I think part of the reason a lot of (white) agronomists / crop scientists / industrial agriculture proponents get so mad about agroecology is because it's a movement led by peasants and Indigenous people in the Global South that refuses to accept their expertise as valid

What is particularly interesting is their tactic of deflecting from their whiteness, upholding colonial systems of food production / plantation form, and often paid support from capitalist industrial agriculture by basically calling agroecology white privilege etc.

What has made the argument historically effective are the elements of truth...owning farmland in the U.S. is more accessible to white people, homesteading is rooted in settler colonialism + capitalist individualism, many academic authors on permaculture/agroecology are white.

But the argument is built on erasure. It ignores academic research on agroecology produced in the Global South. It ignores the millions of people with little to no platform or voice practicing agroecology in the Global South.

It ignores grassroots social movements pushing for these practices in Central and South America, Asia, and Africa. It ignores people who are literally risking their lives to fight against the global industrial food system and build something better.

It ignores the human suffering, genocide, and dispossession created through capitalist industrial agriculture. It ignores the staggering ecological cost of an agricultural system that ignores ecology, destroys ecosystems, and can't work without fossil fuels.

Why do they do this? In many cases because they're paid to or it's in their financial interest. Because agroecology and associated movements are growing in power. Because they are a threat to the most powerful capitalist industry on Earth: agriculture.

Because at the end of the day, their system doesn't have answers for how to feed people in a climate changed world without further accelerating ecosystem collapse and climate change.