Dr. Marney Isaac, Canada Research Chair in Agroecosystems and Development, Professor at U of T, and Bioenterprise SIAC Advisor, explains why agroecology, agrobiodiversity, functional traits, and urban farming are key for addressing food security and achieving sustainability
From the Bay of Fundy to the botanical sanctuaries on the island of Kauai, Dr. Marney Isaac has travelled far to uncover the secrets that maintain the balance of our planet’s most precious and diverse ecosystems. She has devoted her career to understanding and preserving these exquisite places – the life that exists within them and the lives they affect without.
Laterally, Marney now works to harmonize the philosophies of biodiversity, transferring knowledge between these wild spaces and our managed agricultural systems. She is an activist, an academic, and an adventurer with a creative spirit. Now finding herself standing squarely before the gates positioned at the epicenter of the movement toward sustainable farming, she shares with us her unique perspective on where we are with food security, and where she believes we’re headed.
Environmental Fidelity
Marney’s story begins in New Brunswick, a province known for its contrasting extremes of topographic terrain and climatic conditions. The highest tides found in the world help shape not only its rugged coastlines but also its warm and sandy beaches. Inland, its rivers meander past rocky mountains, gentle rolling hills and low plains, and through its pristine Acadian Forests, all teeming with diverse and abundant life.
The province is also unmistakably marked by its iconic history of forestry and fisheries, and it was here that Marney Isaac first bore witness to the degradation of her beloved natural resources. Unable to stand aside, the young activist sought to draw attention to the importance of these irreplaceable landscapes. This is where Marney’s commitment to the environment was born.
Seeking a change of scenery, Marney left her home to pursue undergraduate studies at the University of Guelph, drawn there by its environmental science program. Her subsequent journey through academia was not straightforward, taking detours to work and fund her education. Her gigs varied from forest firefighting to farming, while her focus on education remained.
Post-graduation, Marney moved to Kauai, Hawaii to work in ethnobotany at the National Tropical Botanical Garden, sparking her lifelong interest in the relationship between people and plants. This experience influenced her future academic pursuits.
Returning to Canada, Marney completed a master’s degree at the U of G, shifting focus from botany to the agricultural aspects of agroforestry. This shift set the tone for an enduring theme of her future studies, research, and work – diversity in agricultural systems.
Marney’s journey brought her to Toronto where she continued her work in agroforestry and completed her PhD. This was followed up with a post-doctoral fellowship in France, known for its strong sustainable agriculture development programs, before returning once again to Toronto.
Since 2009, Dr. Isaac has continued to embody her original commitment to the environment as a professor of multiple faculties at the University of Toronto (U of T) including the Department of Physical and Environmental Sciences, the Department of Global Development Studies, the Department of Geography, and the School of the Environment.
Today, as the Canada Research Chair in Agroecosystems Development, Co-Director of the Sustainable Food and Farming Futures (SF3) Cluster, and a valued member of the Science and Innovation Advisory Committee at Bioenterprise, Dr. Marney Isaac has evolved from a young activist to an exemplary leader. She heads the Integrative Agroecology Lab at U of T, mentors grad students, and continues her research, all while fulfilling her role as an orchestrator, acting as an invaluable point of connection between diverse stakeholders within the emerging world of agroecology and sustainable farming.
Agriculture Meets Ecology
In 2019, The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) called out agroecology as the transformative pathway to sustainable agriculture in their document, The 10 Elements of Agroecology. According to Dr. Isaac, FAO member states have approved the document, stating that this concept will be the target for transitioning agriculture systems for sustainability. This is a big deal.
So, what exactly is agroecology and why should we care about it?
Agroecology is a holistic approach to agriculture that considers the ecological, economic, and social aspects of agricultural systems. Its purpose is to achieve sustainability by creating healthy, biodiverse food systems that are resilient to climate change by incorporating a set of ecological principles. In doing so, it aims to integrate local knowledge and cultures to promote social equity and food sovereignty.
Unsurprisingly, some practices employed through this approach include biodiversity, soil health, and water management. Agroforestry, conservation tillage, crop diversification, natural pest management, and organic fertilizers, among others, also fall into this bucket. But it also doesn’t leave out the equally important social and economic factors impacting farming communities.
Dr. Isaac says, “Agroecology is a way of conceptualizing sustainable agriculture as a science of ecological processes, yes. But it also includes farmer movements and practices on the farm. So, to achieve successful transitions toward these sustainable systems, we can’t only study the natural sciences. The research must be done within its accurate context.”
This means that while her team is studying the plants and other biological systems on farms, they’re also studying farmer well-being and other influential factors that might affect the adoption of practices by them, encompassing all the moving pieces of a multi-functioning ecosystem.
Agroecology, as a term, has been around for a long time. So why, recently, is it attracting more attention? “We’ve had a lot of science produced without considering the social context around it. The agricultural system we’re currently in is locked, contributing to a cycle of high environmental, social, and economic costs, and these costs continue to grow as time passes,” Marney says.
Simply put, she says, “The practices that have been deployed for the last 40 years are having big consequences for our soil and water, and our climate. These systems are not resilient to changes in the market and they’ve collapsed farmer autonomy. So, we’re trying to find ways to unlock the systems.”
