human-beneficial species (of
the same family as the wild ones constituting the local biome), and Integrated
agriculture as an approach which shares permacultural main agro-techniques (like
integration of production units and biological pest-control), but considers chemical
fixes suited for human purposes when a system deviates from commercially
utilizable results. Even after short description it is obvious that they are both
biomimetic solutions—both are creative solutions inspired by nature [a sort of
‘‘assimilation of biological machinery’’ (Ball 2001)], and both includes bio-
inclusive ethics (where nature adaptation for human ends is ameliorated to include
adaptation of human ends to nature’s capacities). They are, of course, leaning to
different specific biomimetic content. On the one side, although creative design
solutions are characteristic mark of PC (notably spatial rearrangements of functional
dependencies found in wild ecosystems), its blending in in the natural environment,
with minimum technological input, makes PC highly biomimetic. On the other side,
although IntAg doesn’t completely renounce conventional agricultural methods and
technologies, nor include a whole philosophy of living, it does adopt a bio-inclusive
ethics, if nothing because it considers economically counterproductive to do
otherwise. Consequently, it seems accurate to describe PC as bio-imitation (or that it
is modeled on natural ecosystems and their dynamics) and IntAg as bio-inspiration
(or that it is mentored by nature in reorganizing conventional agriculture).
The specific problem of applying the concept of biomimicry to agriculture is that
in it we deal with natural systems twofold. They are both the sources for mimicking,
and at the same time natural species and their relationships are incorporated in
designs—thereby being the material. Nature being both the source and the material
for design complicates differentiating nature from technology (a polarity necessary
for BM). What is actually mimicked (alongside completely intact ecosystems on
micro level) are functional relationships between wild species, and transferred to a
slightly different group of species which suits human purposes better—for example
the functional structure of temperate zone forest is mimicked by including
cultivated fruit trees and domesticated animals into design, instead of wild fruit trees
and game. What then is the technological import comes down essentially to
intelligent design of the system—i.e. functional assembly of species (Mollison 1988)
[accompanied by a modest and selected use of conventional agro-technologies
(Hendrickson et al. 2008)].
In contrast, what is incorporated in technomimetic and majority of other
biomimetic disciplines are, at best, natural products (e.g. urea), not natural species.
On molecular or nanoscale levels, for example, natural ‘manufacturing’ can be
accurately mimicked because on these levels ‘‘disparity between the natural and
synthetic art of manufacture [as well as the inanimate and living matter boundary]
begins to diminish’’ (Ball 2001, 416). The way ‘bottom’ levels blur the nature

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versus technology polarity by developing synthetic manufacturing to its extreme

