Community Markets for Conservation (COMACO) has helped people address the challenges of food insecurity and environmental degradation while conserving wildlife and other natural resources. COMACO is one of the few programs that operate at the scale of an entire ecosystem—contributing to increased wildlife numbers, better protected habitats, improved food security, and better incomes.

This case study was produced by the Oakland Institute. It is copublished by the Oakland Institute and the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa AFSA). A full set of case studies can be found at www.oaklandinstitute.org and www.afsafrica.org

Initiatives based on ‘short chains’ between farmers and consumers are slowly but surely gaining ground in the Netherlands, a country with a strongly industrialised food system. Looking for ecological, healthy, and fresh food, urban consumers are now creating innovative channels that support local and organic food producers.

One way that family farmers improve their resilience to both climatic and economic shocks is to diversify what is produced. More and different crops and livestock, particularly local varieties and breeds are being promoted. Two other options stand out too – bees and trees. These have the added advantages of complementing the production of agricultural crops and enhancing the agroecosystem. In Zimbabwe, the Ruzivo Trust has been promoting beekeeping, and the results are showing the sweet taste of success. Bees can help farmers break out of poverty.

En los últimos años los servicios intangibles que brindan los pastizales de Sudamérica tomaron importancia, principalmente los rioplatenses de la Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay y sur de Brasil. Los pastizales rioplatenses de la Argentina pertenecen en parte a la subregión conocida como Pampa Deprimida. Una porción importante de este paisaje ha sido fuertemente afectada por el proceso de agriculturización. Paradójicamente, en la región argentina existen áreas ubicadas en los alrededores de los grandes cascos urbanos que aún conservan superficies importantes de tierras cubiertas por pastizales naturales manejados por pequeños productores familiares.

El Centro de Resguardo es un espacio donde se establecen y reproducen plantas medicinales y aromáticas, asociándose especies silvestres y cultivadas, y donde además se registran los conocimientos populares sobre sus usos.

After the electoral defeat of the Sandinistas in 1990, former land owners returned to Nicaragua from the USA. They began to take back their former estates through legal and less than legal manoeuvering, driving many rural people off the land they had been cultivating. This ‘agrarian counter-reform’ as it became known, left many hundreds of people landless in its wake during the 1990s and early 2000s. Now a national union has adopted agroecology and is leading the way for peasant farmers to collectively work their way out of poverty and towards a more resilient model of agriculture.

Recurring drought and crop failure in many parts of the world have led to food and nutrition insecurity, and a dependence on food aid. But recently, some farmers in Kenya have been developing their own sustainable way to secure enough nutritious food along with extra income so that they can send their children to school. Traditional drought tolerant, nutritious crops such as cassava, sorghum and millet that were losing popularity due to a surge in maize production are again becoming commonplace, with reliable harvests improving diets and income.

From a situation of widespread undernutrition, consuming fresh vegetables all year round has now become a reality for many Nepali households thanks to their expanding home gardens. But the stories they tell show that the benefits of home gardens are not limited to improving household nutrition. The gardens also help to empower women and conserve biodiversity, two much needed conditions for better family and community nutrition on a broader scale.

Ecuador is going through a substantial nutritional transition. This, coupled with the paradox that rural families that produce food are often those most affected by undernutrition, shows the ironies of ‘modern’ food systems. It also highlights the importance of rural-urban linkages around family nutrition which can help to address such contradictions. This is what we see among families living in two rural villages, San Francisco Alto and Ambuqui, in the north of Ecuador, who through various strategies have managed to achieve healthy, diversified and nutritious diets.

Opinion by Navina Khanna.
Navina Khanna introduces the food justice movement in the USA, and how from the corner shop to Capitol Hill, communities are making waves, and fighting for fairer policies in both corporate and governmental sectors.