Under the framework of agroecology, Dr. Isaac and her team use a set of 13 principles as they search for the right keys to open the locks and remove the shackles. One principle of focus for them is agrobiodiversity.
The Melodic Hum of Biodiversity
Diversity, on a very basic level, is about variety – how many kinds of things and how many of each kind are present in a given area. And research shows us that more diversity is better.
Agrobiodiversity refers, specifically, to the number, variety, and variability of plants, animals, and microorganisms used – directly or indirectly – in agriculture and food systems. It’s a collection of genetic resources (species, varieties, and breeds) used for food, fodder, fibre, fuel, and pharmaceuticals found within a system. So, back to that very basic level: if there are more resources present, the system is considered more diverse.
Critical for providing nutrition and food security, the principle of agrobiodiversity addresses the adaptability of systems to environmental changes and stressors such as pests, diseases, and climate change. Implementation of agrobiodiversity will conserve and sustainably use available genetic resources with the purpose of protection and preservation of traditional varieties and breeds, as well as the wild relatives of agricultural species.
For Dr. Isaac and her team in the lab, the goal is to study the process and impacts of diversification, or what happens to a system when we replace a current input/component with diversity. For example, we could ask the question: does the introduction of agroforestry, or the addition of trees, on a farm reduce the need for fertilizers for successful crop production? Dr. Isaac’s team works to answer that question and more.
Up until now, our rigid farm systems, which are essentially functioning as homogenous controlled environments, haven’t required a deep understanding of the relationship between every living piece of a biodiverse agricultural system. Now, Marney says, “If we’re interested in transitioning to this biodiverse way of agriculture, then we need to understand how crops strategize in very heterogeneous environments.”
Although the promise of a balanced, holistic return to natural farming methods will sustain us in the long run, we have some work to do to achieve that balance. The purpose of The 10 Elements of Agroecology is to guide all stakeholders through the challenges ahead.
If we don’t know ahead of time how a crop will behave in reaction to a major, or even minor, environmental shift, we may as well be blindfolded as we drive a bus full of passengers. Of course, it would be nice to assume that any “natural” change or amendment would result in a positive outcome, but while we drive our food system with two wheels at the edge of the cliff, and farmers’ livelihoods are on the line, we can’t afford to be optimistic to the point of naivety.
So, according to Dr. Isaac and other leading experts, agroecology is the beacon to guide us out of the global food crisis. And agrobiodiversity is a key principle to help get us there. Diving even deeper, Marney says, “You can measure biodiversity, or the number of plant species. You can measure soil fertility. You can measure all these different variables. But really, it’s what lies in the middle of everything that is responsible for moderating the system.”
So, what lies in the middle? Traits.
Keeping the Tempo with Traits
Over the last few decades, ecologists have exposed a knowledge gap. They’ve discovered that the number of species found in a diverse ecosystem doesn’t quite explain the full story of why and how the system can confer all its necessary functions like nutrient cycling or carbon storage. While diversity is a reflection of the species, it actually has more to do with the specific functional traits that are present in those species.
Functional traits are the characteristics of plants that influence their reproduction, growth, and survival, as well as their effects on the whole ecosystem. These traits include things like leaf size, flowering time, root structure, seed dispersal mechanisms, and wood density.
While one might think of leaves and flowers as the melody, or countermelody of a song, it turns out they belong in the rhythm section. They’re like the bassline, setting the tempo and linking the full arrangement together. These traits are important because they are the key to understanding specific processes, and by studying them, ecologists can better predict how an ecosystem will respond to environmental changes and disturbances.
Dr. Isaac says, “These morphological or chemical traits are the moderating mechanisms of biodiversity. They hold everything together. We need to fully understand just how they underpin the reasons why, for example, we might find higher soil health in one system versus another. Historically, the agronomic traits measured have been things like the size of a plant and how many seeds it has, but that doesn’t really tell you anything about how that plant impacts its environment. With a desire to move toward heterogenous environments, we’ll be adding biodiversity, and disrupting a homogenous system. Understanding functional traits will help us predict the outcome.”
Turned On and Tuned In
Inside the Integrative Agroecology Lab, Marney and her team study not only targeted biodiversity and the implementation of techniques like rotational cropping, but also spaces on farms that are often overlooked to find associated biodiversity, like riparian zones, hedgerows, shelterbelts, and small woodlots.
Her large research program is built around the study of these various zones and their role within large-scale agricultural landscapes. “We’re interested in knowing how biodiversity functions and how it confers function and services here. These functions and services can impact soil fertility, nutrient availability, and changes in soil microbial communities. But they can also impact things like wind and microclimate modification,” she says.
Just as they’ve done in a recent field research project with Alternative Land Use Services (ALUS), they measure all the traits present in a plot of land. By doing so, they’ve proven that it isn’t a specific species of plant contributing to soil health, it’s a specific trait doing the work. By pinpointing the trait responsible for the cause and effect, they’re able to, for example, “pick out genotypes that might work best intercropped with other crops on farms across Canada,” Dr. Isaac says.
