Excerpted from This Changes Everything.

Currently, much of the debate about agriculture and climate change focuses on contrasting the pros and cons of industrial agriculture versus local and organic farming, with one side emphasizing higher yields and the other emphasizing lower chemical inputs and often (though not always) shorter supply lines. Coming up the middle is ‘agroecology,’ a less understood practice in which small-scale farmers use sustainable methods based on a combination of modern science and local knowledge.

Based on the principle that farming should maximize species diversity and enhance natural systems of soil protection and pest control, agroecology looks different wherever its holistic techniques are practiced. But a report in National Geographic provides a helpful overview of how these principles translate in a few different contexts: the integration of ‘trees and shrubs into crops and livestock fields; solar-powered drip irrigation, which delivers water directly to plant roots; intercropping, which involves planting two or more crops near each other to maximize the use of light, water, and nutrients; and the use of green manures, which are quick-growing plants that help prevent erosion and replace nutrients in the soil.’

These methods and many others maintain healthy soil while producing nutritious food — more than industrial agriculture does, per unit area — and limit the need for farmers to buy expensive products like chemical pesticides, fertilizers, and patented seeds. But many farmers who have long used these methods have realized that they also have a triple climate benefit: they sequester carbon in the soil, avoid fossil fuel-based fertilizers, and often use less carbon for transportation to market, in addition to better withstanding extreme weather and other climate impacts. And communities that can feed themselves are far less vulnerable to price shocks within the broader globalized food system. Which is why La Via Campesina, a global network of small farmers with 200 million members, often declares, ‘Agroecology is the solution to solve the climate crisis.’ Or ‘small farmers cool the planet.’

In recent years, a phalanx of high-level food experts has come to similar conclusions. ‘A large segment of the scientific community now acknowledges the positive impacts of agroecology on food production, poverty alleviation and climate change mitigation — and this is what is needed in a world of limited resources,’ says Olivier De Schutter, who served as the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food from 2008 to 2014.