agro-ecology

This briefing by IIED revisits the term ‘sustainable intensification’. The paper makes a distinction in what it should be according to the authors — a useful guiding framework for raising agricultural productivity on existing arable land in a sustainable manner; and what it should not be — a paradigm for achieving food security overall. The »

This report (PDF) of EASAC by a group of researchers, highlights the importance of the relation between agriculture and ecosystem services, as a critical part of a sustainable agricultural system. More and more studies show the severe effects of the use of neonicotinoids on a wide range of organisms that provide ecosystem services like pollination »

On the 2-3 February 2015, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) organized a technical meeting betwen Indigenous Peoples’ respresentatives and FAO staff. This report includes the work plan based on the main suggestions made for how FAO and indigenous peoples can collaborate in the short, medium and long term. The report identifies concrete steps that can be followed in relation to the Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-scale Fisheries in the Context of Food Security and Poverty Eradication, known as the SSF Guidelines, inidgenous food systems and fishers among others. »

This article by a group of researchers, published in Proceedings B by Royal Society, compares organic and conventional yields by using a new meta-dataset and a new hierarchical analytical framework that can better account for the heterogeneity and structure in the data. Their main finding is that organic yields are only 19.2% (±3.7%) lower than »

This report (PDF) from The Overseas Development Institute (ODI), describes a case study where degraded land in Burkina Faso was brought into productive use through the application of improved traditional farming techniques. Three main factors have contributed to achieving this progress: 1. farmers had valuable local knowledge of suitable and efficient traditional farming methods; 2. »

The Africa Agriculture Status Report 2014 (PDF) presents a comprehensive overview of smallholder agriculture in Africa and addresses the ‘climate-smart agricultural’ (CSA) sector in the continent. The role of soil fertility and plant nutrition in strengthening the vigor of farming systems and make them less vulnerable to climate change is explicitly addressed in this report. »