In recent years, many ecologists, agronomists and food systems analysists have concluded that by mid-century farmers will need to produce more food on the same area of land with fewer purchased, environmentally damaging inputs. The key to making this happen? Ecological intensification, in which ecological attributes or processes supplant the need for purchased inputs to achieve sustainable and adequate levels of food production. The term has been adopted by a wide range of researchers to describe almost any change in farming practices that has the potential to reduce negative environmental impacts. As with other catch-all terms like “sustainability,” ecological intensification runs the risk of meaning everything and therefore nothing, or at least much less than it could.  In this session we present for discussion the idea that ecological intensification of agriculture should be informed by ecological and evolutionary relationships in natural systems, and that disparate approaches to ecological intensification can best be understood and appreciated when considered in the context of the ecological hierarchy. In this special session we will review the history and current usage of ecological intensification, and then we will provide examples of how it can be applied to agricultural challenges at the individual/population, community and ecosystem scales. The session will wrap up with discussions of potential improvements in agriculture if all scales of intensification are intentionally and simultaneously addressed and how the concept of ecological intensification can be further defined and implemented.