Agriculture is moving towards ecological principles.

Agriculture in different latitudes of the world is experiencing one of its worst moments in its history, because it is no stranger to the crises that the planet is experiencing from an environmental, food and economic point of view. In recent years there has been a lot of irregularity in the prices of agricultural products, at least that is what happens in our country Venezuela where the incentive and serious agricultural policies have progressively decreased and the prices of the items remain in a constant rise and fall, possibly as mentioned by some researchers for the imports of certain items, this situation of dependence sometimes generates some concern about food security, because the idea is that nations produce their own food.

As evidenced in the previous chapter, our country is not except to what happens in many countries worldwide and every day it becomes more difficult to develop agriculture in these times which is a vital point, due to the skyrocketing prices and the need to reduce imports; in addition to this, conventional practices have been practiced for many years in agriculture creating high dependence on synthetic products, which was well seen as a productive response in the short term, undoubtedly, it made us slaves to unsustainable practices from an economic, environmental and social point of view.

In recent years, due to the marked economic crisis that our region has been going through, the need has arisen to use production alternatives based on low external inputs and to enhance the local resources available within the production units or in the surrounding areas that are economically and environmentally sustainable. In this way we have been progressively migrating to organic, ecological and sustainable systems, to be honest it was not a decision that was made in order to conserve the environment but to be able to keep the production units productive in the moments of crisis that we face, but as they say over there, but despite these evils, the advantage is that producers have begun to know many agroecological alternatives to keep the production of crops in balance with the ecosystem.

In the same vein, the management of agricultural production units has been strengthening with the use of low external inputs and work has begun to obtain organic products for various practices such as, for example, fertilization, pest control among other practices of agronomic interest. We have begun to understand that a large number of organisms that are fundamental for production interact within ecosystems, where we can mention the microorganisms present in the soil, which are capable of decomposing the organic matter present and transforming it into inorganic elements that can be easily absorbed by plants, therefore, many bioproducts have also emerged, such as the well-known EM (efficient microorganisms), which have begun to be elaborated and applied on a large scale, in the agroecological area where we are located it is widely used in the cultivation of oil palm.

In relation to the alternative of the efficient microorganisms Amrhein and Higa (2002), they mentioned that it is a technology that emerged in the 80s by Dr. Higa, professor of horticulture at the Ryukyus University in Okinawa (Japan), with the aim of progressively decreasing the synthetic products of agricultural production and in this way obtaining excellent productive yields with a method that was environmentally and economically sustainable and of course healthy for humans. The same researchers point out that the creator of this alternative suffered a disease because of these polluting agents and therefore opted for natural microorganisms, accidentally discovering that the mixture of a group of microorganisms had a very strong synergistic effect on plant growth and other beneficial functions, it is indicated that the key was to work with several populations of these microbes and unite them, not in isolation, which is the tradition and what is most practiced in the world.

Dear readers, as it could be evidenced at present, due to the serious environmental, economic and social imbalances, agriculture has begun to develop on the basis of the past managing ecosystems as natural sources of production without turning them into experimental laboratories of synthetic products, the idea is to diagnose what kind of resources we have in our agroecosystems and from there recognize with which we can work efficiently. There are many plant species that are used for animal feed, others with repellent effect for insects, in the same way, through organisms such as worms, we can obtain an excellent solid and liquid fertilizer for the nutrition of our crops, all this could have a positive effect in the medium and long term on the agroecosystem.