Blog for People, Food and Nature

March 13, 2012

Bioversity talks Landscapes

On the heels of the Nairobi International Forum, the discussions around integrated agricultural landscapes are still forefront on our minds. Co-Organizer Bioversity International’s Pablo Eyzaguirre extends the discourse to the web, talking about the potential for landscape approaches to reconcile the objectives of agricultural production and nature conservation. The video dep ...
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March 12, 2012

Scaling Down Innovation: The Case of Maasai Corridor

“The landscape we visited was almost unable to function in an integrated way anymore” – the rather depressed conclusion of the participants who set out to visit the Maasai Corridor as part of the Nairobi International Forum learning activities. Scaling up innovation? In this case, it is scaling down. And at the very least, imposing […] ...
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March 9, 2012

A Look at the IAASTD

By Hans Herren, Director Millennium Institute, Washington, DC, USA In 2008, a UN-commissioned effort, the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science, and Technology for Development (IAASTD), took a comprehensive look at the current global agriculture and food situation. The IAASTD report warns that continuing on the path of high-input industrial agriculture wil ...
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March 8, 2012

Agricultural Research for Farmers’ Priorities

Daniel Bornstein

The agricultural research agenda must reflect farmers’ priorities if they are to benefit from landscape approaches. Research investments work toward improving the productivity of indigenous crops valuable to farmers’ nutrition and livelihood objectives—a much-needed departure from the longstanding emphasis on globally-traded commodity crops. One promising development in t ...
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March 8, 2012

Getting to the heart of the matter: Action and Advocacy for an integrated landscape approach

The second day of the International Forum in Nairobi and time to put the participants to work. The mission?  To get an African elephant on roller skates to change direction. Landscapes for People, Food and Nature is a three-year initiative with three components: conducting a global review to build and communicate the evidence base for […] ...
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March 7, 2012

Launching a Common Vision

The need for a common vision – catching crabs in a stream in Ghana – and rain shower of words –highlights from the opening session of the Landscapes for People, Food and Nature International Forum, Tuesday morning in Nairobi, Kenya. It is well documented that many of today’s agricultural practices—along with population growth and changing […] ...
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March 6, 2012

Landscapes for People, Food and Nature on Air

<img src="http://blog.ecoagriculture.org/wp-includes/js/tinymce/themes/advanced/img/trans.gif" class="mceItemMedia mceItemFlash" width="320" height="266" data-mce-json="{'video':{},'params':{'allowfullscreen':'true','allowscriptaccess':'always','flashvars':' ...
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March 5, 2012

What we call “Landscapes for People, Food and Nature”

Seth Shames EcoAgriculture Partners Sara Scherr

“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet…” (William Shakespeare) During a tea break in the EcoAgriculture Partners office a couple of weeks ago, a familiar conversation broke out about the proliferation of words that describe various aspects of ecoagriculture. Usually this conversation ends with a collective shrug once our teacups are empty, […] ...
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March 1, 2012

DESIRE Sustainable Land Management

Info-brief 8: Using land for the benefit of all The DESIRE research project is a collaborative effort to develop integrated approaches to combating land degradation. Above is a booklet recently produced on “using land for the benefit of all.” It is based on the World Overview of Conservation Approaches and Technologies (WOCAT) methodology to identifying […] ...
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February 28, 2012

Agroecological Grazing at Scale

A recent article in the open-source journal Solutions describes an integrated approach to the provision of public ecosystem services. Authors Joshua Farley, Abdon Schmitt F., Juan Alvez, and Norton Ribeiro de Freitas Jr. present an example of Management-Intensive Grazing (MIG) as a case study for how an incentivescheme could support agroecology. In this system riparian zones [ ...
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