Through their work, the team also seeks to address social concerns like barriers presented to farmers during their transitions to sustainable farming practices. They try to answer simple, yet important, questions like, “Why would a farmer plant trees? And if they do, what effects does this have on the farm?”
Remember driving the bus? Metaphorically, this team is pulling off the blindfold to steer clear of the cliff by predicting how the introduction of new methods and processes will cascade to the rest of the farm.
By tuning into, not only the intricate details of functional traits, but the wider scope of a fully functioning farm, including the people living and working on it, Marney and her team can support farmers in their efforts to move toward sustainable farming methods. While their work encompasses large-scale agricultural operations, it doesn’t overlook other potential places where changes could have an enormous, positive impact.
Urban Farms for Food Sovereignty
The team has recently submitted a significant grant proposal focused on urban and peri-urban agroecology. The initiative will create a vast network in Ontario across the Golden Horseshoe, collaborating with municipal bodies, conservation authorities, and various farmer organizations.
This network intends to establish research sites throughout the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) to investigate the impact that sustainable urban agriculture and agrobiodiversity will have on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The project will explore the transformation of underutilized lands, such as green roofs and power corridors, into productive areas and the development of regional food hubs.
This ambitious undertaking will begin with quantifying the land available for these ventures. Dr. Isaac says, “The first pillar of the project is to inventory all the land, to get an accurate idea of how much land we’re talking about, and then identify how much food production we have the potential to produce from it.”
The numbers may be high, but by now not surprising to many who‘ve followed media coverage of the controversial Bill 23, including discussions surrounding unused urban land in Ontario. So, when might we know if the urban farming project will move forward?
Marney expects to learn about the outcome of the proposal by spring 2024. If approved, the project could be a giant leap in the right direction for Toronto. It would set an example for the rest of Canada in our collective efforts to solve issues of food security, promoting local production and creating pathways toward food sovereignty at the same time.
Systems Out of Sync
When asked what might be standing in the way of reaching a consensus around, and uptake of, the practice of agrobiodiversity on farms, Marney points to the mismatch between the efforts of agricultural extension services and the regulatory mechanisms in place that dictate these services.
“You’ve got the pull of markets, people deciding to support local and biodiverse farms, and at the same time, you’ve got the push of regulatory bodies, telling farmers they need to have a certain amount of biodiversity and conservation on their farms. So, to me, the biggest obstacle lies in matching these things up. The government needs to support farmers with economic incentives and access to training and knowledge,” she says.
This alignment and governmental support are crucial for advancing sustainable, biodiverse agricultural systems in Canada, which is currently trailing behind European standards in this innovative approach.
Feedback for a Bright Future
An optimist by nature, Dr. Isaac has a positive opinion about the current state of food security in Canada. From her perspective where she’s entrenched in the agrobiodiversity movement, in the push for sustainable agriculture, with agroecology gaining momentum not only at grassroots levels but also on international platforms, there is good reason to be optimistic.
Farmer-led movements are challenging traditional agricultural structures, advocating for transitions to resilient, localized food systems. This shift is reflected in major policy changes like the aforementioned document endorsed by the FAO of the UN in 2019.
Moreover, the 2022 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) devotes a full section to agroecology and agrobiodiversity, which signals a broader recognition of their roles in addressing climate change.
“I see bright spots with these high-level discussions on transitioning to sustainability through agroecology, and also these transitions happening on farms,” Dr. Isaac says.
Plugging into Innovation
With agroecology and agrobiodiversity set to become a regular part of the agricultural landscapes of the future, and her solid and clear understanding of these philosophies, methods, and principles, Dr. Marney Isaac is aptly poised to help shape the future of farming in Ontario and across the country.
She predicts that increased demand for resources and information from local associations will pressure the government to support necessary agricultural transitions. She says, “We’ve been talking about no-till agriculture and cover cropping for a very long time. By now, these two things should be the minimum practices for sustainable land management. Now it’s time to expand the conversation. Let’s think about adding trees on farms, let’s talk about intercropping. It’s time to push further.”
Pushing boundaries requires innovation. To Marney, innovation isn’t necessarily defined by material technological gadgetry. Innovation is the process of generating new ideas and new ways of thinking. “All farmers, new and established, are innovators, and many are interested in being at the forefront of these transitions. Let’s help them break down the barriers.”
For those farmers keen to move beyond the basics, Dr. Isaac suggests taking a calculated risk by experimenting with a small percentage of their land. For support, she suggests reaching out to local associations as well as the Ecological Farmers Association of Ontario (EFAO) to access available resources.
As the recap of our conversation comes to a close, it becomes obvious that Marney’s work has only just begun. Positioned strategically at the precipice of a movement set to shake the walls of Canadian farming, her future appears far from restful. Yet she is energized, fueled by the promise of a better future.
Listening to the echoes of her past, never wavering from her early commitment, Dr. Isaac works to educate and advocate, while leading Canada and the world to a better understanding of the importance of agroecology. She gives a clear voice to the needs of farmers and the environment so that all Canadians have an opportunity to not only witness but actively engage in, the approach toward autonomy for our food and agriculture systems.