Abstract
In this final chapter, we outline a vision for a technological revolution in agriculture that would work to regain a sense of balance between food production and natural ecosystems. We promote an ecological engineering approach to crop production that draws on experience from the organic and conservation agriculture movements. However, we expand on this by promoting in addition:
An Internet of Things enabled biomonitoring system that enables key (above and below ground) environmental indicators to be automatically monitored across an agricultural unit.A combination of network and thermodynamic ecosystem modelling approaches to enable a deep understanding of the response of ecosystem service functioning to changes in biodiversity, and the abiotic context, in any given agroecosystem.
We also call for an explicit recognition of the “ethnosphere” (the sphere of human social and cultural experience) as a fifth geosphere which emerged from the biosphere, and the other three geospheres, and whose continued existence is therefore contingent on the health and stability of the other four geospheres.