Recently Added Initiatives and Reports

  • Inga Alley Cropping providing land for life

    Hands, M. R. June 2002. Alley-Cropping as a Sustainable Alternative to Shifting Cultivation. Final Report. Project HND / B7-6201 / IB / 97 / 0533(08). Tropical Forests Budgetary Line. Commission of the European Communities. DG I. Brussels. Hands, M. R. 1998. The uses of Inga in the acid soils of the Rainforest zone : Alley-cropping sustainability and soil-regeneration. In : Pennington, T.D. and Fernandes, E.C.M. (eds.) The Genus Inga : Utilization. The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. England.


  • Peasant-led food sovereignty gives life to agricultural biodiversity

    What is it about? ABSTRACT Agricultural biodiversity is dynamically managed by smaller-scale food providers, who have co-evolved with their crops and livestock and agroecosystems over millennia. It encompasses not only the species directly harvested for food etc. but also all the support species that provide essential ecosystem functions, which support the productive environment. Agricultural biodiversity increased over millennia with the movement of peoples across the globe. However, more recently with the rampant spread of the industrial production of commodities, livestock and fisheries, agricultural biodiversity is haemorrhaging. Yet, it is the smaller-scale food providers – the world’s peasants – who provide nourishment for most people in the world through their biodiverse and ecologically-resilient production systems, developed in the framework of food sovereignty, who sustain agricultural biodiversity. Their production systems enhance agricultural biodiversity and enable it to adapt to changes in agroecosystems due to climate change and other threats. This article calls for the breaking of the value chains which bind industrial producers to unsustainable and biodiversity-destroying production and consumption systems. It also calls for the protection of the rights of smaller-scale, biodiversity-enhancing food providers whose localised food webs developed in the framework of food sovereignty will continue to provide food for most people today and tomorrow as well as sustaining and enhancing agricultural biodiversity for future generations. (more…)


  • Who Will Feed Us? The Industrial Food Chain vs the Peasant Food Web

    Who Will Feed Us? is a data-driven report full of unexpected statistics that reveal a tale of two food systems. It upturns common assumptions about who feeds whom in a hungry world threatened by climate change. Some highlights of the report: Peasants (not food corporations) feed the world: 70% of the world’s population is fed by the Peasant Food Web, using only 25% of resources. Industrial food production fails to feed: Only 24% of the food produced by the Industrial Food Chain actually reaches people – the rest is wasted in meat production inefficiencies; lost in transport, storage and at the household; and diverted to non-food products. Industrial food costs us more: For every dollar spent on industrial food, it costs another 2 dollars to clean up the mess The report is also available in Spanish and French


  • Investissements dans l’agriculture durable à petite échelle

    Ce rapport de 32 pages donne un aperçu de la situation mondiale des investissements dans l'agriculture. Il fournit des exemples de plusieurs pays et présente des recommandations pour des investissements futurs dans une agriculture durable à petite échelle. L'objectif du rapport est de: Augmenter les connaissances, la sensibilisation et les discussions sur les investissements dans l'agriculture durable à petite échelle parmi les organisations d'agriculteurs, les ONG, les institutions et les investisseurs travaillant dans l'agriculture, en particulier dans les pays en développement, ainsi que les décideurs et les institutions des pays de l'OCDE qui s'occupent de l'aide publique au développement (APD). Contribuer à l'augmentation des investissements publics et privés dans l'agriculture durable à petite échelle.


  • Agroecology: Science and Politics

    Our global food system is largely based on unsustainable industrial agricultural practices, is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, is controlled by a handful of large corporations and produces unhealthy food. Agroecology is a solution to these increasingly urgent problems. After decades of being dismissed by mainstream institutions and defended in obscurity by grassroots movements and farmers, agroecology is suddenly in fashion. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization, government ministries and even corporations are jumping on the bandwagon. But, are they pushing the same agroecology as developed by pioneering farmers and scientists and pushed for by peasant social movements, or are they seeking to co-opt the concept and give it different content? Rosset and Altieri, two of the world’s leading agroecologists, outline the principles, history and currents of agroecological thought, the scientific evidence for agroecology, the social aspects of bringing agroecology to scale and the contemporary politics of agroecology.