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.

Read More

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. Read more

Read 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

Read More

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.

Read More

Unravelling the Food-Health Nexus: Addressing practices, political economy and power relations to build healthier food systems’

This report from the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES) reviews the latest evidence on the whole range of health impacts associated with food systems around the world to provide a full picture. It further examines the political economy of food systems: why evidence gaps persist, why negative impacts are systematically reproduced, and why certain problems are not politically prioritized.

Read More

Women, Agroecology & Gender Equality

This booklet from Focus on the Global South, is intended to serve as a basic background resource for grassroots groups, to make links between gender and agroecology, and to understand agroecology’s potential to address gender inequalities.

Read More

Investments in small-scale sustainable agriculture

This 32 page report gives an overview of the global situation of investments in agriculture. It provides examples from several countries and present recommendations for future investments in small-scale sustainable agriculture.

  • The aim of the report is to:
    Increase knowledge, awareness and discussions about investments in small-scale sustainable agriculture among farmers’ organizations, NGOs, institutions and investors working in agriculture, especially in developing countries, as well as decision-makers and institutions in OECD-countries dealing with official development assistance (ODA).
  • Contribute to increased public and private investments in small-scale sustainable agriculture.

Read More

Farming Matters: Building Food Sovereignty

This issue of Farming Matters is about food sovereignty. Food sovereignty is a self-organised, grassroots response to today’s problematic food and farming system. Diverse people, such as producers, consumers, peasants, migrant farm workers and urban citizens, to name a few, are uniting around initiatives to regain control over their food and natural resources.

Read More

Agroecology and Sustainable Development

This report primarily focuses on agroecology projects and the views of Caritas France’s partners in the Global South. The wide range of practices is tailored to providing local solutions for sustainable agriculture in myriad different regions. All the initiatives are built on the principles of empowerment, action, resilience and integration of the social dimension.

Read More

Report of the Special Rapporteur on the right to food

The report was written by Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Hilal Elver, in collaboration with the Special Rapporteur on the implications for human rights of the environmentally sound management and disposal of hazardous substances and wastes. In the report, a clearer account is provided of global pesticide use in agriculture and its impact on human rights; the negative consequences that pesticide practices have had on human health, the environment and society, which are underreported and monitored in the shadow of a prevailing and narrow focus on “food security”, are described; and the environmental and human rights regimes are examined to determine whether the constituent rules are sufficient to protect farm workers, consumers, and vulnerable groups, as well as the natural resources that are necessary to support sustainable food systems.

The report concludes with a set of important recommendations, which include – among the others – a call  to the international community to work on a comprehensive binding treaty to regulate and reduce the use of hazardous pesticides  taking into account human rights principles, the promotion of agroecology, the development of national action plans that support alternative sustainable practices.

Read More