May 21, 2012
Landscape-Level Conservation Agriculture
Conservation agriculture has been promoted as a means to increase water and nutrient efficiencies in semi-arid regions of African, through a suite of practices such as cover-cropping and no-till agriculture. However, adoption of conservation agriculture on the continent has been low. A recent article in the journal Field Crops Research explores the reasons behind this lack [&h ...
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May 9, 2012
Biodiversity and Organic Agriculture: A Symbiotic Relationship
Last week, we highlighted recent research and discussion around organic versus conventional agricultural methods as a means to feed the world. Today, Dr. Lise Andreasen, International Coordinator for the International Centre for Research in Organic Food Systems (ICROFS) in Denmark, explores how organic agriculture can play a role in a landscape approach to sustainable intensifi ...
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May 4, 2012
Mainstreaming Ecosystem Services into Farm Policies
We have looked at ecosystem services provision within agricultural landscapes in a couple of different contexts on the Landscapes Blog. Today, Dr. Tobias Plieninger, Head of the Ecosystem Services Research Group at the Berlin-Brandenberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Germany, provides a European policy perspective on the topic. It calls for a more integrated and [&hell ...
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May 2, 2012
Closing the Gap
“The world already produces more than 1 ½ times enough food to feed everyone on the planet,” noted an article from the Institute for Food and Development Policy. Referencing a new study in the journal Nature by Seufert, Ramankutty, and Foley, the article argues that the primary concern now in combating food insecurity is with access and […] ...
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April 25, 2012
Metrics for Biodiversity
By Lee Gross, Project Manager for Markets and Biodiversity EcoAgriculture Partners, Washington DC, USA How do we know we are having an impact? This is a critical question posed by resource managers, businesses, and policy-makers worldwide. Fundamental to answering this question is an effective system for monitoring and evaluation. Since 2008 EcoAgriculture Partners has provided ...
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April 4, 2012
Making Landscapes Climate-Smart
Eva Wollenberg
University of Vermont
CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS)
While adaptation and climate change mitigation in agriculture are usually managed at the farm, plot, or crop level, a landscape-level approach can increase agriculture’s “climate smartness.” That means achieving multiple goals – adaptation and mitigation of climate change, while also meeting agricultural production, food security, and sustainable development objecti ...
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March 28, 2012
Managing Landscape Margins for Better Outcomes
Dr. Mike Bushell, Syngenta Global Research and Development
The challenges ahead for world agriculture are huge. Before the end of the century we need to feed 10 billion people sustainably – with climate change, water scarcity and energy security issues making life much more difficult for farmers. We must achieve this on about the same amount of agricultural land that we use today. […] ...
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March 21, 2012
Sampling the Soils of Ethiopia
By Dr. Leigh Winowiecki, Soil Scientist Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), Sustainable Land Management Program, based in Nairobi, Kenya. Land degradation is increasingly recognized as a major cause of low agricultural productivity, loss of biodiversity, and poverty. When degraded lands are continuously cultivated without rehabilitation or conservation measures, they can ...
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March 14, 2012
Indigenous resource management systems: A holistic approach to nature and livelihoods
By Dr. Maurizio Farhan-Ferrari, Environmental Governance Programme Coordinator Forest Peoples Programme, Moreton-in-Marsh, UK Two peer-reviewed studies published recently by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and the World Bank show that strict conservation is less effective in reducing deforestation than community forests that are managed and controlled by ...
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February 29, 2012
Niche Product Markets: A Silver Bullet for Agrobiodiversity Conservation?
Adam G. Drucker
Bioversity International
Only around 30 plants account for more than 85% of global crop production. The majority of the planet’s food comes from a very small number of crops: out of approximately 380,000 plant species known to exist, fewer than 20% are eaten, and only about 150 are domesticated for farming. Despite providing a key input into […] ...
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