(i.e. its indistinguishability from natural) is quite different from biomimetic
agriculture where the method is rational organization of natural systems by the
principle of least action—i.e. proactive design. Notwithstanding the huge differ-
ence, there is an analogy between agriculture and nanotechnology. In the latter, the
‘‘living systems are viewed as molecular manufactures (…) characterized by what
they can perform’’ (Bensaude-Vincent 2011, 7), while in agriculture they are viewed
as macroscale organic manufactures, also characterized by their function (Mollison
1988, ch. 3). In both, the function is the priority in the design process. However, the
functional orientation in ecological agriculture doesn’t blur the distinction between
nature and technology materially, but blurs the distinction between organized by
nature and by artificial design. The similarity is methodological, not ontological.
The nature/technology polarity in ecological agriculture is thus, on the one hand,
partially blurred (there we have ‘a natural technology’—the biomimetic agriculture-
, organized in such a way as to perform essential functions by natural methods—e.g.
biological pest control, organic fertilizers, etc.), and, on the other, partially restored
(‘unnatural technology’ based on the chemical model of agro-systems, where
traditional technologies enable key functions of a system).
Fertility cycles present, perhaps, a fairly obvious distinction between biomimetic
and conventional technology in agriculture. Somewhat more subtle case is, for
example, in the debate about genetically modified food—although it is perhaps hard
to spell out. We believe that here, again, ‘sustainability’ is the key concept. If we
adopt as methodology that sustainability is measured by generations, GMO’s are
simply untested and their overall impact can’t be tested except by use, measured in
generations. If the only experiments we have so far are on mice, who lose their
ability to reproduce after four generations, it is no wonder why we take GMO’s as
‘unnatural’ technology, and a fairly unsafe one for humans (Farre et al. 2011).
Similar arguments run on the topics of specific agro-chemicals such as DDT, aldrin,
chlordane, etc., but also on the question of chemicals-use in general. This opens up a
completely new topic of the crucial importance for discussing ecological
agricultural systems—the health impact, to which we will return later.
We have argued so far that ecological system-design model of agriculture is
scientifically and philosophically advantageous comparing to the dominant chem-
ical model. But when we come down to the mode of this new paradigm—the choice
between PC and IntAg, what are the essential markers on which we should assess
their difference? In other words, what is the logic driving the PC’s opting for that
extra abstention from chemical inputs and machinery use, above the IntAg’s
abstention from chemicals that damage the ecosystem for the sake of economic
viability? Two logics are present here: ecological and medical. From the PC’s
ecological point of view, abstention from energy-intensive industrial monocultures
is simply not enough for the transformation of agriculture required for conservation
of the Earth’s ecological capacities—notably, to stop climate change and
biodiversity loss (IPCC 2014; Rockstrom et al. 2009; Steffen et al. 2015; Rockstrom
2015; Folke et al. 2011). What is necessary from this perspective is a complete
transformation of agriculture from a GHGs and biodiversity-loss source, and
redesigning it to be a carbon sink and basic-biodiversity refuge (Foley et al. 2011).

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In practice, the most forceful way to accomplish this (alongside banning industrial
monocultural methods) is to eschew fossil fuels and biocides altogether. The last
two and a half centuries of civilization are characterized precisely by an ever-
expanding base of fossil-fuel use so one might say that ‘‘most of our freedoms so far
have been energy-intensive’’ (Chakrabarty 2009, 208). Accompanying agricultural
progress, which freed the workers for the industrial revolution by feeding the
growing population and shrinking the percentage working in agriculture, was also
conducted in this energy-intensive manner (driven by fossil fuels, biocides and
artificial fertilizers). Therefore, it is plausible to say that the earth system crisis we
face is the price we pay for the pursuit of energy-intensive civilization. PC is
deliberately devised to tackle this problem—to challenge this civilizational mode (if
you want—dogma) at its core by trying to answer to alternative challenge: How to
have agriculture without the fossil fuels? How to have a non-energy-intensive
freedom? Reasons are obvious—we cannot afford to destabilize planetary
conditions that work like boundary parameters of human existence (Chakrabarty
2009; Rockstrom et al. 2009).
Choosing to take care for ecology contains at the same time a concern for human,
most of all physical health, which is believed endangered due to toxic practices of
modern agriculture. This logic manifest nicely why PC is considered in this article
as a classic example of BM—it unifies anthropocentric and biocentric perspectives
of the environmental debate (cf. Norton 1992). In this human health-oriented way
we should understand PC’s tenet that only eco-friendly solutions are human-
beneficial. This is not as deep ecology and some similar position suggest that human
self is an ecological self (in the sense we should strip away layers of our culture to
find ourselves), but that human self (both mental and physical) has the best
perspectives to develop inside a cultivated ecological environment. Namely, in the
PC there is no implicit distinction between the natural and cultural—the distinction
emerges only in cases of eco-damaging cultural activities, which are on the edge of
considering as cultural sensu srticto (nature degradation as anti-culture). It should
not be mixed with Marxist or similar positions where every culture is natural,
simply because it’s created by human species. On the contrary, PC’s insistence on
‘harmony’ of culture with the natural ecosystems (cf. Mathews 2011, 374) puts PC
firmly into the sustainability movement. Therefore, we can say that health
considerations underlie the entire PC movement—a concern tightly connected with
another widespread grass-root practice—the Local food movement (Noll 2014).
This movement is in the most direct connection with the choosing of the form of
agriculture, and even the socio-political model we pursue, because it makes market
pressures on agriculture and counteracts the governmental policies (or lack of
them), creating alternative economic incentives for agricultural development (cf.
Folke et al. 2011).
A crucial question poses itself: Is the transition to low-energy-consuming-low-
waste model of broadscale agriculture PC proposes a bit too much? Is the current
Earth’s crisis already a catastrophe which necessitates such drastic changes in our
cultural practices? And even if it is, do we have enough scientific reasons that the
amelioration of conventional agriculture embodied by IntAg is not enough? From an
ecological point of view, especially since both are still new in application (not

