This paper analyzes how peasant movements scale up agroecology. It specifically examines Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF), a grassroots peasant agroecology movement in Karnataka, India. ZBNF ends reliance on purchased inputs and loans for farming, positioning itself as a solution to extreme indebtedness and suicides among Indian farmers. The ZBNF movement has achieved massive scale not only because of effective farming practices, but because of a social movement dynamic – motivating members through discourse, mobilizing resources from allies, self-organized pedagogical activities, charismatic and local leadership, and generating a spirit of volunteerism among its members. This paper was produced as part of a self-study process in La Via Campesina, the global peasant movement.

Climate adapted villages (CAV) is the Development Fund’s method for local climate adaptation. It if focused on food production and natural resource management. This report is a review of the CAV method and how it has been implemented in Ethiopia.

There is an increasing recognition that sustainable resource management and sustainable livelihoods are inseparable. If neglected, everyone’s future is threatened.

While farmer’s distress stories are shocking everyone’s conscience, first time celebrations like International Year of Family Farming, emerging health consciousness among consumers, is putting farmers production practices in the focus for right reasons. Also, the mainstream international agencies are voicing that agroecological approaches are the way forward.

This issue of Farming Matters explores innovative ways to demonstrate that agroecology provides critical solutions to the challenges of our time.

Agroecology is gaining recognition for its potential to address climate change, biodiversity loss and malnutrition, and many successful examples exist. However, to garner the necessary support in policy and practice, looking differently at ‘progress’, ‘performance’ or ‘success’ of farming and food systems is key. As agroecology can have impact at many levels, conventional indicators such as yield per hectare of a single crop no longer suffice. The experiences, opinions, and perspectives featured in this issue show how farmers, researchers, policy makers and consumers are using new lenses to track change.

n this first issue, an attempt has been made to discuss about soil in detail through the various topics focusing on soil. In his article entitled “You are from the soil and shall go back to the soil” Dr. Hailu Araya urges all to think of the soil, its contents invaluable uses. In a similar manner, Dr. Georg Deichert tells us we have to resonate of the soil in his article entitled “Rethinking the soil.”

These days, the soil has become a topical issue. That is because soil is the basis for everything and any problem in the health of the soil affects everything, especially living things. The agricultural system is the most affected as agriculture is all about soil, plants, animals, microorganisms and biodiversity in general.

Agro-biodiversity is not only about the genetic make up of Crops and animals domesticated by humans, it is also about the knowledge that supports it.

In this issue of Wegel we present views, opinions and research findings from different angles regarding the changes in the global agricultural system and its implications on the supply of healthy and balanced nutrition as well as the role of various stakeholders in putting the system back in to the right track.

The global food system is changing in line with the ever-increasing global population, technological advancements, scarcity of resources and the resultant scramble for the scarce resources.

‘Connecting Smallholders to Markets’ is the title of policy recommendations negotiated on 8- 9 June 2016 in the Committee on World Food Security, the foremost inclusive international and intergovernmental platform deliberating on is- sues of food security and nutrition.
This analytical guide examines how small- scale food producers’ organisations and allied civil society can use the recommendations in their national and international advocacy and how they can work together with their governments to apply them in the context of national and regional policies and programmes.

More info on the work of CSM on this issue here

The Right to Food and Nutrition Watch 2016—“Keeping Seeds in Peoples’ Hands”— explores the articulation of seeds, land and other natural resources with the human right to adequate food and nutrition. It assesses the role played by access to and control over natural resources in the realization of the right to food and nutrition across the world. Over the last few decades, the privatization and commoditization of nature has resulted in a multiplication of local struggles using human rights against the appropriation of agricultural biodiversity, land and water resources by corporations and states. How are peasant movements, indigenous peoples, and other local communities resisting—and what are the alternatives they present?

The Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security are a new international tool that can be used by peasant, fishing and pastoralist organisations, indigenous peoples, the landless, women, youth, and civil society to assert their rights. This People’s Manual is a didactic guide, which aims to make it easier to understand and use the Guidelines at the best. It is the result of collective and participatory work undertaken by the Land and Territory Working Group of the IPC (International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty)