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Policymakers, donors, and investors are seeing the wisdom of investing in soil restoration, agroecology, agroforestry, and biodiversity, among other regenerative actions. Not only are these markets a good fit for smallholder farmers who practice agroecology , but they are also more equitable and accessible for women and youth.
This is the first part of an articles series based on based on conversations held during COP16 (Cali) and COP29 (Baku) side events by leading food system actors, who explored solutions provided by agroecology. And efforts to make food systems more nature positive, including through agroecology, must be integral to each.
On the importance of diversity in ecological research. Towards an agroecological approach to crop health: reducing pest incidence through synergies between plant diversity and soil microbial ecology. Diversity of the research teams, that is. Adapting wild biodiversity conservation approaches to conserve agrobiodiversity.
But intensive agricultural practices prevalent since the Green Revolution began in the 1960s in India suppressed many ecosystem services and threatens India’s food, ecological, and nutritional security. Natural capital and ecosystem services constitute farms’ ecological wealth. percent in 1947 to 0.4
Title: Ecological Farming Program Specialist I or II Location: California / Hybrid – partially remote option (Davis, CA Region preferred) FTE: 1.0 Currently our programming is focused in four areas: Farm to Market, Policy & Advocacy, Farmer Services, and Ecological Farming.
A Bigger Conversation’s Director, Pat Thomas, shares insights from the ‘Agroecological Intelligence’ project, which spoke with agroecological farmers and growers to establish a criteria for adopting new technologies. But not everyone buys in to this narrative.
Organizations large and small are investing in local farmers, local economies, and agroecology so that Haitians can feed themselves in the long term. Jean-Baptiste has been working with smallholder farmers across the country to promote agroecology as a solution to hunger and poverty for four decades. Hunger in Haiti is not an accident.
A bit further north, the Sicangu Lakota community is reviving traditional Native American growing practices to reclaim their food sovereignty and also restoring the buffalo herd that once kept the Prairie ecology in balance.
By Justin Duncan, NCAT Sustainable Agriculture Specialist For the past couple years, NCAT has worked with the Southern Risk Management Education Center to provide training to farmers on how to better decide which crops to plant based on agroecological methods. Where are we in the ecological succession? I did my graduate work in cotton.
The Food Sovereignty Prize champions grassroots, agroecological solutions from the people most harmed by the injustices of the global food system,” states Heather Day, Executive Director of Community Alliance for Global Justice, a USFSA coordinating member, in a press release.
He writes: “Our societies must turn to low-energy, low-capital, low-carbon agroecological approaches geared to meeting local needs primarily from local land, air and water. Another part of my argument is ecological feedback. Humans are great at inventing symbolic systems that overrun the local ecology.
Fossil fuels have enabled us to soar past our ecological limits. We can support practices like agroecology and regenerative approaches that reduce dependency on synthetic fertilizer and pesticides while catalyzing a cascade of benefits, from better health outcomes to biodiversity protection.
There are many different schools of thought or different methodologies that people embrace as we do our farm work, and I have borrowed from many, but my favorite is agroecology. Agroecology is an integrated approach that combines ecological and social principles for sustainable agriculture and food systems.
The need for greater access to land, so that younger generations can have a role in equitable and accessible food production – most particularly in agroecological food production – is critical and demands that we find new pathways beyond ownership to invite their participation.
The environmental and financial problems of the hill farming sector have been written about exhaustively, so I won’t expand on them here – other than to say that while hill farming has a central role to play in socially and ecologically vibrant landscapes, a major shift towards agroecological practices is needed to realise this.
The crisis in Ukraine reveals that now more than ever, we must embrace a food system grounded in local agroecology. These are costs that are very limited or non-existent on small-scale, organic agroecology farms. The recent rise in food prices is buoyed by increased fertilizer, energy, and transport costs. Among the 12.6
But where Bergen Community College aims to foster new farmers in a suburban-urban environment through vertical farms and hydroponics, Walla Walla’s program will expand upon an existing agroecology curriculum geared toward its rural students, many of whom may be seeking to bring their education back to family farms or other local agriculture.
Community Alliance with Family Farmers, in partnership with the Farm Service Agency, Veggielution, Agroecology Commons, the Los Angeles Food Policy Council, and Food Access LA, are thrilled to announce the recipients of the Growing Urban Agriculture microgrants for the Spring of 2024.
Better yet, why do some researchers, farmers and activists prefer the term “urban agroecology?” From 2017 to 2019, my research team helped to define and elevate “urban agroecology” in the US as a better way of acknowledging the multifunctional benefits of urban green spaces. amount of food produced per unit of GHG emission).
Since 2017, CAFF’s Ecological Farming team has been conducting an on-farm demonstration project in collaboration with California no-till farmers to better understand small-scale biointensive no-till farming’s effect on soil health. Their webinar grabbed the attention of hundreds of agricultural enthusiasts, invoking in-depth discussion.
It sits alongside the Belize Northeastern Biological Corridor, which connects various ecological reserves and allows for safe passage of wildlife like jaguars and pumas. The ecological farming practices SHI partner farmers use provide even more habitat for wildlife and contribute to national conservation efforts.
Acres of Ancestry Initiative/Black Agrarian Fund The Acres of Ancestry Initiative/Black Agrarian Fund is a multidisciplinary, cooperative nonprofit ecosystem that aims to regenerate custodial land ownership, ecological stewardship, and food and fiber economies in the American South.
Over at Tool Legit, the farmers share similar goals of farming ecologically and productively at a human scale, which lends to knowledge-sharing, too. “It It’s also helped him experiment with intercropping, another practice that builds soil health and biodiversity on the farm.
Philly Forests uses revenue from their crop sales to operate their Urban Ecology Program which distributes free trees, shrubs and perennial plants through the Philadelphia zip codes with the lowest amount of tree canopy. In 2022, Philly Forests began a school garden and mini food forest at EW Rhodes K-8 School in North Philadelphia.
The struggle over coastal land has continued to intensify as locals endure successive waves of development, rezoning, and ecological destruction. An ornithologist can help document nesting territories, an ecologist document biodiversity marshland, and an agricultural economist can help assess the value of agroecological traditions.
However, as with all social-ecological systems , change in any part of the system necessarily requires or causes change in other parts of the system. Who manages land determines which scientific perspectives, crop choices, traditions, and skills shape the landscape, with profound implications for its ecological sustainability.
Currently our programming is focused in four areas: Farm to Market, Policy & Advocacy, Farmer Services, and Ecological Farming. We commit to advancing racial, gender, and environmental justice in our larger systems, as well as in our own workplace. To learn more about CAFF, our history, and our core values, visit [link].
Founded, owned and operated by Cole Bush, Shepherdess L&L was launched in 2020 in the Ojai Valley of Ventura County where the Shepherdess “flerds” of sheep and goats work from to provide vegetation management services for fire prevention and ecological enhancement projects. ” – Cole What is a day in a Shepherd’s life like?
As many parts of the country cannot transition fully to year-round, grass-based livestock systems, we believe it is vital to dedicate funding to AMMP technologies to ensure that instances where confinement is likely to continue are as ecologically friendly as can be.
WHAT WE'VE BEEN UP TO On-Farm Research While CAFF’s preliminary on-farm research trials have wrapped up, we’ve continued to visit no-till farms in Northern California in partnership with UC Berkeley’s Agroecology Lab.
And agroforestry has broad ecological positives that aren’t necessarily reflected in the raw accounting of carbon offsets. If some offsetting is inevitable, Carbon Harvest suggests, its proceeds should be harnessed to boost the growth of sustainable agriculture in places like Southern Appalachia.
The couple show a real passion for nature, as evidenced by the sign at the entrance of their farm which reads, “Ecology now!” And for agroecological farmers and growers, this poses some difficulty. Troed y Rhiw is an 8.5 Finding appropriate machinery for field-scale organic horticulture is hard.”
USDA funding should be directed toward building an understanding of the ecological aspects of our food and farm systems and integrating the diverse knowledge and practices of agroecological farmers and farm workers, rather than continuing to explore and promote the narrow constraints of industrial-scale monoculture. (
But as we understand ecological systems better, we have come to realise that, while they can be very resilient, at some level of degradation they reach tipping points at which they flip into new states far less conducive to human life.
Prioritizing ecological integrity and community health over yield, these farmers stay profitable by diversifying their crops, producing value-added products like jams and sauces, and building community support and social capital.
Removing livestock for even 10 years from this land can cause an ecological disaster in grassland communities.” Now, they absorb up to 16 inches of rain per hour,” says Jack Algiere, director of agroecology at Stone Barn. Julie Elliot is a director on SRM’s board. Obviously, farming crops and rangelands are not compatible,” she says.
This marks an increase of more than 30% in the past decade as chicken has been marketed as a more compassionate, healthy and ecological alternative to red meat. Examples of good practice are already flourishing in organic and agroecological enterprises. There are at least 1,000 intensive poultry units throughout the UK.
xlii] Agroecological farming systems have been demonstrated to increase biodiversity on farmed land: plant species increase by 20-95%, insect species by 23%, and pollinator numbers by 30% in organic compared with conventional farming systems. Ecological Entomology 40, 124–135 (2015). cattle industry. xvii] Milazzo, F.
. “[…] a relentless focus on single outcomes, such as carbon, coupled with industry’s instinct to define and standardise, threatens the transformative potential of agroecology,” he wrote recently. He argues agroecological systems are “networks of relationships, not collections of practices.
Virginia Tech and Virginia Cooperative Extension’s project team conducted 11 semi-structured interviews and conversations across Virginia to learn and better understand farmers’ and ranchers’ agroecological motivations and overall values related to the protection and conservation of water resources.
USDA funding should be directed toward building an understanding of the ecological aspects of our food and farm systems, integrating the diverse knowledge and practices of agroecological farmers and farm workers, and accessible to all farmers.”
According to Compson, “Organic certification provides a market mechanism for farmers to be rewarded and recognised for their positive efforts towards tackling the climate and ecological crisis.” Today, shoppers in the United Kingdom spend £60 million a week on organic. Yet, there are concerns about organic certification.
When it comes to ecologically produced food, to sustainable agriculture, to farmers welfare; there is no diverse person that can tackle and better discuss these matters, than Tammi Jonas. around the agroecological transition. Tammi has been farming for about 10 years, and recently started a Ph.D. Let’s not forget, WE ARE WHAT WE EAT!
Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) , Africa AFSA is a coalition of civil society organizations advocating for food sovereignty and agroecology across the continent. They focus on improving livelihoods through the promotion of ecological land-use management practices and empowering farming communities.
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