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enough generation have passed in order to sufficiently assess their real sustainabil-
ity), it seems as we do not possess enough evidence to decisively answer preceding
questions. Consequently, it may seem rashly to demand such drastic measure as to
eschew our civilization-feeding practices. Especially when we add up the arguments
that PC is not enough production-intensive in order to feed the growing population
with the same percentage of those working in agriculture (Scholes and Scholes
2013, 566), and that the problem is not the scale of human consumption, but its
entropic (nature depleting and degrading) character (Mathews 2011, 373). In short,
as long as BM aims to conform our ends to nature, as it finds them in the consumer
society, IntAg seems vastly preferable solution. However, matching agriculture to
suit our purposes may not be enough for the ecological crisis; hence, certain cultural
changes and matching of our purposes to the ecosphere are necessary (Mathews
ibid; Foley et al. 2011). This turn out to be a question of policy and many already
argue that fossil fuel subsidies and policies that support unsustainable agricultural
practices by should be eliminated on the level of the United Nations in the next
decade or so (Griggs et al. 2013).8 Paradoxically, although PC is tackling head-on
environmental issues driving alleged policy reforms, its targeting of goals to far into
the future makes, for the time being, IntAg more appropriate for professional
farmers, due to the cheap input prices of the materials in question and relatively
short-termed nature of business viability.

Conclusion

PC’s pedestrian methods—intensive human labor and micro-management—can, in

the meantime, prove useful for the social underclass and may turn the tables in
extreme situations such as prolonged poverty or economic crisis. In micro-
management lies its biggest economic potential since it provides people with
subsistence possibilities, through intensive care and on low budget, from extremely
small tracts of land—an in-depth nature-integration, so to speak.9 The real strength
of PC seems to be not so much in the viability of its economical scheme on the
macro level (from the perspective of state or the world gross agricultural produce;
its goal after all is self-sufficiency), but being a sort of a social safety-net. By
practically converting, with low-technology, non-arable lands (left behind by
conventional agriculture) and other unused land and even home gardens into
intensive food-producing patches, PC opens possibilities to a relatively safe and
long-term self-employment with as little capital as possible. In the world where
severe shortage of jobs is expected in the next several decades (both due to
automatization of existing jobs and due to global population momentum) (Stiegler
2015), PC provides alternative, worst-case agricultural and social model of
development.
8
Notably, to limit biocides, nitrogen and phosphorous fertilizers, and fresh water use (Griggs et al. 2013,
307).
9
Aim of PC’s micro-management practices is to additionally biologically interlock the system and
thereby diversify and enhance production, creating yields where conventional methods miss to do so
(Mollison 1988, ch. 2).

