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.

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Handbook On Agroecology: Farmer’s Manual on Sustainable Practices

This booklet is aimed to educate and inform farmers about diverse possibility of sustainable and safe food production methods and its techniques. This handbook is designed as a practical guide to these different practices of agroecology and their specific principles, techniques and strategies.We hope that these practical techniques would help to address the needs of especially small and marginal farmers who are contemplating to switch over to low-cost agriculture. We also hope that sustainable agricultural practices mentioned here can easily be adapted by small farmers without involving much input costs.However the set of practices mentioned here are not the only valid roadmap available for adopting low-cost organic agriculture. A skillful agroecology practitioner can come up with their own innovative techniques by applying different agroecological principles to suite particular crops, soil conditions and available natural resources.

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Sharing Power. A global guide to collaborative management of natural resources

The collaborative or ‘co-management’ of natural resources – whether between states and local communities or amongst and within communities themselves – is a process of collective understanding and actions by local communities and other social actors. The process brings about negotiated agreements on management roles, rights and responsibilities, making explicit the conditions and institutions of sound decentralized governance. At heart, co-management is about sharing power.

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