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Precisely due to this pedestrian way, however, the PC is not appropriate

agricultural solution for the current Earth crisis, at least not for the civilizational
modes and cultural practices as we know and nurture them today. Although many
suggest that a great transition is necessary (e.g. Rockstrom 2015; Steffen et al.
2015), and that agriculture must include not only limitations on energy and
materials used, but also a change in our cultural patterns of food consumption
(Foley et al. 2011), there still isn’t enough evidence that we need a complete cultural
revolution, implicit in the PC’s low-energy-consuming-low-waste model of
agriculture. After all, visions of future of civilization as ‘million villages’ (Mollison
1988), where majority of human population inhabits eco-villages, is obviously a
farfetched goal [although it remains unclear what future food crises, associated with
the climate crash, will bring (Winner 2013)]. Fortunately, biomimetic strategies
such as ‘ecological cities’—urban sustainable design which includes self-powering
and water-collecting buildings and small (but net significantly contributing) food
producing patches—are compatible, or, perhaps, essentially connected with
ecological agriculture. Together they provide an ecological alternative to the
million villages vision. Current world demographic momentum, however, is
expected to provide problems anyway, especially in the light of currently prevailing
cultural practices—e.g. in the case of continued immoderate consumption of animal
products and food-wasting in transport and trade (Foley et al. 2011, 340–1). In spite
of these dappled pressures, returning to small-scale forms of society must be
considered, maybe not as a dooms-day solution, but surely as a severe crisis
scenario.
PC as agricultural approach is not, of course, endangered by these shortcomings
of its civilizational visions and its agricultural methods may provide important
economic opportunities even when applied partially. It proves especially significant
if we accept that one of the most pressing challenges of the current Earth system
crisis is that:
Sheer demographic momentum will increase the world’s urban population by
3 billion people over the next 40 years (90% of them in poor cities) and no
one—absolutely no one—has a clue how a planet of slums, with growing food
and energy crises, will accommodate their biological survival, much less their
inevitable aspirations to basic happiness and dignity (Mike Davis, ‘‘Living on
the Ice Shelf: Humanity’s Meltdown’’, loc. cit. Chakrabarty 2009, 211).
From the perspective of ecological agriculture, we argue, all this mounting pressures
on the Earth system make only stronger grounds to take PC seriously—to nurture it
as a cutting edge eco-agriculture, a sort of testing ground for expanding the
biomimetic content of the extensive-producing agro-techniques. (One could argue—
what PC has always been.)
The way ecological discussion will settle in agriculture will determine much rest
of the tailoring of our culture. And not just in the GHG-emissions tailoring by other
economic sectors, but also by transforming how we understand relation between
nature and technology. Biomimetic agriculture, by interlocking its systems with the
natural ones without altering the natural species, transforms our picture of
sustainable technology as not only fitting in in nature, but to which nature is an

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integral part. What this means for the whole biomimetic movement is rather
puzzling. It can be argued that ecological agriculture calls for a sort of technological
pyramid, based around agro-technologies (due to its external dependence on the
environment, through the connection with food—i.e. subsistence and health), where
other biomimetic disciplines are deliberately designed to fit the food-production
modalities, to mold a picture of sustainable civilization counteracting tech-
nomimetic avenues of development. It is a nested vision of technology which, if
successful, purports to transform the UN SDGs project and to foster planetary
stability (cf. Griggs et al. 2013).
Although it is clear that the chemical model of agriculture is endangering the
very (and only) conditions we know that can support modern life—the Holocene
geological epoch, the precise measure of agricultural technologies we have to
eschew remains a matter of further exploration. However, since we need the
transformation of agriculture to happen before ca. 2050 (Rockstrom 2015),
alongside with increasing the total production (Foley et al. 2011), choosing a
specific model of ecological agriculture turns form purely scientific question to an
engineering (and a political) problem. Anyhow, the ecological agriculture provides
possibilities to forestall some of the ‘‘extreme, ultimately physical ruptures’’ and
‘‘unthinkable consequence of the ongoing crisis’’, which pose to challenge and
reshape our basic institutions and technologies (Winner 2013, 6–7). Tackling the
Earth system crisis, agricultural bio-friendly solutions are challenging our ideas of
limits of technology in a sustainable culture, as well as the place of our subsistence
technologies in the technosphere.

Acknowledgements This work has been funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Techno-
logical development of the Government of Serbia.

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